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?