You've Got a Friend in Me
At the start of the new year I sensed the Lord calling me to surround myself to a greater degree with a few trustworthy men in my life. In essence, God was nudging me towards taking a step in cultivating biblical friendship. Hesitantly, but knowing this was the direction the Lord was leading, I reached out to two brothers with whom I had been forming a solid friendship.
And just like the middle-schooler on the first day of school I asked…“Do you guys want to be friends?” Well, actually it was more like do you want to go deeper in our friendship. Sadly, in our culture this is a strange sounding request and often a request that goes unasked. But thankfully these men were equally as hungry to cultivate a more meaningful friendship and we have been meeting on Fridays for coffee…talking life, wrestling with doubts, confessing sin, celebrating life wins, and praying together.
To jump start things…we decided to read through a book entitled Made For People by one of my favorite authors, Justin Whitmel Early. The book provided a solid foundation for us to lay out the expectations for what we are striving for and desiring as friends. It provided concrete handlebars for the type of friendship the Bible outlines and the type of friendship we sense our souls longing for.
As a church, we just looked at the story of Ananiah and Saphira from Acts 5. One thing we noted is the danger of hidden sin in the church to the mission of God. And one of the major antidotes to hidden sin is meaningful friendship.
Whitmel Early writes, “Once we understand who we really are, and that our true hearts and desires can be one of the most dangerous things about us, that’s when, we will look for friends who are like Jesus, who will find us as we are but never leave us as we are, and who will love us enough to speak a word of loving rebuke” (67).
He concludes, “For anyone who has experienced it, having someone name problems in your life can be breathtakingly freeing” (64).
Sin is like the moldy Greek yogurt in the back of our fridge. The longer we let it sit there the worse it gets and the more it grows. We need friends in our life who will help us pull that yogurt from the shelf and in repentance discard that sin from our life. Taking the step of asking a friend to be that person can be awkward and difficult but that difficulty doesn’t compare with the difficulty of living with hidden sin.
So…who is that person in your life? Can you name them? Do you have that type of friend? And are you being that friend to someone?
If not…take the bold step today to ask the hard but life saving question…will you be my friend?
Pastor Jeremy
