What God really wants from us is a marriage, a union, a oneness between us and Him. Jesus said, "I no longer call you 'servants,' but 'friends,' for a servant does not know what his master is doing." God wants friendship with us--not perfection--but cordiality and communication.
I think it is fair to say that our friends change us; we cannot 'hang out' with people who are very different from us. The old adage "tell me who your friends are, and I'll tell you who you are" is very true. If we want to be friends with someone who is very good, we need to adapt to their goodness, for it is clear that they will not take on our bad habits, nor participate in our evil ways.
It is true, as the Book of Jonah says, that we "do not know our left hands from our right" in our blindness to what is truly good and holy, but God's way of opening our eyes and changing us is through friendship. We cannot discern His ways unless He Himself break through the fabric of our existence and say, "Here I am; I am with you." None of us will change unless we know Him and love Him. And we change not in order to "be good," but in order that we can continue to walk with Him and be with Him.
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It takes a lot of strength inside oneself to continue walking with goodness if one is surrounded by bad. I believe that we all need support in the form of flesh and blood friends in order to feel the presence of the Almighty in our flesh and blood lives.
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