Post 24 in Lifting up the Soul
The friendship of the Lord is for those who fear him,
and he makes known to them his covenant.
– Psalm 25:14
When David entered Saul’s army, God tells us he acted wisely. In 1 Samuel 18:15, God tells us, “And when Saul saw that he [David] behaved himself very wisely, he stood in awe of him”(ASV). Saul watched David like a hawk. Other versions say that Saul was afraid of him. David was successful. Where did David learn to act wisely?
This passage in Psalm 25 shows us how David’s acknowledgement of His covenant with God influenced him to clearly discern things and act carefully. Walking in covenant with God taught David how to walk before his fellow men. God, through His covenant, tells His servants what He likes and what He dislikes. A covenant is a mutual agreement that comes with stipulated boundaries. God, through His covenant, taught David to know his own limitations and his role. David learned to behave wisely before God with honesty and integrity.
The covenant of Christ stipulates the boundaries that God always planned to have with His people. In Matthew chapters 5 through 7 Jesus revealed to the Jews how the law of Moses was lacking. The covenant of Moses taught the people to serve God in commanded actions that expressed holiness, righteousness, and regard for others. The covenant of Christ extends beyond the action to the core of the person. Christian living expresses how the spirit enjoys this spiritual state of holiness, righteousness, and regard for others. Through the sermon on the mount of Olives, Christ introduced the type of people we are to be in order to have the type of relationships God wants us to have. His covenant creates the guidelines to show us what healthy relationships look like. And the first relationship, known as the first commandment from the very beginning of the world and forever after, is our friendship with God. We love God first. That friendship is the foundation of all healthy and rich friendships.
All of us have faults. God shows us how to maintain our relationships despite those shortcomings. When two people begin a new friendship, each one starts to trace out the territory of the relationship. Together they build their covenant. Isn’t it endearing to see someone attempt to change their behavior to help the other person in a relationship? One who is truly trying to please you is going to map out your boundaries—know what things are unacceptable with you. Each person asks, “Can I keep to the terms she is needing from me? Will she keep to the terms I’m needing from her?”
There are many people who believe they are in a relationship with God, but they are not following His covenant at all. There is one covenant, and God has established that covenant for us. We either accept and give freely to what He offers, or we don’t have a covenant agreement with Him at all. For centuries, souls have mistakenly concluded that they can pick and choose what they want to do for God, and they expect Him to do for them whatever they want from Him. They become angry with God for not behaving according to their own expectations of what He should be doing for them. Yet, they never seek to know Him or learn His true covenant. They don’t ask Him what He wants. They demand and never offer Him the respect He so greatly deserves. That relationship cannot last.
We enter unhealthy covenants with others without realizing what the agreement is going to do to us or to the other person. Both inside and outside the Church, unhealthy relationships abound. There are religious groups that enforce so much hyped-up “service” to God that they exhaust and depress their members into a state of constant guilt and weariness. This emotional pendulum swinging back and forth is a sure symptom of unhealthy boundaries. We need to know the boundaries, and we need to be able to keep them. Having abusive friends or neglectful friends can cause a sister to respond to future friendships with a fierce, overreaching desire to walk through fire for their friends—with the stipulation that the friend will walk through fire in return. By placing such great need on their friends and on themselves, they begin to see themselves as the deliverer in their friends’ crises. This takes God out of their relationship because they are the ones doing the rescuing instead of relying on God to be the answer. Healthy friendship does not demand; it asks. There is choice in this friendship that allows each person to show their love and loyalty freely. Just as God is patient and waits for us to develop a greater need for Him, we are patient.
Kind sister, your life has been filled with different types of covenants or relationships. Some have been good for you, and some have been bad for you. Your relationship with God is the perfect one—perfect on His side. He is the perfect friend, and He shows you how to develop good friendships. Let Him develop in you an understanding of how to navigate your relationships in life wisely. By going to His covenant, studying it, and seeing its impact on you, you will develop relationships of gratitude, loyalty, and love for others. This will encourage you in your soul-lifting walk with God.
Here are some passages that show us how God gives us understanding about covenant and friendship.
And because you listen to these rules and keep and do them, the Lord your God will keep with you the covenant and the steadfast love that he swore to your fathers. Deuteronomy 7:12
A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother. Proverbs 18:24
And he said to them, “Which of you who has a friend will go to him at midnight and say to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves, for a friend of mine has arrived on a journey, and I have nothing to set before him’; and he will answer from within, ‘Do not bother me; the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed. I cannot get up and give you anything’? I tell you, though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of his impudence he will rise and give him whatever he needs.” Luke 11:5-8
This is the twenty-fourth post in the Lifting Up the Soul study from Psalm 25. Subscribe to WomEnCourage to be notified as this study continues.