Why we Need Friends

"There's a closeness, an intimacy, to friendship, without which we become vulnerable to ruin."
(Sam Allberry, 7 Myths About Singleness)

I've spent the last couple weeks looking at what Scripture says about friendship (here and here). I believe that's the place we need to start everything from. And I hope you've begun to see the importance of friendship, or community, that is found in Scripture.

I purposely left my previous posts on this topic mostly just Scripture with little interpretation or explanation. That's what I want to talk about now.

What does friendship look like for us?

How does the importance of it play out in our everyday life?

Our culture tells us we can do it ourselves, that we don't need anyone else. But, a look at the lives of so many, both inside and outside the church , tells a different story. Trying to do it alone doesn't work long term. Even if it appears successful in the short term - almost all the time it ends poorly.

As Sam Allberry wrote in the quote I shared at the start of this post:

"There's a closeness, an intimacy, to friendship, without which we become vulnerable to ruin."
(7 Myths About Singleness)

We need people who we allow to get close. We need people who have our backs when attacks come. We need people to celebrate with us, to mourn with us. We need people who can and will warn us when we're getting off track and who will help us get things right again. Without this, we easily find ourselves in trouble.

Even as I write this, I'm challenged about how I've been living and my own friendships. With a significant change in circumstances in some key areas of my life this fall, I pulled back from most of my friendships - some partially, some completely. I started trying to go it alone again. And it seemed like it was working for a while.

But, as the new year approached, I realized it actually wasn't going well at all. I was walking through some hard stuff by myself and it was quickly becoming overwhelming. I saw how easy it would be to head down a path to ruin, to trouble. In fact, I was already taking steps down that path.

Thankfully, when I choose to reach out to friends again, they were still there. But, through this, I was reminded of why we need friends. How important it is that we have people we're walking through life with. And of how vulnerable we are when we try to go it alone.

So, who is in your circle? Who are the people you're walking with?

Or, have you started trying to walk through life alone? What steps can you take to correct this?

Biblical Examples of Friendship

Are there examples in Scripture that reflect what friendships should look like?

Is there more than just a list of things friends should be and do in Scripture?

The answer to those questions is YES.

In Scripture, we're provided with models of what this looks like. Last week, I gave a list of references of directives of what friends are like. Today I want to take a look at some biblical examples of friendship.

One of the more talked about examples of friendship in the Bible is where I want to start.

David and Jonathan would have been an unlikely pairing for a friendship. Jonathan was the one who should have been the next king after his father Saul. David was the one who had been anointed as the next king instead. But, friends they were.

We first see mention of their friendship in 1 Samuel 18:1-4. Jonathan and David became close friends after David came to stay and serve Saul at the palace.

We see a further example of their friendship in 1 Samuel 20. Things were becoming dangerous for David to remain in Saul's household. Jonathan, who at first didn't believe it, confirmed that David's life was in danger and helped David to get away safely.

In 2 Samuel 9, we see further evidence of the friendship of Jonathan and David. David is established as king and tradition would have been to make sure all descendants of Saul were killed so none could try to lay claim to the throne. David discovers one of Jonathan's sons is still alive, but rather than have him killed, David takes him into his home and treats him as family in honour of his friend.

David and Jonathan loved each other deeply and went out of their way to help and support each other. Even when it came at a personal cost. This wasn't a friendship just because it was easy. The held on through hard things too.

The book of Ruth is another example of friendship in action. After the deaths of their husbands, there was no reason for Naomi and Ruth to continue life together. What had tied them together was gone. But, Ruth chose to stay with Naomi (see Ruth 1:16-18). She chose to give up all that was familiar to her to with Naomi because she cared about Naomi.

Friends do make choices to give things up to go with another into something. Ruth chose this and set an example of being willing to sacrifice ourselves for friends.

The final example I've chosen from Scripture is Jesus and His disciples - specifically Peter, James, and John. Jesus chose these three to be a part of an inner circle of really close friends He spent time with them. He invited them into things where others weren't (see Luke 9:28-36). Even in His time of greatest struggle in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus invited these three in deeper (see Matthew 26:37-38). Jesus didn't do it alone.

In all of these examples, these friends showed up for each other and invested time into the friendship. We have these examples of what friendship in action looks like.

There are other examples of friendship in Scripture, but these are the ones that really stuck with me. Friendship doesn't come without a cost, but it's a beautiful cost. We weren't made to do this life alone. We need each other.

Over the next few weeks, I will continue to explore this topic. I'll be pulling in some of the reading I've done around the topic and talking a bit more about some practical examples.

Friendship - What Does Scripture Say?

We weren't made to go through life alone.

It doesn't take reading very much of Scripture to this pretty clear. The model of Jesus, and of many others in Scripture is one of living life with others - in community. If deep friendship with one another.

