Warren Taylor - What does it mean to become a friend of Jesus? - Sunday, April 12, 2026

I'd like to do something different with you in our prayer time today.

In a few moments, can I ask you to close your eyes and we're just going to invite God to come and walk with us.

Just as in Genesis 3 said, heard the sound of God in the garden walking.

It says, Can I just ask you and close your eyes just for a short time?

Lord, we declare that you are a good, good Father.

We present to you now our hearts, hearts of surrender, hearts of honor.

And we give to you our spirit that's being shaken in awe and wonder of you.

And Lord God, we ask that you would now come walk with us now in the coolness of this auditorium, that you would come and meet us now.

And we invite you.

I'm just gonna have a little time of quiet.

Father, we thank you that you are precious and beautiful.

Amen.

I don't know about you, but I am intrigued by the thought of being God's friend.

I know that God desires it for us.

And I've heard theologians claim from the James passage where it says, draw near to God, and he will draw near to you, that we determine the level of intimacy that we have with God.

And I have witnessed, and I'm sure that you have some confusing stories of friendship with God.

I've heard people say that God and I are just like this.

Have you seen that?

I've heard you seen?

And maybe it's said as it in jests as a joke, but it can make us recoil because we sometimes can't see the integrity of the women or men's relationship with God.

We can also see people who have seemingly a flippant relationship with God where the fear of God seems to be missing.

At worst they press a switch and God is compelled to answer their prayers.

You can be right in saying that God doesn't want us to take the position of judge.

It's not our role, it's God's.

Yet God doesn't want us to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

God wants us to seek a rich closeness in our relationship with Him, which is far beyond what we can imagine or believe is possible.

God desires to reveal the innermost secrets of the kingdom to us.

I believe God will want me to talk about the following points today.

There's four of them.

Number one, can Jesus trust us?

And why is it important for God to trust us?

Secondly, what can I learn from the heroes and heroines of the Bible who were friends of Jesus?

Thirdly, how does one move into friendship with God?

And lastly, a testimony of friendship with God.

The first one, can Jesus trust us?

And why is it important for God to trust us?

Maybe that heading has left us a little hollow, a bit confused.

Doesn't Jesus trust all of his children?

It's not my intention for you to be uncertain concerning God.

So let's look at the very character of God.

In 1 John 4 16, it says, God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and God lives in them.

Love defines God.

It is impossible for God to act outside of love.

Love compels and controls God in all his interactions with his children.

It is a love that's not controlling, a love that is not demanding.

It is a love that draws us to him.

In turning to Christ, it was his love that encircled us and drew us to him like a moth to a light.

Now to the passage that almost everyone uses at their wedding.

It's beautiful and wonderful and certainly describes the beauty and depth of a loving relationship with God.

1 Corinthians 13, verses 4 to 7.

1 Corinthians 13:4–7

Love is patient and kind.

Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude.

It does not demand its own way.

It is not irritable and it keeps no record of wrongs.

It doesn't rejoice about injustice, but rejoices whenever the truth wins out.

Love never gives up, never loses faith.

It's always hopeful and endures through every circumstance.

Since God is defined and embraced by love, the passage is really saying God is patient and kind.

God is not boastful or rude.

God doesn't keep a record of wrongs.

God never gives up on us.

All the great and exuberant and abundant pictures that we have of God.

So is the title that I started off a few moments ago potentially alarming and confusing.

I have discovered over the years that when God is forming a prophetic word in me, I would become a little anxious and want it to happen very soon.

I have learnt, maybe the right word is taught over the years to ask God questions.

Is this word for me?

Is this word for the church?

Is this word for someone else?

Dear God, I don't want to push or demand of you.

Is this the right time for you to give this word to me?

Sometimes I believe God says, I have a word for you, for I trust you.

Sometimes I ask the question, why do you trust me, Lord?

And no, it's not because of my goodness, not because of some precious gift that I have crafted and shaped in myself.

No, no, no.

It's because of the glorious goodness of God.

In John 2, the authorities were selling doves, goats, and bulls for the people to offer as sacrifices to God.

In John 2, verses 16 to 18, this is Jesus talking.

John 2:16–18

Get these things out of here.

Stop turning my father's house into a marketplace.

Then his disciples remembered this prophecy from the Scriptures, Passion for my God's house will consume me.

But the Jewish leaders demanded, What are you doing?

If God gave you authority to do this, show us a miraculous sign to prove it.

The authorities challenged Jesus' leadership.

The authorities discredited Jesus' leadership.

The authorities demanded a miracle from Jesus to establish his authority.

Jesus had already turned the water into wine and Cana, his first demonstration of his glory.

