Shalom,


Genesis 18:17:


17 And the LORD said, Shall I hide from Abraham [My friend and servant] what I am going to do,


This verse has come up recently in our services and I decided to look into it today! I found this discussed in My Utmost For His Highest by Oswald Chambers. Look at this portion:


The Delights of His Friendship. Genesis 18 brings out the delight of true friendship with God, as compared with simply feeling His presence occasionally in prayer. This friendship means being so intimately in touch with God that you never even need to ask Him to show you His will. 


Doesn't that sound a lot like "as He is, so are we in this world" (1 John 4:17)? He goes on to say:


When you have a right-standing relationship with God, you have a life of freedom, liberty, and delight; you are God’s will. And all of your commonsense decisions are actually His will for you, unless you sense a feeling of restraint brought on by a check in your spirit. You are free to make decisions in the light of a perfect and delightful friendship with God, knowing that if your decisions are wrong He will lovingly produce that sense of restraint. Once he does, you must stop immediately. 



Members of The Spoken Word Church are very familiar with that teaching! Move out in faith! You can trust that God will re-direct you if necessary! Amen! Next he speaks of the responsibilities that come with that friendship:


The Difficulties of His Friendship. Why did Abraham stop praying when he did? He stopped because he still was lacking the level of intimacy in his relationship with God, which would enable him boldly to continue on with the Lord in prayer until his desire was granted. Whenever we stop short of our true desire in prayer and say, “Well, I don’t know, maybe this is not God’s will,” then we still have another level to go. It shows that we are not as intimately acquainted with God as Jesus was, and as Jesus would have us to be— “. . . that they may be one just as We are one . . .” (John 17:22).  



1 John 5:14-15 tell us that to get answers to prayer, we need to pray according to His will! We MUST spend time in the Word of God and in fellowship with Him to get to know Him to that extent that we can have complete, unshakable confidence in Him to confirm His Word! That is why Paul made it his "determined purpose" to KNOW HIM (Philippians 3:9-10)! We should, too! Amen! Here is "I Live To Know You More" by Hillsong:

Shalom in Him!