Pastor Wayne Cordeiro
June 27, 2004 - W0426

Today we are continuing our series called “The Greatest of All – Breaking through to God’s best”.  We started the series earlier this month talking about the characteristics of great faith and what qualities of great faith can make the heavens take notice. Well today we will be talking about friendship and the characteristics that make of a great friend.

Friendship…God uses it to define one of the highest qualities of love. Great love is found in the context of true friendship. “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13).

When we consider the world we live in, we often misdefine friendship. We mistakenly believe friends are people who do what we want them to or who agrees with us. Someone who thinks we’re funny. Someone who never argues with us or actually someone who looks, thinks, and acts like me. Me! Me! Me! But that is not true friendship; that is a selfish friendship.

The Bible speaks about a biblical kind of friendship. In fact, the Bible says, “Faithful are the wounds of a friend” (Prov. 27:6) In other words, it means that sometimes a friend may say something to me that is not easy to hear. Yet if it’s the truth and it’s something God is saying, that makes that person a true friend because the Bible is saying a true or great friend is someone who is…

COMMITTED TO GOD’S VERY BEST IN YOUR LIFE.

When left on our own, we have a tendency to define friendship in a very selfish way. However, the Bible defines friendship in terms of one’s commitment to helping do what is God’s best in the other person, and supporting God’s commands. “You are My friends if you do what I command you” (John 15:14).

True friends are those who walk in when everyone else walks out. True friends are those who say, “It’s okay,” when we don’t have anything left. True friends are those who stay to resolve issues when you disagree because there is a commitment to the relationship more important than the specific problem at hand.

We want a friend who is committed to what is right, not who is right. So if that’s the kind of friendships we want, where do we start?

1.       START WITH THOSE YOU LOVE.

Huh?  Who are we talking about here? We are talking about your family: your spouse if you are married, your kids if you have any, and others who are close to you. This advice may seem odd at first, but think about it. Sometimes the hardest ones to be friends with are the ones you love: your family, your spouse, and your kids. In fact, the Bible tells us, “Above all, keep fervent in your love for one another, because love covers a multitude of sins” (1 Peter 4:8).

The word “fervent” originates from a Greek phrase that means stretching and straining. So, when the Bible says to “keep fervent in your love for one another,” it’s telling us to develop and sustain the kind of love that has the flexibility and elasticity to be stretched and strained without breaking. That’s because it is that kind of love and friendship that covers a multitude of sins. God encourages us to develop relationships with one another that have the qualities of being stretched and strained. At the same time friendships should be able to endure because the relationship is more important than the mistakes and problems that are bound to occur within them. This is the kind of love Jesus has for all of us. We have all sinned and fallen short of His grace yet He loves us anyway. 

So now that we understand the kind of love and friendship we should have for one another, where should you begin?

·         START WITH YOURSELF.

“…you shall love your neighbors as yourself” (Matt 19:19).

Oftentimes we judge others by their actions but we judge ourselves by our intentions. We evaluate others by the rules but we evaluate ourselves by grace. The fact is that we have a tendency to measure others by one standard and ourselves by another. In this passage, God is telling us to treat others the way we treat ourselves because that is an increased kind of love. Love others as you love yourself because God knows that great friendships are not possible without that kind of grace. True friendship requires forgiveness, overlooking of weaknesses, and a willingness not to hold a grudge. 

“A man who has friends must himself be friendly…”(Prov. 18:24). Ask yourself, “Are you known for grace?” Grace does not mean compromising on sin. Jesus didn’t compromise on sin but he showed grace…to the woman who was caught in adultery…grace…to the thief on the cross…grace… to the prodigal son…grace… and to Peter after having denied Jesus three times….grace. So like Jesus if we are going to be people of great friendship, we need to be people of great grace.

Now when you give grace, it does not decrease people’s respect for you but rather increases it. And when we become people of great grace, we look more like Jesus than ever. This is important because you may be the only Bible someone reads and the only Jesus someone sees. So start with yourself but then move to…

·         YOUR SPOUSE.

Become friends with your spouse because when you befriend those you love everything else will fall into place. Otherwise, the following can happen: “It is better to live in a corner of the roof than in a house shared with a contentious woman” (Prov. 25:24). What this verse is saying is if you are not friends with your spouse, you are going to be very lonely. Although you may be in the same house, it can be lonely or it can be like living in a corner of the roof.

Well how does this happen in a marriage? Oftentimes it happens because we marry an expectation, not a person. Then, we spend our time trying to change that person into our expectation and it really never works. On the other hand, a true friend is someone who becomes friends with those they love and who recognizes the relationship is much greater than the expectation they have of you. So going back to the passage, “…that one lay down his life for his friends,” in the case of a marriage, it may simply mean laying aside our expectations of the other person, extending grace, and loving them as a friend. 

