This past weekend we dove into 1 Samuel 18 and looked at an often unappreciated and certainly under-talked-about topic: friendship.  As I sat in and prayed through this passage of Scripture all week - I was overwhelmed at the significance and vital importance of godly friendships.  I was struck at how much of a gift they are from God to his children.

After Sunday, a friend passed along an article that he read many years ago.  The sermon sparked his memory and he dug up an article that I think helps highlight the importance of friendship within the church.  Below are a few excerpts from pastor Sean Morris’s article entitled In Praise of Christian Friendship.  I’d encourage you - especially Chrisitan men - to give the full article a read.  And then wrestle with and pray into the implications laid out in this helpful post.

I think about how many today experience rampant loneliness and paralyzing isolation—some of which is self-wrought, some brought on in an era of pandemic lockdowns, some endured through no fault of their own. Social media seems to exacerbate this terrible phenomenon, both in the way it conveys faux-intimacy through “Friend Requests” and “Follows,” and in the way it drives people further into corners of despair. Devoid of any flesh-and-blood camaraderie, some retreat still further into the internet, finding there yet darker corners for connection and mutuality.

Just in the past few months, I can think of half a dozen situations where godly friendships…served to minister grace to me and encourage my soul: A few months ago, I was out of town attending a class and a brother (who barely knew me from Adam’s housecat) invited me to dinner. In the course of our conversation, he poured his heart out regarding some strain and trials that his family was enduring. I didn’t say much that evening, as I could tell the brother just needed a friend to serve as a sounding board. He needed someone to listen to him, a brother-in-arms to offer some compassion and understanding, to pray, and to blow off steam. His problems were hardly solved, but I could tell he left in better spirits than when he started.

I have been close to several such situations. I will not describe them in colorful detail, but it does strike me that the men in each instance, despite the variety in their sin and scenarios, shared a common factor: they were lonely and isolated. Maybe they would never have put it that way. Maybe they didn’t realize it. Knowing what I know now, I wish I had tried to do more to help in some cases. Regarding the isolation, at least one man admitted as much to me when he said (paraphrasing), “My sin festered in the isolation. Who knows how things might have gone differently if there were people around me to notice and to call me out?”

Whether you’re a minister, a church leader, or a layperson in the pew, seek out godly friendship…Give God thanks for the way He works His grace through godly friends. And keep on the lookout for those seeking “a friend that sticketh closer than a brother.”

God, may you grant Port City Church to be a place of deep and meaningful relationships.  A place where friendships are formed around the wonder and beauty of the gospel.  A place where people can be known and truly know others.  

Amen.

Jeremy Dager