At the Corner of Friendship and God

At the Corner of Friendship and God

Pastor Allen Snapp

12/07/14

For the past several months we have been in a series titled At the Corner of Life and God, where we’re looking at how God wants to intersect with us in the everydayness of our lives. This morning I want us to meet at the corner of friendship and God. Over the years I don’t remember hearing many messages on friendship. Most of the messages I’ve heard (and preached) about relationships in the church emphasize “community”, “fellowship”, and “family”, but the concept of “friendship”, not so much. But the Bible has some powerful things to say to us about friendship so let’s begin by turning to John 15 together. 

John 15:12-17 

Jesus is many things to us: he is the Resurrection and the Life, the light of the world, the bread of life, the fountain of living water, the way, the truth, and the life. But Jesus introduces a unique dimension into our relationship when he calls us friends. A friend is someone you want to be with, someone you feel close to, someone you let into your life because you trust them. When Jesus calls us friends he is drawing close to us and drawing us close to him. He is the exalted Lord of lords and King of kings, the Savior of the world. And he’s our friend. I came to Christ 40 years ago, and all those years he has been many things to me: my God, my Lord, my Savior, my Redeemer. But there is something very precious in being able to say he has also been my dearest friend. What a friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and grief to bear! What a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer.

But Jesus doesn’t intend for it to stop there. In fact the one condition to his friendship seems to be that we bend that friendship out to one another. Look at his progression of thought beginning in verse 12: This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. We know that Jesus is the supreme example of such love and laying down his life for his friends, but remember, in the flow of the passage he has not yet called us friends. He will do that in the next verse. So the flow of the passage is Jesus tells us to love one another, then he tells us that the highest expression of that love is for a person to lay down their life for those they call friends, and then he says, You are my friends if you do what I command you. And what does he command us to do? To love one another. And what is the highest expression of that love? To lay down our lives for our friends. It’s all intertwined and you can’t pull one part of it out without it all coming apart. 

At the very least, this tells us that friendship is to be a part of our life together as an outgrowth of our mutual friendship with Jesus. The term friendship adds a depth and a warmth to our understanding of what it means to be a community and to have fellowship one with another. It helps us understand a little better how we are to walk out our relationships authentically. So friendship is a really big subject and too much to cover in one message, but we’re going to look at a few characteristics of friendship and a few thoughts about we can grow our friendships. But first I want to take a minute to warn us of a potential friendship-killer that may surprise you: being too intense, too discriminating, about who you call a friend!

Considering the broad range of friendship

Friendships come in many shapes and sizes. You may have heard it said, and I’m pretty sure I’ve said it myself, that you can have many acquaintances but only a few friends. The idea is that only those who are incredibly close to us are friends, everyone else is an acquaintance. It sounds good, but I am not so sure anymore that it’s true or biblical. The truth is there are levels and degrees to legitimate friendship. Best friends, close friends, good friends, friends.

Ironically getting too intense about friendship can be a friendship-killer. I’ve met people who have this extremely high bar for what they will and won’t call a friend. More than once I’ve gotten cold silence from someone because I made the mistake of calling them a friend when in their eyes our relationship didn’t rise to that level. I think in their eyes they’re preserving a pure and undiluted definition of friendship but here’s why this can be a friendship-killer: when we define friendship only as those that we’re super-close to, those we spend a lot of time with, those who know us so well they can finish our sentences for us, and everyone else is just an acquaintance, we are more likely to put so much pressure on our relationships that we smother them before a friendship has the chance to develop. We’re also more likely to devalue the friendships we do have because they don’t rise to that elite level. 

Look at Jesus’ example. There were definite tiers or levels in his friendships. Out of the multitude of disciples, he chose 12 and he drew them into a closer level of friendship. Out of the 12, he chose three, Peter, James and John, and drew the ring of friendship with them even tighter. Out of those three there was one, John, who was uniquely close to Jesus. So Jesus had varying levels of closeness in his friendships, but I am grateful that when Jesus said, “you are my friends” he wasn’t limiting it to John, or the three, or the twelve, or even the multitudes of that day. I am very grateful that when I say Jesus is my friend, he doesn’t pull back with cold silence because I’m not as close to him as John was, or even as close as I could be. So let’s dial down the intensity, take a chill pill, and appreciate the broad range of friendships in our lives.

