The friendship we were created for is under attack.
Friendship is one of God’s greatest inventions. My 9-year-old’s son’s day is made by a connection he makes in the playground. The embrace of a best mate can soothe all manner of sorrows. The company, encouragement, laughter, cheering, and weeping of my friends have seen me through life’s highest highs and lowest lows. And yet there are threats to friendship everywhere.
Time is the oxygen of friendship; the intensity of modern life is starving it of air. Vulnerability and depth of conversation nourish our relationships; we are starving on a superficial diet of surface-level conversation. Presence and proximity provide strength to existing friendship structures. Social distancing has kept many of us apart long to shake their foundations to the core. Zoom has been a poor substitute.
How might bravery help us meet the challenges we face in this area of our lives?
Brave in vulnerability
There are countless friendships and even marriages between people who spend a lot of time together but never achieve the kind of intimate connection needed to fulfil our deepest human longings and the closeness of relationship we were created for. Conversation rarely goes deeper than discussing the events of the day or the trivialities of other people’s lives. Plans for the future are explored in terms of events and places rather than hopes and dreams. When deep and meaningful talk appears on the horizon, one or both parties make a U-turn and return the discourse to the superficial, frantically swimming for the surface like a panicked diver.
We were made for more.
There comes a defining moment on the storyboard of every great relationship when party takes the venture into uncharted conversational territories and instigates a ‘deep and meaningful’ by opening up to a friend about a struggle, an unexpressed hope or dream or a deep-seated hurt. To do so requires great courage.
Rob Parsons says if you want want acquaintances, tell them your successes; if you want friends tell them your fears. To expose our heart makes us feel unsafe and defenceless. But it is essential if we are to harness the trust required to build friendships that last.
Brave in sharing faith
The most influential person in a Christian’s journey to faith is a friend. As I have heard the stories of new Christians over the last few years, virtually every one of them credits a friend as a significant companion on the journey.
It can take a great deal of courage to admit to our friends that we are a Christian, even more to invite them to something at church or enter into a conversation about faith. My encouragement is to begin to pray for them and pray for opportunities to share something of Jesus with them in words and action. If you wanted some help being brave in this area of friendship, my book Story Bearer is written to help us all be more effective in this area.
Brave in challenge
There’s a verse in Proverbs that tells us that wounds inflicted by a friend are faithful (Proverbs 27:6). I didn’t understand this verse until I had been wounded.
A few days after we had been spending time with friends, I got a phone call from my best friend, Adam. He called me to help me reflect on the evening. I had no idea at the time, but in the group discussion that night I had been really rude, condescending and said some really unhelpful things. I was totally blind to my bad behaviour. His correction helped me say sorry and I am better for it.
His phone call must have taken a degree of boldness, but I am so thankful for it. Although a little bruised, I thanked him profusely and encouraged him to do it again whenever he saw me step out of line. We need friends and we need to be friends who have the courage and care to gently reprimand and steer each other back on track. It is much easier to only inflict strokes of encouragement – and we desperately need these in our fragile states – but we must also be brave in gently wounding our friends. We must also be gracious enough to receive their challenge.
As we rethink and rebuild our lives in the aftershocks of the pandemic, we have an opportunity to reflect on who we invest our time in and how we do friendship. My encouragement is to be brave in the way we relate to our friends, to intentionally take bold steps to grow deep friendships with a few, and be courageous in sharing our lives and stories with not-yet-Christians in order to help them be united with the Greatest Connector of them all.
Let’s be brave in vulnerability, bold in sharing faith and courageous in challenge.
