When I think of what it means to flourish, I think of my life the past two years. No, I’m not rolling in money, my house feels overly cramped and sometimes it feels like a struggle to save money. Inflation has hit my grocery bill HARD and I’ve had to say goodbye to loved ones. Even as I age, I struggle to lose weight and live a healthy, active lifestyle. My life is far from perfect and yet, the past two years of my life have been the best of my life. It’s not because of my circumstances. I am flourishing because I have discovered friendship with God.
“Come walk with me, in the cool of the day.” It’s an invitation I hear often. My Lord is inviting me to walk with him, to befriend him, to commune with him. It is a precious and radical thing. The God of the universe, King of all, Savior of the world, wants to spend time with me. What a mind boggling concept! But forgive me, I’m starting the story in the middle. Lets take a walk back to the beginning.
I grew up in a Christian home, under the care of parents completely dedicated to Jesus. Their faithful dedication to the Lord has literally taken them to the ends of the earth, and as a child, I tagged along. A life overseas is an incredible thing, a gift beyond compare. But a life overseas can also come with traumas, heartache and brokenness, of which I got a small sampling.
Jesus came into my life in a powerful and personal way when I was thirteen years old, in a season when I wanted absolutely nothing to do with him. I wanted no part of my parents’ commitments and even though I never doubted God’s existence, I wanted nothing to do with him. It was then that he met me, called me, invited me into relationship with him. Thirteen was the year where I let go of my parents’ faith and seized my own.
Part of growing up is learning how very broken the world is. How incredibly evil and destitute people are. I grew up when I became a nurse. Pediatric nursing gave me a front row view into the horrible outcomes of sinful people and a broken world. Bodies not doing what they should, people abusing what they should not. And I began to ask myself, where are you God? How can this be reality when you are so good? How can you allow this evil to innocents when you have been so good to me?
So I arrived at a crossroads of sorts. And because I’m fiery and like to know things for myself, on my why home from work one day I demanded God prove himself to me. I wanted to know where God was in the midst of brokenness and evil. I didn’t want trite, church-y answers. I wanted truth. And I wanted the source of all truth to put his money where his mouth was. And the crazy thing is that he did.
Every time I opened the Bible to study it, I would read horrible horrific things in the Old Testament. And then God would gently whisper into my heart where he was or was not and what he did about the evil and injustices I had read.
Here was my first and second lessons. First, God did not shy away from my emotions nor my questions and doubts. He met me where I was and gently responded. Second, I was learning to discern God’s voice as I interacted with him in this manner. I would ask questions in prayer and then he would give me insight into the passages of scripture I was reading. Unbeknownst to me at the time, God was tuning my heart to hear his voice.
What the American church has done a poor job communicating, but I have grown up knowing to be true, is that life with God is an adventure. You never know what paths he will take you on if you’re willing to follow. Did you catch that? If you’re willing to follow. God does not force himself on anyone. He might pester you, prod you, but he will not force his love on you. The adventure awaits for those who are willing, for those who want it.
Adventure for me looked like writing and publishing a book, something I would have never in a million year dreamt I would do, nor be capable of doing. But as I researched, wrote, edited, and lamented the many, many rejections from publishing houses I received, I was learning without even realizing it. I was learning by practice, to run to God with my fears, to cry out to him when I was sad, to praise him when things went well. My heart was being trained to run to God first.
That adventure lead to another. A much more difficult, intimidating adventure- the adventure of Undercurrents Ministries. Thank God he starts small and grows us with the project he assigns us, because my heart could not handle more than a simple newsletter at the beginning! Even writing and sending that measly little thing was such a difficult season of learning to lay down my fears and doubts at Jesus’ feet and just be obedient, even if I was terrified and unsure of everything.
I was learning to be obedient, regardless of my emotions, what other people said, or my circumstances (I started this adventure during the COVID lockdown of 2020). I did not understand, I was afraid that all my writing and work as for nothing, a waste of time, and though I saw a huge need, I did not really want to sacrifice my time for something I did not fully understand.
