One of the basic problems involved in movement along the way of life is to be found in the processes of rejecting, with a very definite rejection, that which is not of reality and accepting that which is of reality with an eager, enthusiastic, openhearted acceptance. We find even among those who are earnest and sincere a tendency to halfheartedly reject those things which are not of the divine pattern and to halfheartedly and lethargically accept those things which are of the truth, which would set them free. The Master said, "And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." He did not suggest at any time that we could by any of our own efforts or determinations free ourselves. He did not suggest at any time that there was any avenue or means by which man might know true freedom other than by knowing the truth. The one and only way, the way which He emphasized over and over again—if man would be free, free to live life abundantly and gloriously as God designed it—was to know the truth and let the truth make us free.
The human being must so yield to the truth that he permits himself to be made over or be made new. As it is put in the inspiring expression in that blueprint which we call the Book of Revelation: Behold, I make all things new. And the individual must of necessity accept that in relationship to himself in this present life, in this present hour, if he would know the recreative fulfilment of God's will in himself. We must recognize that man can reject the truth, he can refuse to let the truth make him over, make him new; but he cannot make himself new. Only the truth can do that. But if we would reach a point where we may experience such fulfilment we must of necessity know the truth. It is not enough merely to hear about the truth, not enough merely to believe some idea or concept. It is essential that we come to know the truth; for no human being can experience the liberating power of the truth until he or she begins to know the truth.
The process of knowing is experienced only with the development of a sense of oneness-with, which we call love. We cannot know any person until we have had an opportunity to experience the relatedness of a normal pattern of life with that person. We may know about many people but there are exceedingly few who ever come to know even one person during a lifetime. When any person has come to truly know another and to accept the relationship that is so established, there is one word which applies—friendship. Those who in a pattern of truth come to know one another become friends in the true or divine sense, and friendship in the divinely ordained patterns of relationship and association is the highest state to which any human being may attain. But such a state of true friendship with another human being is an utter and everlasting impossibility unless one first begins to realize the significance of the privilege we have of being a friend to our Lord and King and accepting the friendship which He offers. The basis of friendship with God is already established on one side, for He knows you. He does not have to learn to know you. He already knows you. And knowing you, in spite of any limitation which may be inherent in your present manifest expression of life, in spite of anything that may have happened in the past, in spite of any seeming obstacle which may exist, He offers you friendship. A true friend accepts his friend as he is, because of what he is, and is unmoved by any limitation which may for the moment appear.
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It is a remarkable and wonderful privilege we have of receiving the friendship of One who knows us already, utterly and completely, so that no thing is hid from Him. And yet, knowing us as we are, regardless of any pretense, regardless of any front which the human being may have developed, knowing us as we are, He extends friendship. And by reason of this very fact we have a most significant indication of that which is required of us if we would accept that friendship and reach a point where He may call us friend. We may now call Him friend, but we must reach a point where He can call us friends. He extends His friendship to us, knowing us as we are, accepting us in the initial stage of the outworking of the cycle of restoration just as we are, without one word of condemnation, without upbraiding, without any of the reservations which human beings ordinarily establish. If, then, we would receive that friendship, we must accept Him as He is, even as He accepts us as we are, for this is the basis of friendship—not to say, "If you will change thus and so, if you will yield to my will thus and so, I will be your friend." God does not say that to us. Although human minds, with limited concepts, have sought to make it appear that such is the attitude of God, it is not, as the record of divine inspiration through the ages clearly reveals.