But, for some reason, we've bought into the lie of our culture that we can do it on our own. That we don't need anyone to get through anything. And it's gotten us in trouble.

So, maybe we need to begin by taking a look at what Scripture says about friendship. If we weren't created to go through life alone, then Scripture should have plenty to teach us about what friendship and walking together through life looks like.

As I began to look at this topic and study what Scripture says about it, I realized it could be, and probably should be, a lifelong study. There are some common themes on friendship I discovered that I want to share as I believe they highlight the foundation of what I'm talking about here.

I've wrestled with how to put this into a post and I'm going to break a lot of the "rules" out there for what a post should look like with this one. And I'm doing so because I want you to go to Scripture and look at it and read it for yourself - read the context and ask God to help you understand what He is saying.

In future posts, I'll talk more about these things with with more stories and the practical side of things. But, I think the foundation Scripture lays out needs to be set out clearly as I begin this.

So, what does Scripture say about friendship?

• Friends love at all times - Proverbs 17:17
• Friends can be trusted, even when they speak hard truth to us - Proverbs 27:6
• Friends stick close - Proverbs 18:24
• Friends help one another up when they fall - Ecclesiastes 4:10
• Friends offer comfort in sorrow - John 11:33-36, Job 2:11
• Friends keep confidences - Proverbs 11:13
• Friends are people chosen carefully - Proverbs 12:26
• Friends sacrifice for one another - John 15:13
• Friends offer heartfelt advice and are pleasant to be around - Proverbs 27:9
• Friends celebrate with one another - Luke 15:9
• Friends care for each other's needs - Acts 27:3
• Friends love one another - 1 John 4:7

This is far from an exhaustive list - much of it from what Proverbs says about friendship. If you were to look further at just what the book of Proverbs says, you would also see a lot of warnings about what friendship isn't.

But I intentionally chose to focus on what friends are and what they do, because I find that more difficult to describe. My life experience tells me a lot of what friends aren't, but what friends are, for some reason, seems to be harder to define and describe for me.

Scripture does also include some examples of friendship in action. That will be the subject of my next post.

What do we do about Loneliness? What is the Solution?

Friendship.

As my series this fall on loneliness finished up, I knew that what needed to come next was a discussion of friendship and community. If we're going to deal with the loneliness epidemic in our culture, then real friendship and community is the only solution.

But, even as I knew this, I felt completely unqualified to write anything on the topic. Most of the time I'm not sure I'm qualified to write on what I talk about on my blog, but this topic leaves me feeling even more unqualified than usual.

The question I've asked myself is: What does an introvert with social anxiety disorder possibly have to say about friendship and community that can help anyone? Especially one who has often struggled with friendship and not done well in this area.

But, if I've learned one thing over the time of writing this blog, it's that most of what I write teaches me something in the process of writing it. That seems to be why I write anything - to learn it myself.

So, I guess this is my invitation to join me in this. I don't promise to have all the answers or to be able to tell you exactly what the solution looks like in practical ways. But, about loneliness and not also talk about friendship and community.

Many of the books I've read on singleness in the last year, talk quite extensively about this topic, because it's important, for all, but I would argue especially for those of us who are single. As a single adult, I have to be that much more intentional about friendship and community. It is appallingly easy to go through an entire week without seeing or talking to anyone but co-workers about work. Or to go an entire weekend without seeing or talking to anyone.

I've had many people tell me I'm lucky that I can do that, or that it's a good thing. And, I do need time alone, but that I can isolate myself from others so easily is not a good thing. And when it happens, I pay a price and so does anyone who does that.

Friendship and community doesn't mean we're never alone. But, when we can disappear and it's not noticed, we have a big problem. And it's a contributor to our culture's loneliness epidemic.

Sam Allberry puts it this way in his book 7 Myths About Singleness:

"The sad reality is that there is now an appalling paucity of friendship in many of our churches. FOr our Western Culture, and, sadly, for much of our church culture as well, friendship is largely dispensible. When it comes to intimacy, our focus is on the romantic and the marital. But this is all a far cry from what the Bible has in mind when it talks about friendship."

I wrote in fall about intimacy and ho we've forgotten what it actually is. (Find the post here.)

I think in many ways, we need to grasp a better understanding of intimacy to see friendship as the solution to the loneliness epidemic.

"Our society, including the evangelical church, struggles to imagine a relationship that is intimate, fulfilling, and committed yet is not the result of striving toward a sexual union. Because of this, both the idea and the practice of friendship are under assault." (Christina S. Hitchcock, The Significance of Singleness)

So, we need to change this, but how?

That's what I want to explore.

I know I've painted a bit of a dismal picture in this post and I'm going to leave it that way this time. But, there is hope to come. Stay tuned.