Three characteristics of friendship

•Caring

Friendship is marked by caring about the other person. The older I get, the more I realize that life is full of its ups and downs. There are great times and there are hard times – and we’ll all experience both in our lives. The Bible says we are to weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice. That’s caring. If you’re hurting, friendship means I hurt with you. If you just hit a home run, friendship means I’m celebrating with you. Friendship is entering into each other’s lives and caring. 

I spent several days this week at a retreat with some pastors, most of whom I’ve known for many years. And at points we were sharing what was going on in our lives, and a few of them shared about some really deep waters that they’re walking through with one or more of their grown children. Talking painful, heart-breaking burdens that weigh heavily on their hearts and on their wives hearts. But these are also issues that are out there in the public so their churches know about them. I was so encouraged to hear how their churches have rallied around them and expressed care for them and for their grown children in the midst of their pain and struggle. 

There are seasons in life when we carry heavy burdens – burdens that weigh down our hearts and our minds. Burdens that press us to the point where we might feel unable to go on. 1 Peter 5:7 tells us what to do with those burdens: cast all your cares on him (God) for he cares for you. But notice why Peter says we should cast our cares on God. Not because He’s almighty (though He is), not because He is in control of all things (though He is), not because He can take those burdens and change our situation in a moment (though He can). Peter urges us to cast our cares on God because He cares for us. He will help us carry those burdens because He cares for us. When we have burdens and heartaches and troubles, we don’t want someone to try to give us all the answers, we want a friend who cares for us. 

For the church to be a safe place, a place of genuine fellowship and community, it needs to be a place where the loving friendship of the Lord Jesus Christ fills our hearts and is bent outwards to each other. It needs to be a place of caring.

•Sharing

Sharing what’s going on in our lives seems to be an important component to friendship. Jesus says in verse 15 the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. Jesus didn’t just share information about God with them. He shared the Father’s heart with them, what He loves, what He hates, what He’s doing, how He’s working. They saw the heart and mind of God through Jesus. Servants don’t get that. Friends do. The only person in the OT who God specifically calls His friend is Abraham, and we see the same component of sharing in their relationship.  The Lord visits Abraham and as He is about to leave, He says, should I hide from Abraham what I’m about to do with Sodom and Gomorrah? The answer is, no. Abraham is my friend. I will share what’s on my heart and mind with him.

Sharing our hearts with one another is a part of friendship. God created us all with a deep longing to be known and to know others. Of course there are levels of trust, so there will be levels of sharing. But it is important that we learn to let people into our lives. It can be tempting for us to draw the blinds on our lives and not let anyone see what’s going on inside. It seems easier to just work through stuff on our own and not have the trouble of letting people in. But as a friend of mine once wrote in a song, when we lock people out, we’re also locking ourselves in. And sharing with friends what’s going on in our lives can help release some of the mental and emotional pressures that build up and help restore perspective to us. 

One evening Janice and I were scheduled to go out to dinner with Jeff and Rachel Perry, but on the way to their house we got into a real doozy of an argument. I mean it was ugly (I was ugly). Of course as we drove up to their house there’s a temptation to put on a smiley face and act like everything’s ok, but we wanted to be real, so as they climbed into the car we told them we might not be the best company – we’re kind of in the middle of an argument. But Jeff and Rachel were great and it helped us to talk about it with them. To relate to them and hear them relate to us. To laugh about some of the sillier aspects of the argument. To not take ourselves so seriously. It helped release a lot of the pressure and help us put things in perspective.

But it’s not just about sharing struggles or conflicts. It’s about sharing what God is speaking to you. It’s about sharing memories and some laughs. I am amazed at how friends often enjoy reliving memories. There’s something about the retelling of memories, funny stories, and meaningful moments that helps to strengthen our relational bonds. God has created us to enjoy life more fully when we share it with friends. 

•Honesty

Faithful are the wounds of a friend, but deceitful are the kisses of an enemy. Prov. 27:6

One of the biggest friendship-killers is manipulation. That’s what the enemy is doing with all that kissing – manipulating. They butter you up with flattery to get you to do something they want you to do. They use the pretense of friendship to advance their personal agenda. It’s the opposite of friendship.