However, by the same token, it becomes necessary for us to take the attitude that we will receive Him as He is without our saying to Him, "If You will change things to be thus and so, if You will please me in such and such a fashion, thenI will be Your friend." Consider the attitude of human beings toward Deity. Is it not always, or almost always, a fact that the basis of approach is, "Oh, God, if You will do thus and so, if You will arrange this or that, if You will take this thing from me or give me the other thing, then I will be Your friend"? But that attitude is completely and utterly out of pattern in relationship to friendship. We may note in those rare instances where human beings attain to friendship with a fellow human being that, even though the friendship as such does not require anything of the friend, makes no demands, nevertheless those who are friends exert a profound, a deep and a lasting influence upon each other. This profound influence which each friend exerts upon his friend changes and enriches life, brings fulfilment and gives meaning to those things which otherwise would be meaningless. So God does not say to us, "Change in this way or that; do this or that; reach a certain point of fulfilment; grovel in the dust for a while, or some other thing, and I will extend you My friendship." God says no such thing. He says, "Come as you are. My friendship is great enough to invite you to come just as you are."
With a friend—and if we see in true realization that He is our friend—with a true friend there is never any need to hide anything, never any need for shame, never any need for excuses; for the quality of friendship is greater than all such things. And inherent in that quality is trust which can be trusted. Therefore, since God invites us to receive such friendship on the basis of true friendship, so that we need feel no shame for anything that has been or is, so that we need make no excuses, so that we need have no reservations, no tendency or necessity of hiding something, since He offers such a pattern of true friendship, we in turn, if we would be His friend, must take the attitude of a friend to God. And as He requires nothing of us, so we should require nothing of Him, for it is not the nature or character of a friend to demand anything when it is friend to friend. There is the offering of the giving without demand or requirement. We need make no demand of God, and if we do we deny the reality of friendship and declare by our actions and attitudes that we are not God's friends, since any human being who imagines that he must demand something of God in order to receive it does not know God nor does he know the truth of God. It requires only a simple nobility to accept the reality of friendship.
But in this world human beings are, and have been for so long, governed by the determination to get something. They are going to get something out of their neighbors, out of their so-called friends, out of their husbands and their wives, their children or their parents; yea, they are even going to get something out of God, and particularly do they hope to get some sort of salvation for the time that shall appear after they are dead. They're always going to get something! But the spirit of "gettingness" is never found in the spirit of friendship. God is not seeking to get something from you, He is not seeking to take something away from you; He has no need to try to enhance His own position or increase His own possessions by taking something away from you. Human beings, because of the spirit of gettingness, try to get something from God; and underlying so many of the concepts about God we find that man has assumed God is trying to get something from the human being. If there is some particular treasure, someone greatly loved, there is a fear that God will take it away, as if God were trying to get something for Himself at your expense and to your damage. He does not increase if you decrease. The only way God can increase is for you to increase, and anything that decreases you decreases God insofar as His kingdom here on earth is concerned. And so man has assumed something with respect to God that is not true. Our basic statement is, "And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." So instead of assuming that which is false with respect to God, we first begin to know the truth about God, and then, accepting that truth, we begin to know God. In that knowing, the knowing of the centering of all truth, of all control and all design—for that is truth—we begin to know the truth as it relates to ourselves. And beginning to know ourselves, we are in position to begin to know those around us.
The friendship which God has extended to man down through the centuries, unchanging and constant in attitude and provision, stands as overwhelming evidence, if evidence be needed, that we can afford to trust such a Friend, that we need have no fear, that there is no necessity of lethargic patterns of acceptance, halfhearted attitudes, but rather that it is a point of wisdom, the sense of the fitness of things, to eagerly, wholeheartedly, enthusiastically accept the privilege of friendship. And all that is required is that we reveal the capacity of receiving such friendship by revealing the attitude of a friend. Friendship cannot be one-sided. It may be offered, but it does not become friendship in fact until it is received, and unless we can be a friend to God, God cannot be a friend to us. For those who are not controlled by prejudice and fear there is no difficulty, once the truth is seen, in rejecting any false concept which may have been held in consciousness. This is the basis of honesty; for he who is not controlled by fear, by prejudice or by human pride but, having seen the truth, accepts it, reveals himself as being honest. And only those who are honest within themselves and toward each other can attain to the state of friendship.
