Hello everyone and welcome to Pastor Rick's Daily Hope, the Bible teaching ministry that's here to

encourage and inspire you every day. And today we're continuing our series called Awesome Relationships.

In it, Rick Warren shares practical ways to help you take your relationships with family, friends,

coworkers, and even God, from ordinary to extraordinary.

And this is a series you don't want to miss.

So let's get right to Rick for the final part of a message called Becoming Best Friends

with God.

Jesus said in John 1514,

You're my friends if you obey me. Now what does that mean? Well, let me clarify this.

When I say that God wants us to be his friends, we are friends of God, but we are in no way equal to God.

Does that make sense? We're all, we can be friends with God, but we're not equal to God.

For instance, if there's a king in some country and I become that person's friend, I may be able to get up close to him. I may be able to be trusted

by him. I may have confidences of his. I may know information. Other people don't know.

And all kinds of things. But I'm still not the king. And let's don't get that confused. I'm

just a friend of the king. I'm not the king. And I'm still subject to the king like everybody else is.

I may have more privileges because I'm a friend of the king, but I'm still not the king.

And I have to do what he says. And friends of the king have special privileges.

But they're just still subject. So what's he saying here? You're my friends if you

obey me. I can't say I love Jesus and then go live like the devil. I can't say, oh, I'm a

Christian and then live a self-centered life. I can't say, oh, I'm a follower of Jesus. And then

pick and choose the verses that I want

to listen to and ignore the ones I don't.

...