Inner Friendship For Christians

10:00 AM - August 15, 2014 by Jonathan Burch

    Inner friendship is about receiving wise guidance from your inner voices that know better than you do how you should respond in your circumstances to be happy.   You experience the source of your inner voices, hunches, thoughts or feelings as a person who becomes your inner friend.

    For a Christian your inner friend is one to whom you pray for guidance and help.  For some Christians this is Jesus Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit.  You communicate with Him through the power of prayer.  

    Jesus can be everywhere at once, inside you and throughout the universe and beyond.   Jesus created you and knows what is best for you to live as he created you to live.  Jesus knows what is happening to you right now and can give you wise guidance on how to respond to your circumstances to lead you to your personal fulfillment as a whole person - your happiness.

    All you have to do is ask for Jesus’ help, and listen for the messages that Jesus will send you personally inside your head.   Once you have decided what the message from Jesus is, then you do it and wait for the consequences, trusting that in the long run it will work out.

    You need to have a passionate loving, guiding inner friendship with an inner friend you can trust.  Only then can you become accustomed to quickly receiving accurate inner guidance, trusting it so well that you act on it immediately and gratefully, and then give thanks to your inner friend for loving you so.

    Who is your inner friend?  Some Christians may prefer Jesus Christ or the Holy Spirit.  Some Christians may be more comfortable with a different inner friend.   Some may prefer a favorite saint, who has blessed and nurtured them all their life.  Some may prefer a deceased ancestor or departed soul who was a great Christian.  Who do you feel close to of this sort?  Who is real to you?  To whom do you pray?  What supernatural being do you trust?  This is your inner friend.

    I believe in Jesus Christ as God, who created me and who cares for me out of his grace, compassion and love.  He came to Earth to show those who would find and follow his way how to relate to God and live as they were created by God to live.  He said he knew it would not be everyone, but he knew it would be many, and everyone who believed could successfully follow his way.   He does it with profound, unconditional love, which he calls us to do also.

        “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you.  Now remain in my     love.  If you obey my commands you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father’s commands and remain in his love.  I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.  My command is this:  Love each other as I have loved you”, John 15: 9-12. 

        Jesus promised that we could pray to him through the power of the Holy Sprit no matter where we are, and receive divine guidance.  “If I do not go away [ascend bodily into heaven], the Comforter [the Holy Spirit] will not come, but if I leave, I will send him to you.”  “When the Spirit of Truth [the Holy Spirit] comes, he will guide you into all truth.”  Let your inner friendship provide you that intimate, personal guidance.  It is the natural way for you to receive it.

    I will share my inner friendship with you as an example of how it works.  I believe in the supernatural. Other people may have a different natural or supernatural inner friend, and that is good.  It should be someone you believe in, whom you take for granted is true, is there, and that can help you live your life successfully.  Your inner friend is real to you.  Respect yourself and your inner friend.  Remember, another person’s inner friend may be quite different from yours, and equally real and helpful to the other person.  Respect the other person and his or her inner friend as real and helpful for guiding the other person’s life.   This is mutual respect.

    All my life I have been a Christian.  For me the source if all is Jesus Christ.  For a person who has been a Muslim all his life, the source of all is Allah.  For a person who has been a Hindu all his life and believed in Krishna, the source of all is Krishna.  

    For me God is Jesus Christ.  This is real to me.  My inner friend is Jesus Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit.  That means I can talk to Jesus, the person I know from the Bible, through prayer.  Jesus can hear me, know my thoughts, communicate guidance, attitudes and feelings to me, and make things that I cannot do happen in the world, anywhere in the world or the universe - anywhere, anytime.  This is Jesus Christ acting through the power of the Holy Spirit. 

    If you develop a private way to communicate with your inner friend, this can be even better. When I first learned about the Holy Spirit from my friends in the International Pentecostal Holiness Church, although I am a United Methodist, I learned to feel the shivering all through my body that happens when the Holy Spirit is powerfully upon you.  Later I used this shiver in the middle of my head as a communication method with my inner friend.

    I should point out that I had to learn to grow in my inner friendship, by learning who my inner friend was, and how the inner friendship worked for me.  At first I thought that the Holy Spirit was my inner friend.  After all, Christians believe in the Trinity, that Father, Son and Holy Spirit are all aspects of God. However, I soon discovered, and discerned, that my inner friend was Jesus Christ, who communicated with me through the power of the Holy Spirit.  Anyway, I talk and pray to Jesus Christ, the person I know from the Bible, and I get communications through the shiver in my head.  I can ask “Yes “ and “No” questions.  “Do you want me to do this?” A shiver means “Yes” and no response means “No”. The to be sure the message is from my inner friend, I ask it in the other way, requiring the opposite answer. “Do you not want me to do this?” No shiver means do it, a shiver means do not do it.

    As I have gotten sensitive to this form of communication I have gained many other types of messages.  If I have been away from praying for a while, busy with the world, solving problems on my own, and I realize I have not been paying appreciative attention to my inner friend, I will say in my head, wherever I am at the moment, “Sorry, I have been elsewhere, It is good to be back in relationship with you”, and I will get an unexpected head shiver, which I take to mean, “Welcome back, all is forgiven.” That is a very good feeling.

    Sometimes when I say a “thank you” prayer, especially for something I really wanted or needed for myself or someone else, I get an unexpected head shiver, which I take to mean “You’re welcome”. When you have many “Thank you”’s and “You’re welcome”’s, it builds an inner friendship.  It is real to you, every moment.  Now you can just say something to your inner friend in your mind, no matter where you are or what you are doing, and share your life with your inner friend.

    It is good to share the joys of your life with your inner friend and give thanks for them. When you share how happy you are about how something turned out, and receive a head shiver sharing the joy of the moment, that builds the inner friendship. Your inner friend is a friend with whom you share the most intimate and deep personal concerns you have. It is very nice to have such an inner friend, who always has your best interests at heart, even if it does not seem so, sometimes.

    You are very lucky to have such an inner friendship. You worked at it. You said “Hello” first. You opened yourself up to it, and now it is a wonderful, guiding part of your life.  As you look over the years of the inner friendship, you see how you have grown as a person, how much happier you are, how fulfilled you are, and how wise the guidance of your inner friend has been in your life.  You could not ask for more.

    How do you begin an inner friendship with Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit?  It is easy.  Just pray.  

    The first step is to quietly pray.  The Jesus is always listening.  You do not have to be loud or wordy.  Just let Jesus know you are now reaching out.  You can pray out loud or silently in your head.  “Hello, Jesus.  It’s me.  I don’t know what I am supposed to do, but here I am.”  Your inner friend is waiting for you and will be glad you opened the door.  To begin … just pray.  Then follow the nine steps to a mature inner friendship in Inner Friendship For Everyone.

Request For Articles

    This article has been prepared for this web site, www.innerfriendship.com by the author of the site.  It is only one point of view.  If you have an experience with inner guidance through prayer in your Christian walk, and would share it with others, how you did it and how it worked out, please write a brief article about it and email it to contact@innerfriendship.com.  It will be reviewed and some of the articles will be added to the Christian page on the web site.  We cannot put them all on at once, but we may rotate them.  Include your name, city, state and church affiliation if you want.  Also include your written permission to publish it on the site.  Any suggestions for the web site or improving the ebook for the next edition will also be appreciated.

Thanks,

Jonathan Burch