Who You Were Made To Be // Going DeeperIhe Atụ

The Tricky Business of Friendship

Friendship can feel like a tricky business. For instance, how important is it, you wonder, for a potential friend to be like you—in personality or in experiences or in beliefs—so the two of you can connect on a level deep and meaningful and significant? Or how important is it for him or her to be different from you—to challenge you to see and experience new things in the world? Must they love you? Care about you? Respect you? Must you love them? Or respect them? Or pursue them? What are the rules of friendship, anyway, you ask Me. Why does it feel so complicated sometimes? Why does a heart both ache for friendship and struggle to rejoice in it too, you ask. I hear you. . . I hear you.

There is great value, great beauty, great wonder, in having and being a friend.

Now, as for the knowing each other well, the thing to remember in friendship is that, already, you are each connected in a way that is profound and intimate and good. Each person on earth, of course, is connected by Me—a love greater than you can fully know. The people you encounter on the street and in stores, the person alone in a room and the person surrounded by a crowd at a party, each of these persons was created by Me. You forget that, don’t you—that you are all family, even if it isn’t recognized by each of you yet? Friendship starts here, with a recognition that the connection between you and another person, because I made you both, binds you together—no matter differences in race or heritage or upbringing or personality or social class.

It is always worth the effort to show someone they are worthy of love.

Because it isn’t just about what you have in common with another person that makes a friendship. And you know that. Rather, it is time together. It is sharing experience. It is loving him or her as much as you love yourself. How much effort, you wonder, should you put forth for the sake of friendship? When friendship is so messy? When it is not easy being open and vulnerable with another person—sharing your heart, your opinions, your time? It can feel easier to be alone, sometimes. I know. For friendship requires something of you as much as it gives. It requires trust and risk. It requires sacrifice and selflessness. It requires love.

I know it hasn’t been an easy road developing friendships that bring you joy and make you feel loved. The brokenness of people makes hurting one another inevitable. Pride and self-righteousness. Selfishness and envy. Arrogance and narcissism. But in this messing up and hurting one another is the opportunity to turn toward Me for help. For all relationships are repairable. All hard hearts can be softened. The journey toward connection with another person, with all of the inconvenience of vulnerability and risk in sharing your heart, can be worth it. For you are not made to be alone. You are made to be in relationship with people who can love you and show you more of who I am.

Do not give up now. Do not decide to give up on friendships without asking Me first, without looking to Me for guidance. Relationships that have been hard or inconvenient or have required more of you than you have felt you could give are ones you need to ask Me about. Trust Me, look to Me, ask Me, in all your friendships, what it is I have for you in them. And I may whisper to you to stay, or wait, or trust, or go.

In all friendships, much is required of you to love another person well—to be a friend who loves without reservation. But I protect your heart. And I won’t ask you to do something that is not good for your heart. I want good things for you. And sometimes friendships are what I use to love you. Sometimes friendships are how you see Me and hear Me and experience Me.

But this fact, more than anything else, is what I want you to know about friendship: No matter the mess of the situation with the friend, no matter the difficulty of words, no matter the challenges in connection and communication, I am the friend who never leaves. I am the friend who grabs your hand and helps you in every relationship that is before you. I am the friend who, in your loneliness—in the ways your heart is aching for friendship that has not yet materialized—you can love Me and lean into Me and trust Me. Let Me love you and speak to you and guide you. If you let Me, if you desire My friendship, if you believe I am worth risking for, I will protect you, and I will guard your heart.

Exercise:

When we are in relationship with God, there is always an exchange. Many of them, actually. We offer things to Him or surrender them—our time, our attention, our idols, our sin. And He offers us things, in return: His presence, restoration, freedom, righteousness.

Though not on the same level, when we are in relationship with our friends, there are exchanges too. Maybe that’s because friendship is a gift from heaven. James, the brother of Jesus, wrote: “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above.” That’s from James chapter 1, verse 17.

Holy Spirit spoke about the kinds of exchanges we make with our friends. He said, “friendship requires something of you as much as it gives. It requires trust and risk. It requires sacrifice and selflessness. It requires love.”

And He said, “In all friendships, much is required of you to love another person well—to be a friend who loves without reservation.”

But He also says something amazing about what is required of us in friendship. He said we can be open and trust and give freely of ourselves—because He promises that, in this, He will protect our hearts . . . if we let Him. He also said He won’t ask us to do anything that is not good for our hearts.

And He said something equally amazing about what, through friendship, we get in return. “I want good things for you,” He said. “And sometimes friendships are what I use to love you. Sometimes friendships are how you see Me and hear Me and experience Me.”

With all of that in mind, let’s jump right into some listening prayer with Jesus. Let’s do exactly what Holy Spirit counseled us to do. He said, “Trust Me, look to Me, ask Me, in all your friendships, what it is I have for you in them.”

So, Jesus, right now, we consecrate our minds, our imaginations, to You. We consecrate these next few moments to You. We want to hear Your voice. We want Your wisdom, Your genius to permeate our lives. So, we look to You now. Originate thoughts and pictures and words in our minds—whatever You’d like. We’re listening.

Okay, so I am going to ask a few questions now, on your behalf, and then I’ll give you some time to listen for a response from Jesus.

Jesus, of my existing friends, is there someone I should be making a higher priority than I have been making them?

Jesus, with any of my existing friends, is there something I need to do? Some way I should offer my help? Or is there a question I should ask?

Jesus, beyond my circle of existing friends, is there someone else I should to be a friend to? Is there someone with whom I should try to move into friendship, right now?

Jesus, among my friends, is there anyone I should think about letting go of? Is there any dynamic, with anyone, that’s become unhealthy for me or for them?

Now, dear friend, as we always must when we do any kind of listening prayer, we must now consider the thoughts or pictures or words we might have heard during our time of listening and compare them to the higher authority of Scripture. If what we think we might have heard fits within the principles of Scripture, then we can trust it and move forward with it. But if it does not, then we must drop it right now and forget about it—because those kinds of things won’t have come from God.

Jesus, thank You for this time together. Thank You for your wisdom and guidance and truth. Thank You for speaking.

In Your name we pray. Amen.

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