But remember how I said that Lord never forces himself on us? I was never forced to do any of it. Every time I thought about quitting, the door was always open for me to walk away if I wanted to. But, the adventure of writing and Undercurrents Ministries had drawn me into deeper relationship with the Lord than I had ever experienced before. And when you have tasted and seen that the Lord is good, how can you walk away from him?
So I kept on.
2023 was a pivotal year for me. Nothing went well and I had so much to grieve. My nephew passed away, my parents moved across the world, the ministry that God had given me seemed to be falling apart. And it was halfway through all that muck that I realized I wanted more with God.
I had been noticing a pattern in my Bible studies of the great heroes of faith in the Bible. I noticed that there was some sort of a friendship, a give and a take between God and these people. Simultaneously, I was noticing how very spiritually adolescent I was. I wanted to be autonomous, but I was immature and my relationship with God was very one-sided, very take, take, take.
I realized that I not only wanted that give and take, I wanted friendship, like the kind you develop with your parents when you grow into adulthood. So, one day in my Bible Study, I asked God if we could be friends. I had no idea what that would practically look like, but I craved it, like a country I had never been to, but was deeply homesick for.
A couple weeks later, as I was finishing my morning Bible study, a thought whispered through my heart. “Come into the garden, in the cool of the day.” I knew it was the Lord speaking, because remember, I had been learning for the past few years to discern his voice. Also, the invitation recalled to mind the primordial moments in the Garden of Eden when God would walk with Adam and Eve in the cool of the day (Genesis 3).
Thus my friendship with the Lord began. The relationship had been there since I was thirteen, but now I had stepped into spiritual maturity. It takes maturity to come to the point where you want to listen as much as you want to speak.
When we become Christians, a new creation, a new relationship is born. As spiritual infants we cry out to God for every little thing- our very survival depends on his constant attention. But as we grow up into spiritual children, we are filled with joy, exuberance, eagerness, and we are also quite demanding. Our perspective of reality is severely limited and we always want to be farther ahead than we are.
If we continue in our relationship with God, we grow into spiritual adolescents. We want to do more on our own. We demand to do more on our own, and now we also demand to know. We want to understand. But in this stage in spiritual growth, true friendship has not yet formed. The ability to see beyond yourself, which comes with maturity, is the necessary foundation for deep, rich friendship.
Many of us stall out in spiritual adolescence and like young adults, assume that you have reached the apex of maturity. Age gives you better perspective when you look back on those adolescent and young adult years and realize just how selfish and immature you really were! God does not want us to stall out prematurely, but wants us to adventure with him into maturity. He wants to be your friend and even if you’re a spiritual baby, he looks forward to your maturity with the hope of friendship to come.
Since my foray into friendship with the Lord, I have learned much more that I can possibly record in this post. But I can tell you what you can look forward to. You can look forward to a true friend who will always be around. He is accessible and near at all times of the day- when you’re working, driving, cleaning, walking, stressed out, or happy. He is there in the darkness of midnight or the early morning blues. He is with you now, as you read this, gently inviting you into deeper love and communion with him.
You can also expect to become the best version of yourself. Sometimes we assume that when God strips us of our fleshy desires and habits that we become lesser. I have not found that to be the case. Being stripped of my old ways of being can sometimes be painful, but I am becoming more me every day I spend with Jesus in friendship.
Lastly, the allures of this world will fade as your friendship with Jesus grows. When you have feasted on the Lord’s goodness, love, and presence, everything that you were tricked into believing was valuable somehow starts to ring hollow. You see things more clearly, in particular the lies of materialism, lust and greed.
My dear reader, there is so much goodness and richness yet to discover, and it is to be found in friendship with Jesus, the author, savior, and perfecter of your soul! Befriend him, spend time with him, learn to hear and listen to him. And seek friendship with him. For there will your heart be fully satisfied.
For more resources on discovering friendship with God, check out The Great Omission, Hearing God, by Dallas Willard, and The Dallas Willard Podcast, and The Good and Beautiful Series by James Bryan Smith.
Written by Sara Danielle Hill
Sara is a nurse, writer and founder of Undercurrents Ministries. For more more information about Sara Hill and her writing, head over to saradaniellehill.com
