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A FRIEND
Ah, the blessedness of sharing
secret thoughts with a "friend
indeed"!
Ah, the sunshine brought into a
dreary day
at the sight of a beloved face!
To release our store of
frustrations
and, for a time, slacken our
pace.
When we can share our faults and
failures
with an understanding friend
And speak out on things that
irritate
and frustrate our more human
side.
Somehow, those endless problems,
at least for a time, seem to
come to an end.
The imperfection in others fades
into the background;
in its place, sympathy abides.
What is of more value
than having a trusted friend,
always sincere.
Who sees our faults, knows our
weaknesses
and is still able to understand?
Yet how many times we take them
for granted,
forgetting they are there.
Thank God for friends, who
always come in love,
without motive, with no demand.
(Poem motivated by Myrtle Lee
Venters who became my friend
when I was about five years old,
and she was expecting her first
child.) Myrtle was
85 on May 27, 2004.
Everyone needs a good friend;
someone who will just "be there"
when they need a hug, a
sympathetic shoulder, an
understanding ear
or a voice. Someone aptly said, "A friend is someone who knows
your song and can sing it back to you when you forget the words."
Ideally, a friend would have
thoughts that came through our
mind channel. They would also
understand us, be compassionate
about our causes and always be
supportive and protective.
Realistically, that criteria is impossible. Our friendships would
be much more satisfying if we
came to that conclusion early on
in the relationship. God is very creative and made us all unique.
Though we may find many pleasant
similarities in a compatible
friend,
we are not clones nor do we have
a clone. God didn't make an
accident when we created individuality and that is what makes
us so interesting to each other.
The Bible tells of the
friendship of David and Jonathan
who had such diverse backgrounds
that it would seem there would
be no common ground. David was a
simple young man, who tended the
family's sheep. Jonathan was
born and reared in the king's
palace. There was
something internal though about
the relationship of these two
men.
"the soul of Jonathan was knit
with the soul of David, and
Jonathan
loved him as his own soul." (1
Samuel 18:1). They even
formalized
their friendship into a covenant (v. 3). The covenant would have
included exchanging weapons, thus saying, "I will be your protector.
Your enemy will be my enemy. I will be there when you need me."
Others objects would have been exchanged with similar meanings. It
was a lifetime covenant. Even
when Jonathan's father, King
Saul, turned against David
because he was jealous of
David's successes during battle
and popularity of the people,
Jonathan remained faithful to
David. All
of their lives they were faithful friends to each other.
When David became king after the
death of Saul and Jonathan, he
continued his and Jonathan's
covenant with Jonathan's
crippled son
and cared for him. Even such a
beautiful loving friendship had
to
come to an end.
We have to realize that
sometimes we have friendships
that are
"seasonal." People come into our
lives at just the right time,
fulfill
mutual needs and then
circumstances cause us to go
separate ways.
We will always cherish the memories we have build with a loving
friend, but our lives may take
different paths and terminate
close
personal contact. God knows what
we need; He knows who we
need and precisely when we need
them and for how long. It is our
responsibility to not allow our
close relationships to deter us
from following the leading of
the Lord into the territory that
he has mapped
out for us. David and Jonathan wept at their parting. They would have
preferred their closeness to
continue, but it wasn't possible
in the plan
of God for their futures.
The adhesive in any relationship
is love. Love hides our faults
to people who love us, and it
hides the flaws of our friends
from our view. That is why
people who are so different can
be such good friends. Love
creates a bond that overlooks
each other's "warts."
Webster's dictionary says that a
friend is "a person one knows
well
and is fond of, an intimate
associate, person on the same
side in
a struggle, supporter." It has
been said that a friend is
someone who
comes in when all the rest of the world has gone out. A real friend is
all of those things; even so, a
friend can hurt us; they can let
us down
when we need them the most. If we didn't love them, we would
write them off our friend list.
Husbands and wives are to be
friends. Any friendship or
marriage
requires updated maintenance.
Corinthians 13 gives a beautiful
picture of true love. Television
and other media have given a
distorted, perverted version of
"love," mistaking lust for love.
We
need to look to what God has told us love is, not the world's
definition. Verse 13 goes so far
as to say that love is better
than
faith or hope. Of course, the
reference is to the kind of love
God puts in our hearts, not the
worldly lustful emotion.
After love, the number one
ingredient for good friendship
relations
is to recognize that each of us
is unique, and we can bless one
other
with our special uniqueness. We
are meant to complement one
another. This is especially true
in a marriage. Though we are
equal in God's
sight, he gave each partner a role of responsibility that would be
mutually supportive. It is a sad
mistake for marriage partners or
great friends to attempt to
remodel one other. We are
different because God made us
so, and we are to employ that
difference to complete the
relationship.
Some people are "larks" who get
up bright eyed and greet the
sunrise and are ready to varoom
right into the day. Others of us
are "owls" who just get going
about the time the lark has
wound down.
We arise and fumble our way around in the dark much later in the
day trying to get our adrenalin flowing enough to get dressed and
out the door to our day's
business before noon catches us.
It's a
terrible mistake for larks to
expect owls to appreciate the
early
morning beauties that they have
such delight in. And an owl
can't
expect the lark who has flitted
and sung its way into day to
give a hoot about midnight
vigils. Larks are needed, owls
are needed; and
one should not try to
reconstruct the other.
