Blog In Audio:
Greetings,
As leaders, we are expressions of God’s communication to others. We are activators and facilitators of the voice of God in the hearts of those we lead. We are not the voice of God to them, but we are servants sent to help them hear God in their own hearts for the sake of their identity, testimony, and purpose in Christ. We hear God and we share what we hear, but we are not a substitute for the voice of God within anyone’s heart. We are, however, examples of sons and daughters of God who hear His voice and experience His friendship and love in our lives for the sake of inspiring those we lead.
Any expression of communication by God is for the sake of life. God’s communication with us is not about information. It is about relationship. He has always wanted us to know Him as our Father. He wants us to know that He sees us as His sons and daughters. We are His family. The strength of family is love. The attribute of being family members is to be friends. We are friends with God and with one another. We aren’t friends in order to get something from God or from one another. We are friends to love one another. We are friends to support one another in life. This is what God wanted in the very beginning as we find it in the record of His covenant with man. God walked in the cool of the day with Adam (Gen. 3:8). God’s conversations with Enoch were based upon the fact that God liked him. Enoch pleased God.
Hebrews 11:5 By faith Enoch was taken away so that he did not see death, “and was not found, because God had taken him”; for before he was taken he had this testimony, that he pleased God.
God liked Enoch. He found pleasure in His relationship with Enoch and Enoch found pleasure in his relationship with God. To Enoch was revealed a glimpse of the triumphant Church of God in the earth (Jude 14). God showed Him this because he was His friend.
God told things to Abraham based upon His friendship with him (Gen. 18:17). Before He destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, He told His friend Abraham what He would do. God would not bring a change in the earth without telling his friend in the earth what that change was.
When king Jehoshaphat faced the enemies of Ammon, Moab, and Mount Seir, he appealed to God on the basis of God’s friendship with Abraham. He knew that the foundation for being the people of God was a friendship with Him. Being the people of God, was being the family of God. The family of God is filled with family members who know God as their friend. They trust God in His abilities, because they know God in His friendship.
2 Chronicles 20:5 Then Jehoshaphat stood in the assembly of Judah and Jerusalem, in the house of the LORD, before the new court, 6 and said: “O LORD God of our fathers, are You not God in heaven, and do You not rule over all the kingdoms of the nations, and in Your hand is there not power and might, so that no one is able to withstand You? 7 Are You not our God, who drove out the inhabitants of this land before Your people Israel, and gave it to the descendants of Abraham Your friend forever? 8 And they dwell in it, and have built You a sanctuary in it for Your name, saying, 9 If disaster comes upon us—sword, judgment, pestilence, or famine—we will stand before this temple and in Your presence (for Your name is in this temple), and cry out to You in our affliction, and You will hear and save.’
It is on the basis of personal relationship that God tells His prophets His coming actions in the earth (Amos 3:7). It’s not because of God’s power. It’s because of His love. God’s communication with man is based upon friendship and love. The love of God is at the core of prophetic communication. It is love for people and a desire to see them relationally connected to God as their Father that must motivate our willingness to prophesy. This must be at the core of our willingness to accept any responsibility of leading others in the body of Christ.
God wants to speak to us on the basis of friendship and love, not on the basis of information. For this reason, prophetic ministry must function to further our relationship with God, not to get information from Him. Our role as leaders must be to assist others in knowing a friendship with God based upon His love.
Food For Thought,
Ted J. Hanson
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Our Ministry Information Is: House of Bread Ministry 3210 Meridian St. Bellingham, WA 98225-1728 