In answer to the Jewish leaders who demanded a miracle, Jesus said he would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days.

The answer didn't put out the fire of questions coming to him.

It seemingly made the authorities more confused and irritated.

His disciples later remembered when Jesus was raised from the dead that he had already prophesied this miracle.

Yet in John 2, verses 23 to 25, it says, Because of the many miraculous signs Jesus did in Jerusalem at the Passover celebrations, many began to trust in him, but Jesus didn't trust them, because he knew all about people.

John 2:23–25

No one needed to tell him about human nature, for he knew what was in each person's heart.

And also in John 6, Jesus and his disciples fed the five thousand.

And in John 6, verses 26 and 27, Jesus replied, I tell you the truth.

John 6:26

You want to be with me because I fed you, not because you understood the miraculous signs.

But don't be so concerned about perishable things like food.

Spend your energy seeking the eternal life that the Son of God can give you.

For God the Father has given me the seal of his approval.

They replied, We want to perform works too.

What should we do?

The word works is often used in Scripture to mean miracles.

The last two sentences can almost be translated as, We want to do miracles too.

Can you coach us?

Teach us how to do the miracles that you do.

God adores you, God cherishes you.

He will never give up on you or withdraw from you.

For God is not like a man.

When our trust is compromised or violated, we can retreat from loving the relationships.

God never does that.

God sees our heart.

God knows our heart.

It can't be hidden from God.

God's trust is weakened.

I'm not sure that's too harsh, but God's trust in us is affected.

When one, we question or dismiss his authority.

Secondly, we seek only from God to get something from him.

Thirdly, we seek to act like God without the heart of God.

God's clear heart towards us is revealed in John 6, verses 35 to 37.

John 6:35–37

Jesus replied, I am the bread of life.

Whoever comes to me will never be hungry.

Again, whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.

But you haven't believed in me, even though you've seen me.

However, the Father has given me will come to me, and I will never reject them.

What can we learn from the heroes and heroines of the Bible who are friends of God?

I'm looking at Job, Joseph, Mary, and David, who are all called friends of God or classified as very close to God.

I'll start with Job.

Job suffered much.

He lost his family, he lost his wealth, he lost his health, and possibly lost his peace.

In Job 1, verse 8, it says, Then the Lord asked Satan, Have you noticed my servant Job?

Job 1:8

He is the finest man in all the earth.

He is blameless, a man of complete integrity.

He fears God and stays away from evil.

Job's wife almost demanded that Job curse God.

She declared that God has given up on you, so give up on God.

Job didn't understand, but refused to accept that God was unloving and cruel.

Their relationship was so close that he had the confidence to ask honest, tough questions of God.

In Job 7, verses 20 and 21, this is Job speaking, If I have sinned, what have I done to you, O watcher of humanity?

Job 7:20

Why make me your target?

Am I a burden to you?

Why not forgive my sin and take away my guilt?

No matter how difficult the trials that he faced, he refused to believe God had changed.

Job refused to believe God was out to get him, despite his many questions.

He used God's heart was always for him, despite his heartache.

I can't begin to imagine what it would be like to live in a world where you faced ridicule, sneering, and shaming because you didn't conform to the expectations of society.

Joseph knew a woman carrying a child outside of marriage meant shame was dumped upon the families concerned, especially for the woman.

Joseph was confused and felt betrayed by his fiance.

He knew that the baby that Mary was carrying could not be his.

What a scandal.

We now get a glimpse into the heart of Joseph.

He did not want to shame Mary publicly, so Joseph decided to break off the engagement quietly.

In Matthew 1.20, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream.

The angel said, Do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child within her was conceived by the Holy Spirit.

We don't know whether Joseph was used to angelic encounters.

Maybe he woke up uncertain about what had just happened.

Was it really true?

Yet the encounter gave him a sense of peace.

Joseph was now reassured that Mary had not betrayed him.

Scripture says Joseph woke and did what the angel of the Lord commanded, knowing society of the time, the rumour mill would have spun into action.

Joseph faced many challenges, and Joseph refused to be bound by the opinions of others.

One dream from the Lord was enough to say yes to God.

He remained true and supportive to Mary and their journey together.

Now to Mary and another angelic encounter.

In Luke 1, verse 28.

Luke 1:28

Gabriel the angel appeared to Mary and said, Greetings, favorite woman.

The Lord is with you.

The scripture says that Mary was confused and disturbed.

Maybe her thoughts were all over the place.

She is pregnant, and there is absolutely no reason for this to be humanly possible.

Mary has not been with a man.

Maybe Mary doesn't feel highly favoured.

She f feels that Joseph and her will be the subject of ridicule.