A friend tells the truth, and sometimes the truth hurts. But the wounds are faithful – they don’t get infected because they are honest and spoken with love and care. Honesty is an important part of friendship, but I have found that good friends are slow to say things that hurt. In other words, if you’re too eager to wound you may have it out of balance. The goal is caring, not wounding. The Bible is sharper than a two edged sword, but that doesn’t mean we should walk around stabbing people with it all the time. If your style is more like Assassins Creed than the Apostle’s Creed, it might be good to dial it down a little. But true friends will bring hard truth when it’s important to do so, and that truth may wound. When those wounds come from a friend, they are faithful, healing wounds. 

Six (quick) thoughts on growing friendship

•Friendships grow in the soil of the gospel

Our friendships with each other are based on our friendship with Christ, which is based entirely on the grace of God in the gospel. We accept one another because Christ has accepted us. We forgive one another because Christ has forgiven us. We love one another because Christ has loved us. We are friends with one another because Christ has called us his friends. 

The kind of friendship Jesus calls us to isn’t based on our performance. “Am I good enough?” Am I doing enough? Am I this enough or that enough? Our friendship is based on Jesus’ performance on the cross, where he died to make us acceptable to God. Not just acceptable as servants, but acceptable as friends. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lays down his life for his friends. 

•Friendship takes initiative 

Jesus took amazing initiative to call us friends. He says in verse 16, you did not choose me, but I chose you…Now, there is a lot of theological freight in that sentence that we don’t have time to get into, but Jesus took the initiative to call us friends. 

Prov. 18:24 says a man that has friends must show himself friendly. There’s a saying, if you want to have a friend, be a friend.  Don’t wait for others to take initiative to reach out to you in friendship – reach out to them.

•Friendship needs to be a two-way street. 

Friendship is a dialogue, not a monologue. If you’re always sharing about your life, but not taking an interest in other people, your friendships will be seriously limited. We can get really focused on wanting to be cared for but do we want to care for others? We can get focused on wanting to go to a church where we are loved. But do we want to go to a church and love? Friendship needs to be a two way street. 

•Value the friendships you have even as you seek to deepen them 

Friendships flourish where they are valued. Affirming the friendships you have is the best way to move forward in strengthening them. If a friendship isn’t where you want it to be, don’t get all critical about it, value it for what it is and do your part to try to deepen it. I’m not sharing this message from the place of having perfect friendships or being the perfect friend. We can always long for deeper and better friendships. But here’s how I want to approach that: I want to be thankful for the friends and friendships I have, AND I want to do my part to see them grow deeper in the coming years. Value the friendships you have even as you seek to deepen them.

•Always make room for new friends

While we’re valuing old friends, we should always make room for new friends. Otherwise our friendships become cliques, where new people can’t enter. My hope here at GCC is that new people not only see a reality to the relationships here, but also feel welcomed to join in and I think this church does that well.  The church is to be a community, not a clique. 

•Friendship can be a powerful part of our witness to unbelievers

People don’t need us to make them “evangelistic projects”. They need us to care about them as people. Whether they ever come to church or not. Whether they ever believe in Jesus or not. There are people I’ve gotten to know that, as far as I know aren’t believers and don’t go to church, and I’d really love to see them believe in Jesus and get plugged into a church. But my friendship with them isn’t dependent on that. I enjoy them and appreciate them just as they are, and want to see our friendships grow, even if they never come to faith in Christ. God has put people in your life who don’t believe. Be their friend. Care about them as people. Learn from their wisdom, respect their beliefs (even if you don’t agree) and appreciate their friendship. And in that context, live out your faith, and share your faith as a friend. 

Conclusion:

When we come to the end of our lives, what’s going to mean the most to us isn’t how much money we have or how successful we were in life. It will be the friends and family that remain close to us. We will treasure how friends have influenced and impacted our lives and how we have influenced and impacted our friend’s lives. More than anything else, we will treasure our friendship with Jesus more than life itself, because it is life itself. For the follower of Jesus, friendship really isn’t optional equipment. It’s a part of how we walk out our discipleship authentically. It’s a part of how we live in community and have fellowship. It’s a part of how we love one another, and so it’s a part of how we obey Jesus. Which means it’s an important part of his work of grace in us. We can’t do it on our own, but we don’t need to: what a friend we have in Jesus!

Let’s stand and close with that great old hymn.