Husbands or wives who
consistently hoard the time and
energy of
the other are going to run into
difficulty. They each need
same-gender friends. As much as
they might want to, men and
women will never
fully understand one other; they
are just too different. However,
with same-gender good friends,
they can come to a happy
balance. Women need to have good
friends who really do understand
where they are
coming from and lend a
sympathetic shoulder or rejoice
in some triumph. Men need the
same outlet and will be missing
something if they
don't have it. That could be a
great tension reliever in a
tense household.
Good friends also need other
good friends. Isolated
friendships
limit our creativity. A few good
friends will provide more
inspiration
and motivation and make us more congenial to our other friends.
Then when we have to give up a "seasonal" friend, we have others
to pick up the slack.
When friends let us down, we may
find ourselves asking God to
send us a "perfect friend" who
will understand us, support us
and
always be there. The problem
with that is the perfect friend
would be getting a raw deal,
because they would be expecting
the same thing
from us; and we can't produce
it.
What can we expect from our
friends? The same thing we are
giving them! We will make mistakes. At times, we will misunderstand
them and even cause them pain and disappointment in our actions
or words.
"A friend loveth at all times."
(Proverbs 17:17). "A man that
hath
friends must shew himself friendly." (Proverbs 18:24). Friends are
not dropped into our Christmas
stocking. While they are a
lovely gift,
the on-going friendship requires maintenance and effort of both parties.
A good friend may need to be open and honest with us when we stray.
"Faithful are the wounds of a
friend." (Proverbs 27:6).
Friends can do
a quality check on each other and still be in each other's good
graces-because they love each
other. "Ointment and perfume
rejoice the
heart: so doth the sweetness of a man's friend by hearty counsel."
(Proverbs 27:9). Love "suffers
long and is kind, beareth all
things."
(1 Corinthians 13). Kind
"hearty" counsel is welcomed and
encouraged by friends who care
for each other.
Having said all of that, the
picture emerges that our friends
are
not perfect, and if they were
they would not want to be
friends
with imperfect us. The fact is
that we have to accept and
endure
each other with all of our
faults and frailties of
character. We
keep looking for that perfect
person who will esteem us and
make
us feel significant, who will be able to look into our hearts and see
the real person in spite of our
failures. Someone who will love
us
for what we hope to become and
not stop at where we are now
and judge us. We want someone
who will always be there
whenever
we need them and will know what to say or do to comfort and help
us, to pick us up when we have
fallen and hold us until we are
strong enough to make it on our
own again. It seems like a
futile search.
We are all still a work in
progress and will be until the
Lord comes
back to claim his imperfect
children. What can we do about
it?
God is perfect. How can He
tolerate us while we are still
in the
making? Where can we find that "perfect friend"?
2 Chronicles 20:7 tells us that
Abraham was a "friend of God."
Abraham was not God's perfect
friend. Abraham lost faith in
God's
ability to provide for his
family during the famine and
left the land
that God had led him to. He sought refuge in Egypt and while there
picked up an Egyptian girl and
brought her back to his home.
Then
he tried to force God's promise
of a son with his barren wife by
having a son by the Egyptian
girl. God still kept his part of
the
covenant He had made with Abraham and gave him a son
miraculously with Sarah, his barren wife. God kept his promise
even though Abraham turned aside from it. Now, that's a
faithful perfect friend!
Looking for a perfect friend?
Look no further. You have found
one.
The rest of Proverbs 18:24 quoted above says, ".there is a friend that
sticketh closer than a brother."
James reminded his readers that
God considered Abraham his
friend (James 11:11). What
qualifications
did Abraham have that caused God to consider him His friend?
God even told Jacob that He had
chosen him, who was the seed of
Abraham, His friend. What made
this friendship so special that
it continued long after Abraham's death, extending to his posterity?
We might think that Abraham must
have done some great memorable
deeds to be so deeply engraved
in God's heart. However, when we
study the life of Abraham, he
could have been any one of us,
with faults and mistakes marking
his life. We would like to be
called the friend of God, but we
feel we could never reach that
status; we are just too
imperfect and fail in our
efforts to be perfect. The
answer is so
simplistic that it is often
overlooked.
James 2:23 gives us the answer
in language so simple that
anyone can grasp it: ".Abraham
believed God, and it was imputed
unto him for righteousness: and
he was called the Friend of
God." "It" being
"Abraham believed God" and
righteousness was imputed to
him.
It was given to him - by God; he didn't work for it, he didn't
earn it; he just believed God
and God gave him righteousness.
Just
what is that righteousness? The
Bible calls it grace. It means
having a right standing with
God. To attain right standing
with
God, we "believe God." What are
we to believe?
"That if thou shalt confess with
thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and
shalt believe in thine heart
that God hath raised him from
the
dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto
righteousness; and with the
mouth confession is made
unto salvation." (Romans 10:9-10).
If you need a "perfect friend"
who will never misunderstand
you,
who will always be by your side,
not a seasonal friend, accept
you
as you are and gently recreate you into a person that He will
accept as perfect in His eyes (2
Corinthians 5:17), who will
never
stop loving you no matter
what-you have found Him! ".I
will
never leave thee, nor forsake
thee." (Hebrews 13:5). He is
a forever friend. His name is
Jesus!
Now take His hand and go on your
journey. Even if the whole world
lets you down, He will pick you
up. You are loved and safe
forever!
Delores Adams
2/17/03
Copyrighted. All rights
reserved.
Alice's Legacy
Remembering Alice
The
"Handkerchief" has been anointed
and prayed over by several
believers who care about you and
want to help you realize your
full potential in Christ Jesus
Our Lord.
~The
Ten Commandments~
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