Ed Welch
What is partnership? For CCEF, it’s a desire to care well for others skillfully in a way that is always wrapped in truth and wrapped in love.
Your design is that you are created to walk with God. Only we, human beings, are suitable partners to walk with God. This is what it means to be human.
To be healthy partners, we must know God and obey God.
Knowing God and following in His ways is lovely because it is what we are made for.
Walking together in conversation is a pleasant image. Walking together with us is what God does when we are closest to Him.
Gen 3, Lev 11, Psalm 23, Isaiah – images of God walking with us. Road to Emmaus – when Jesus walks with the disciples he tells them everything.
To walk with God we need to turn from walking with other partners.
We need to know our walking partner. Peter tells us God has given us all the knowledge we need to live a life of godliness. Our walking with God is contingent upon us knowing Him – He knows us intimately. We must therefore seek to know Him as He has revealed Himself to us in Jesus Christ. What God wants us to know is that we are most fully human when we are knowing Him.
In family worship do we talk about God? Do we explore His character and His acts in history? Do we study how He reveals Himself to us in Scripture and nature?
In shepherding groups do we talk about how we have seen God working in our lives through the week?
In men’s group do we encourage each other to see God loving us in our lives?
To live according to our design is to love the life we have in God.
You have made us for Yourself O Lord and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in You. (Augustine)
Knowing God is a relationship calculated to thrill a person’s soul. (J.I. Packer)
As we know God, we respond to Him – and as we learn to love Him, we desire to obey Him and rejoice when we are able to do so.
Obedience is just right for our souls and when we live it we love it. John 14:30 “I do as the Father commanded me so that the world may know that I love the Father.” (Jesus)
The most fully human person ever to live loved to obey God. Psalm 119 is an effusion of expressing love of God through love of His commandments and walking in obedience to them.
If God’s commands seem burdensome to us we have missed something important.
When you are the recipient of extravagant love you rejoice in demonstrating love by obedience. When we know that obedience pleases the one we love, we desire to do it for the sake of the beloved.
The fully human person says “I always do the things that are pleasing to my Father” (Jesus in John 14). When we are in a loving relationship with someone we know intimately (trusting) we delight to do what they ask us to do. It does not feel onerous or burdensome. “I am pleased to be able to please you.”
How can I help you? How can I please you? How can I anticipate your needs and desires before you express them as an expression of my love for you? “As you wish.”
There is a double joy in pleasing others because not only do we please the person but also we give pleasure to God by the pleasure we give to others.
It is a privilege to walk with God, knowing Him and trusting Him to please us and seeking to please Him.
Love listens. It says that “Who you are is important to me, therefore I pay attention to you.” When someone listens to us we feel loved – and when we don’t listen, we feel unloved.
We live in a world where God has spoken truth to us. Listening and acting rightly on what we have heard is an affirmation of God’s truth.
Wisdom literature continually exhorts us to hear, to listen, to heed truth and act wisely in light of what it teaches us. When we listen and obey, we can delight be being human.
Love honors the other person. A truly human person honors and glorifies the Father (Jesus). The fully human person seeks to outdo others in showing honor. The fully human person cares more about the reputation of others than his own reputation. When we act in these ways we are acting as we are intended to be.
When we disregard and dishonor someone we are called to love, we disregard and dishonor God. And who is my neighbor…
We designed to walk with God together forever as God’s friend and Jesus has made it possible to do so.
We are designed to know and God has revealed His fullness to us in Jesus Christ.
We are designed to obey God and do what is pleasing to Him by pleasing, honoring, and listening to others. When we do so we love it! We rejoice in it! And we give thanks for our humanity. Thanks be to God!
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