Friendship by Degrees

"Friends come and friends go, but a true friend sticks by you like family" (Pr.18:24)
The experts tell us that in aiming for the goals we have in life, like love, friendship, success, etc. we all consciously and unconsciously have various conditions, measures or rules by which we decide whether we are moving toward or have achieved a goal. These conditions can be positive or negative, and mandatory or optional.

Friendship is a goal relationship that will be very fragile when the conditions held differ widely and are poorly communicated. Some example conditions are:- frequent contact, never criticizes, shows genuine interest and concern, never breaks confidences, shares personal thoughts. A useful exercise is to divide a sheet of paper into four, and prayerfully list all the conditions you have about friendships: the 'musts', the 'shoulds', the 'should nots', and the 'must nots'.  Try and be exhaustive; if you have many more positives than negatives, you make friends easily; if the balance is the other way then you are probably putting up too many barriers to others to get close to you.

Now think about our studies on "Making Christ known through friendship" and ask yourself the question, "After the effort of making a friend, of inviting to evangelism functions and Church, you are consistently knocked-back, or the gospel message is rejected, will your friendship with that person change? If your attitude to that friendship does change, what will it say about Christ?"

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