God Wills Relationship with Us - Need Bible Reference

[Randy_Carson]

My friend has no problem accepting free will. But, he also argues that any miraculous interaction between a person with free will and God would strip that person of their free will.

Not really. People can know that God exists and still refuse to obey and serve Him. The angels did, too.

Now, about our relationship with God:

John 15
9 “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. 10 If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. 11 I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. 12 My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command. 15 I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. 16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. 17 This is my command: Love each other.

Friends, sons, children of God - these are the terms used throughout the New Testament to describe the relationship that God desires to have with His people.

 

[Mammoths]

john 17:3 And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.
…
24 “Father, I desire that they also whom You gave Me may be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory which You have given Me; for You loved Me before the foundation of the world. 25 O righteous Father! The world has not known You, but I have known You; and these have known that You sent Me. 26 And I have declared to them Your name, and will declare it, that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them.”