She fears what Joseph might do.

The angel again speaking in Luke 131.

You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you will name him Jesus, and he will be great and be called the Son of the Most High.

The more the angel speaks, the more peace descends on Mary.

She seems to let go of the need to understand all that is before her.

Except for the obvious question, how is this possible?

I'm not sure whether Mary understood the answer in Luke 135.

It says the Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.

So the baby will be born holy.

Yet Mary responds in exuberant confidence in God.

He has never let her down before.

Now God is giving Mary a gift so full of wonder, joy, and greatness.

She says, I am the Lord's servant.

May everything come true as you declare.

Such a rich friendship with God, her creator, deliverer, and close friend.

And now we go to David.

David handpicked by God to be anointed king, largely because of the fullness of his heart.

God called him a friend.

As Joel said recently, David wrote Psalm 40.

It starts off, I waited patiently on the Lord.

He will lift me out of the pit of my despair.

David could wait patiently for he trusted God.

He had confidence that God would take him from a despair to a place of joy and wonder.

Saul was king when David was anointed as king.

David became a powerful warrior and leader of the army.

David would often ask of God, Is this the right time for my army to go into battle with the Philistines?

David's name was shouted exuberantly by the locals as the army walked victoriously through the towns and cities after returning from battle.

Saul became jealous of David, so jealous that he wanted him removed out of his sight.

Saul attempted to kill David on three separate occasions.

David and his men were forced to hide in caves one day when Saul went unknowingly into the cave where David and his men were hiding.

Now's your opportunity, David's men whispered to him.

So David crept forward and cut off a piece of the hem of Saul's robe.

But then David's conscience began bothering him, because he had cut off Saul's robe.

He said to his men, The Lord forbid that I should do this to my Lord the King.

I shouldn't attack the Lord's anointed one, for the Lord himself has chosen him.

So David restrained his men, and he did not let them kill Saul.

David was sensitive to the voice of the Lord.

His friendship with the Lord meant that he did not listen to voices that contradicted the voice of the Lord.

David declared that honoring others was important to his relationship with God.

Honor means to show the utmost respect to others that we disagree with.

Forgiving is part of the package of honoring.

Honoring can be confusing to others, but delights God.

God's friendship with David meant that he could share information with David and trust that David would not use it to his own personal advantage.

These heroes and heroines of our faith had a relationship of friendship with God, demonstrated by a sensitivity to God's voice, a willingness to obey fully what God declared, and a determination on others despite the personal cost.

How is this possible?

In the book of Colossians, it says God rescued from the kingdom of darkness and transferred you to the kingdom of light.

So how does that work?

In Colossians 1, 20 and 21, he that's God made peace with everything in heaven and earth by means of Christ's death on the cross.

This includes you who were far from God, you who are his enemies, separated from him by your evil thoughts and actions.

Yet now he has reconciled you to himself through the death of Jesus in his physical body.

You have been escorted into friendship with God.

Now God begins a pruning process with us.

That sounds like fun.

Well, yes, it is.

We are being transformed into the image of our Heavenly Father, and God is the pruner, and he is in no rush.

In John 15, verse 2, it says, He, that is God, cuts off every branch of mine that doesn't bear fruit, and he prunes the branches that do bear fruit, so they will produce even more.

John 15:2

We are constantly in a state of pruning because God is always wanting to create abundance.

I didn't realise how little I knew about pruning.

You know, they talk about peel having a green thumb.

I think I've got the opposite.

Is it purple?

But my dear friend David was telling me, David Skillen, that the bushes can have branches growing in all different directions, often growing inward.

And David knows he cuts back the dead wood growing inward so the bush can receive the rays of the sun and grow outward.

Chris Valentin is the senior pastor of Bethel Church in America.

When he was young, he worked in his grandfather's vineyard.

Chris says, I didn't know at all, have any idea about pruning.

I cut the vines exactly what I was told to.

A grape vine will produce branches, and the branches will have fruit on them, and the branch will continue to grow.

Then there will only be leaves, and the vine will continue to grow, and then there will be a stick.

This stick looks like the vine is dead, but if you scrape it, it's alive, and it will continue to produce a stick again and again until it seemingly kills the vine and there is no fruit on it.

All the growing energy of the vine is taking it to a place where it can't be fruitful.

The pruner knows this truth and cuts the branches back to the place where the fruit stops.

Now the vine is going to use its energy to produce fruit instead of sticks.

Can you see that sometimes in our lives that we get overextended, so we stop producing the fruit that glorifies God?

So God wondrously prunes us.

Now to the tricky part, and I need God's help more than ever.

In John 15, verse 15, says, I no longer call you slaves, because a master doesn't confide in his slaves.