The next thing to do is to make friends with…

·         YOUR FAMILY / CHILDREN.

As parents, we often have huge expectations of our children and feel that if we can make our children successful, we can right the imperfections of our own lives. These expectations can become a burden to the relationship and may prevent us from being friends with our children. Pastor Mark said something wonderful last week, “You can control your children with authority but you cannot influence them without relationship.” This is so true so we need to recognize the importance of having a friendship with our children, not just birth association.

If you don’t have a family (blood relatives per se), this church is your family and those around you are your family. Jesus made this point one day when he was teaching in a temple and a man came to tell him that his mother and brothers were looking for him. “’Who are My mother and My brothers?’ He asked. Then He looked at those seated in a circle around Him and said, ‘Here are My mother and brothers! Whoever does God’s will is My brother and sister and mother’” (Mark 3:33-35).

In fact, let’s consider this even further.  The Lord says, “…you shall love your neighbor as yourself…”  Who is God talking about?  Who are our neighbors? We know who are friends are.  Our friends are the people we choose as friends, but who are our neighbors? I would suggest this:  friends are people we choose for ourselves but neighbors are people whom God chooses for us. To this end, our neighbors would include our coworkers, people in this Church, the people who live next door to us and even our family since we don’t get to choose whom we’re related to.  God says to love your neighbor as you love yourself. There are times when your own family is more like your neighbor than your friend. You did not choose your family with the exception of your spouse, and even when we initially chose a spouse that is a friend, over time they may become more like a neighbor.  So start with those you love to make them your friends.

God is saying that you can love your neighbor into being your friend.  It’s going to require you to stretch and strain. You may need to lay down your life or more likely your expectations, but choose them first above the expectations. And when you start to love a neighbor until that person becomes a friend, God tells us we are approaching that greater kind of love because, “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.”

Well how do you do that? How do you love neighbors into friends?

2.       MAKE TIME TO BUILD FRIENDSHIPS.

Friendships are built in the margins of life. I would even say that people do not fall out of love; they fall out of friendship. Our lives have gotten so busy that we can easily eat up all the margins of free time in our lives and fall out of friendship. The Bible warns us about this, “Woe to those who add house to house and join field to field, until there is no more room, so that you have to live alone in the midst of the land! In my ears the Lord of hosts has sworn, ‘Surely, many houses shall become desolate…” (Is. 5:8-9).

To build friendships, we must make time and increase the margins in our lives. Looking back at the story of creation, “And God said, ‘Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good and he separated the light from the darkness.  God called the light ‘day,’ and the darkness he called ‘night.’ And there was evening, and there was morning – the first day” (Gen. 1:3-5).  Notice God started creation from rest and he brought life forward out of rest, not activity. This is an important point to understand for our lives:  the secret of fruitfulness is not adding, but actually pruning. 

The Hebrews understood this need for margins. In fact, the Hebrew clock was defined by three designated times with specific purposes:

10:00pm -- 6:00am               to sleep or rest

 6:00 am -- 6:00pm               to work, produce and be productive

 6:00 pm --10:00pm              to build relations with families, friends and neighbors

The Hebrews knew the importance of spending time to build relationships and carved out time to do just that.

And where does this all come from? The source of all of this, the last piece of advice with regards to building great friendships is to…

3.       MAKE FRIENDS WITH GOD,

“I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from My father I have made known to you” (John 15:15). Allow God to reveal what he is saying to you by making friends with God and spending time with Him during your daily devotions. Your daily devotional time is time for you to develop your friendship with God and the kind of love that defines a great friendship.

God calls us to love one another and to love our neighbors as ourselves but it is often difficult because they are not our “friends” as we commonly define friendship. Yet, God loves us though we are not perfect and calls us to develop that great quality love for others without expectation and with grace.  When we nurture that kind of fervent love, a love that stretches and strains and encourages God’s best for another, we start to develop that great quality love that converts neighbors into friends. When we do that, when we prioritize relationships over problems and make the time to build friendships -- that kind of love will cover a multitude of sins and we will become ambassadors for Christ.

Discussion Topics

1.       Describe a time when a friend was a true friend committed to God’s best in your life in spite of what you may have wanted or thought you needed at the time?  How did that friend’s actions impact your life?

2.       How are your relationships with those you love? Are you friends? What can you do to improve those relationships?

3.       Share about a time when you stretched and strained a friendship and how that friend’s fervent love affected you.

4.       How are the margins in your life? There is a good chance that improvements can be made somewhere. Name at least two things that you can do to improve the margins in your life.

5.       What do you think your biggest challenge is in loving your neighbor? Share and solicit ideas about what you think you can do to be a better neighbor.

Great job! Thank you Jaylene Tsukayama for another wonderful summary.