Category Archives: Friendship

Friendship is not a consolation prize

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Rebecca McLaughlin:

‘Friendship is not the consolation prize for those who fail to gain romantic love. Like marriage and like parenthood, it is another way in which God manifests an aspect of his love for us. Christians are “one body” (Rom. 12:5), brothers and sisters (Matt. 12:50), “knit together in love” (Col. 2:2), comrades in arms (Phil. 2:25). Paul calls his friend Onesimus his “very heart” (Philem. 12) and likens his affection for believers in Thessalonica to that of “a nursing mother taking care of her children” (1 Thess.…

A Christian basis for befriending

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Here are some notes on a teaching session on this subject.

Aim

To explore together the biblical basis for befriending, and to discuss the place of evangelism in our friendships with those who are not yet believers.

Activity in pairs

Pair up with a person you do not know very well.  Spend a few minutes talking to one another about how you became Christians.

Teaching on friendship in the book of Proverbs

Constancy Some people are fair-weather friends, Prov 14:20; 19:4,6,7, but a good friend ‘sticks closer than a brother’. 
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The friendship of Jesus

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The Puritan writer John Flavel says, ‘there are certain things in which one friend manifests his affection and friendship to another, but there is not one like Christ. For,

1. No friend is so open-hearted to his friend as Christ is to his people: he reveals the very counsels and secrets of his heart to them. Jn 15:15. Henceforth I call you not servants, for the servant knows not what his Lord does; but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father, I have made known unto you.…

Friendship

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I read somewhere of a man who was working in the garden of his new home, when his lawnmower had broken down.  He tried fruitlessly for two hours trying to get it going again.  Suddenly, one of his neighbours appeared with a handful of tools.  “Can I help?” he asked.  In twenty minutes he had the mower working beautifully. “Thanks a lot,” the newcomer said.  “And may I ask you, what do you make with such a fine set of tools?”…