John 15:15

Now you are my friends, since I have told you everything the Father told me.

God no longer calls you slaves, which means he once did.

Is this bad?

Like being called a fool.

No, that's not the heart of God.

We were enemies of God.

It is said in Scripture that we were slaves to sin.

What does this mean?

A slave to sin means we are controlled by our sinful nature.

Some theologians say we delight in sin.

But then Jesus died for our sins and declared we are no longer a slave to sin.

So what are we now?

In Romans 6, verse 18, now you are free from slavery to sin.

Romans 6:18

You have become slaves to righteous living.

We have been moved to now be slaves of righteousness.

We are not we are controlled by the Spirit of God.

This is not bad.

It's good.

Being this type of slave, we are led and directed by the Spirit of God.

God loves to lead us in our journey with Him, is a place of fruitfulness in our lives.

But now back to the text.

I have told you everything the Father told me.

Some theologians would declare there is a difference between being a slave and a friend.

Slave only does what he is told or commanded to do.

That would certainly explain why the master doesn't confide in his slaves.

In friendship with God, there is a collaboration.

God shares with us and invites us to share with him.

I believe that God rejoices without holding back when he declares that we are slaves to righteousness.

But also God is seeking to take us into a deeper place of richness and abundance.

In Romans 4.17 it says, God creates new things out of nothing.

When God declares us friends, he is releasing gloriously unlimited power with his words.

We are now friends, because he made us so.

He wants to take you into a new place where you are led by the Spirit of God, and you and God are deeply rooted as friends.

Those who live in awe of God receive the promises of friendship with the Almighty Jesus.

And Jesus calls us friends.

I trust you, and I want to share the secrets of my kingdom with you.

Everything I have received from the Father, I want to give to you.

True friendship, no holding back.

And the fourth one, the testimony of Reese Howes, an intercessor.

Reese Howes was a missionary and gave away food and possessions despite his poverty.

Possibly the biggest move of God in Reese's life was to set up a college of intercession in Swansea, Wales.

The Bible College was unlike any other college at the time.

The curriculum for the college was not merely academic, but spiritual.

Students were taught to listen to the Holy Spirit, not to live in debt, to fast and intercede until the heavens moved.

It was a lifestyle.

The college became known as a place where God trained soldiers, not spectators.

One of Reese's foundational beliefs is that intercession meant identification.

You didn't pray for the lost.

You felt their lostness.

You didn't just intercede for nations.

You bore their burdens in your spirit.

Reese would often be seen weeping in prayer.

The end of the 1930s brought global tremors, economic depression, and growing fascism and rumors of war.

Reese began to prepare the college for a new type of battle, international intercession.

Adolf Hitler was rising with increasing speed.

A small band of women and men had been quietly preparing for this battle.

Reese believed that intercession could shape the destiny of a nation.

When nations prepared for war, Rees and his college prepared for a different type of war on their knees.

While newspapers talked of key battles, particularly involving Britain, Reese's college began to pray fervently daily.

Prayer meetings lasted for hours.

Sometimes the weight of intercession would fall so heavily that the room would be filled with groaning and tears.

The college believed that they were not praying about war, but decisions that shaped the war.

One of the most astonishing seasons of prayer came during the Battle of Britain in 1940 as German planes filled the skies and British forces were overwhelmed at Dunkirk.

The college entered into a prayer season.

They prayed that the evacuation of British soldiers would be successful and the advance of Nazi forces would be halted.

Over 300,000 British soldiers were rescued from the shores of Dunkirk.

Many soldiers were rescued by small private boats from England and France.

Many commentators called it the miracle of Dunkirk.

In conclusion, God's love for us is richer than we can ever imagine or believe.

God does not withdraw from us or hold back from us.

God's love is such a strong force that always propelling us toward Him towards us and at the same time drawing us to Him.

He desires that we are compelled by the fear of God, dare I say, rooted in a place of awe or admiration of God, for this is the place where manipulation of God can't exist.

Control of God can't exist.

It seems so stupid to say.

A place where God says, I completely trust you.

Now that I fully trust you, I want to download the secrets of the kingdom to you.

I want to make you a warrior for me.

I want to make you a warrior in me, and I want to put a sign above you.

You are my friend.

If the Lord has used this time today to speak to you about maybe areas where God is seeking to trust you, and he's calling you maybe to repent, or is calling you deeper into another relationship with him, into a relationship that goes beyond being a slave, but into a place where he is so happy, so content to reveal the secrets of the kingdom to you.

That's the heart of God to do that.

He wants to shape you and to make you such a precious friend in his sight.

Thank you for listening.