Friendship is hard sometimes and True friends are hard to find.
They stick closer than family and often know you better.
They pray bigger things for you than you pray for yourself.
They believe with you when your faith is weak.
They make and hold space for you when life falls apart, and
They rejoice with you when all is well.
Most importantly, true friends remind you in every encounter who and what is most important.
Christian friendship carries a weight with it of responsibility.
A friend of mine demonstrated this weight when she visited me and God had me in a place of stillness, as I was in recovery mode from major surgery.
All that know me, know that being still is a hard thing for me to do however, I was recovering from knee surgery so stillness was something that I really needed to do.
I was not only being called to physical stillness but spiritually God was using this time of recovery for me to learn to depend on Him and his love, grace, and mercy. Most times that love, grace, and mercy is/was demonstrated by others.
You see I am GREAT and taking care of others and assuring that their needs (and most times their wants) are met and taken care of. However, when it is time for me to have those same needs and wants to be met by others, I cannot humble myself to a place of acceptance or allow myself to admit I need help.
My good friend came to be with me during this time and made it very clear in no uncertain terms that I was blocking my blessing and the blessings of others in my unwillingness and uneasiness of accepting help and allowing others to do for me what I so generously do for others. She held the mirror to my face and made me see myself. I was a Blessing Blocker! I was shocked but guilty as charged and didn’t even realize I was doing so. She told me the truth about myself with love. She took on the weight of our friendship in my time of stillness.
We as Christian friends have a degree of access to our friend’s lives that others don’t have so the responsibility is greater.
We don’t help our friends hurt themselves or block their blessings or the blessing we are to receive for being a blessing.
We are charged with the weight of the responsibility to be a Truth Teller.
We are also charged with five other things as true biblical friends (taught by Kelly Needham):
- To heighten our friends’ joy in Christ
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- Christian friends help us enjoy God by enjoying him with us.
3. Encourage our friend to obey God (Hebrews 10:24 & Hebrews 3:13)
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- While it is true, we need friends to help us see any disobedience, we also need them to spur us on to obedience. Often, obedience to God takes more courage than we can muster alone.
5. Love our friends for the glory of God (1 Corinthians 10:31)
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- Christian friends should be far more focused on God’s weight and significance — not their own or their friend’s.
2. Expose sin in our friend that keeps them from God (Ephesians 4:15)
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- We need friends to lovingly show us our sin. We need friends to help us see our blind spots. We need friends to speak with brutal honesty (Matthew 18:15) and tender compassion (Galatians 6:1) telling us the truth about ourselves even when we don’t want to hear it (Ephesians 4:15)
4. Bring our friends to God in their weakness (Luke 5:18-19)
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- How can we bring others to God? We listen to a sister confess a hidden sin and wash her with the truth that Christ has cleansed her and made her whole. We can meet the practical needs of those enduring intense suffering in Jesus’s name. Or we can simply bring our friends to God in prayer, asking him to do greater things in their lives than we can do for them.
A little note from J. Javelle:
Grace P.O.U.R. wants this to be a safe place for you to let your feelings out and gain the support you may want and need.
I started with me, I have exposed some of my deepest journal entries in my Be Still Moments for the whole world to see, all I ask of you is that you leave a comment, share your thoughts and give your feedback (Positivi-tea only)!
I’ve done the hard part, so I am inviting you to pour a little tea with me. I promise you by doing so you’ll, in turn, pour yourself a little grace!
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