When we have a very dear friend and someone makes an unjust, unkind accusation, we do not immediately assume, "Well now, the accuser must be right.” Is that the attitude of a friend? No, a friend would simply reject, without any qualifications, without any reservations, the condemnation and the sly insinuation directed toward his friend. This is most important to our realization, for attitudes of condemnation and sly insinuation have been, down through the centuries and the millennia, and are now, directed toward God—every sort of insinuation which assumes God to be limited to the limitations of man, to the whims and fancies of the unstable human nature. As it is put in declarations of pompous concept, from many a pulpit, "If you suffer, it is because God has placed a cross upon you and you must accept it. If you suffer a loss, God caused it to be so. If something is wrong, God caused it to be so and you will have to accept it." Now such an attitude of false concept, of condemning God, and of insinuation toward our Friend, is something which we know to be totally unfounded, unjustified, the product of a warped and ignorant mind, of an unclean, unstable heart. Man has no right to judge God or condemn God, nor to assume any such thing.
So often it is declared, "We can't understand why God does these things." What things? These things that bring sorrow, loss and limitation to human beings. And human beings are judging that God did these things. They do not have courage enough to face the fact that they have brought those things upon themselves and that it was not in any instance God's doing. Such attitudes declare, "God is no friend of ours here on earth. He may change His attitude and be a friend after we are dead, but you can't depend upon God's friendship here on earth." If we cannot depend upon God's friendship here on earth we cannot depend upon it in any heaven anywhere. We need to begin to realize that the lies about God, the false concepts and the assumptions that would detract from Him or His nearness, or His power to do something on earth in and through us, are things which we as friends of God reject without any hesitancy or reservation. And once we begin to reach the point where we, as friends of God, reject heartily those things which are not true about our Friend, we find that the things which seemed to separate us from our Friend, or to prevent us from knowing the reality of His friendship, begin to melt and fade away. The limitations of every sort begin to melt as the ice before the rising sun, and the things which seemed to be so hard and crystallized, so immovable, so destitute of life or the possibilities of life, become liquid. They begin to move, and the conditions essential to living, to growing, to a springtime, begin to appear.
If one has difficulty with the openhearted acceptance of the things of God, let such an one turn his or her attention not to the effort to try to receive but rather to the work of wholeheartedly rejecting those things which are false, those things which are not true. There will be room for the acceptance of the truth if we first reject that which is not true. If we say we will reject that which is not true once we are filled with what is true, we flatter ourselves, for what capacity have we? Have we not filled such capacity as we have with the concepts and beliefs and ideas and attitudes which are revealed in daily living? Where is the room for acceptance while there is, by reason of fear and prejudice and pride, an unwillingness to reject that which is not true? "But," you say, "part of it might be true, and I wouldn't want to reject any little part of truth, so I will keep the whole thing or try to sift it out through the days of my years." Blessed ones, suppose some little part is true, would your rejection of the mixture, the impure mixture, cause that little part of truth to vanish and be eternally gone? Can truth be caused to pass away by any means whatsoever? No. And if there be something of truth in that which you, by reason of the falseness of it, do reject, you will find that you have not rejected the truth, for it will appear in a new form and be revealed in a new setting, a proper setting for the truth, wherein you can begin to know it as it is, without the necessity of trying to calculate with the human mind as to whether this or that is the truth. "And ye shall know the truth"—not just about it or concepts with respect to it.
Ye shall know the truth by reason of your oneness with the truth, and the truth will make you free, free to live victoriously, fulfilling that divine design which God established in you, and you alone, as a specific individual. The divine design, with the power of control—that is the truth with respect to anything. So if we would know the fulness of the design established for us, and if we would know the control which makes that design have meaning, it is well that we should be a friend to the One who has offered friendship to us for so long. If we would be friends of God, let us remember the basic nature of the spirit of friendship, for friends make no demands one upon the other.
