I'll just open up really quickly for you and you'll see it just in a glance, which is what the Lord just dropped into my heart today and notice what He said; I never knew you. That word know is to know intimately, to know as a friend and Jesus brought people into friendship who first learned obedience. He said I no longer call you servants - servant doesn't know what His master does. He follows instructions. I now call you friends, so after a period of serving as servants they grew into friendship with Jesus. So this is about friendship with Jesus, okay. Now let's just take it a little bit further. The only other place that I noticed where this turns up, I never knew you, interestingly enough it turns up in Matthew 25:12 with the 10 virgins, the five wise and five foolish and remember the issue there with the five wise and foolish virgins is the whole issue and we taught on this in depth was intimacy with God.
They were all virgins, meaning they were all believers, but five were wise, five were foolish. The five wise prepared their lives and ensured they had oil in a vessel. The five who were foolish made no preparation in their life. Were they all virgins? Yes. Were they all in covenant relationship? Yes, they were. However, five prepared, and the preparation involved the getting of oil which is always symbolic of the Holy Spirit. Or putting it another way, they took the time and effort to spend time gaining intimacy, gaining revelation, gaining insight from God. They gained the flow of the Spirit by a personal life dedicated and connected to the Lord. Remember the five foolish ones said, they said hey listen, will give us some of yours? They said no, no, we can't give it to you. No, no, no. You've got to go and buy it yourself.
So intimacy with God got to buy for yourself. There's no one praying for you can do it for you. We can bring to you the fruit of our intimacy, but you've got to develop your own and so number one, see intimacy with God and you remember that He said to the five foolish virgins, He said very, very clearly - it says to them - and this is what He said to them. He said, actually I didn't know you. Knock, knock, knock, knock, let us in. No, no, no, no, it's too late. The season of opportunity is over, there's a consequence of not doing this, so the very clear one there is personal intimacy, a loving relationship with Jesus, where you're connected to Him and yielded to Him in a relationship like husband and wife. It's like a lover of my soul. It's becoming intimate with Him and sharing my life with Him and learning to surrender and talk over the struggles of life with Him.
We could do some things on that sometime, but - remember Mary and Martha? Now Mary got very, very busy doing stuff, Martha got busy doing stuff in Luke 10:38 - and Mary got very busy listening to Jesus and then Martha got all wound up with all her serving and she's so wound up, stressed out, burned out, everything. She complains and gets bad attitudes and Jesus said to her, Mary chose the good thing. Now it's not either/or. It's an issue of priority, so it's not saying that you shouldn't do something. It's saying your first priority is the relationship out of which the works flow. Jesus said I don't do anything except what I see the Father doing. Now we need to explain that - not today, but I'll do it in another session.
What He did was He said I am moved in my life by Heaven's agenda. I do not have a thing of my own. I haven't come here to do my will. I've come here to do the will of the Father. I haven't come to just sort of - in fact He wrestled even with it in the garden. Remember Him saying Father, if it's possible I'd rather not do this but not my will, your will be done. So the first thing you see is, remember what Jesus said at the beginning of this passage? He said to enter the kingdom requires you do the will of the Father. Now, you notice that may involve church meetings and church roles and may involve doing this and that, but actually no one can really know. The only one who can really know is you if you're listening to God, because how it outworks will be different for each person. So number one is intimacy. I need to be in relationship where I'm hearing with it from the Lord.