Guarding Friendships and Relationships

Someone once said that if you can truly find more than 4 or 5 true friends in your lifetime, you are blessed. The key words I would like to point out here are "true friends."
There are a lot of people you know who will call you friend as long as the sand does not sink too deep. For as long as what you’re doing is popular with everybody else, or as long as you have a good image in front of other people. Most of the time, these kind of relationships are based on feelings and emotions, and not on trust. These are not true friendships nor are they grounded on anything solid. For instance, if somebody walks up to you at a conference or meeting, and they see you out of the corner of their eye and they come up and say to you “HEY WHATS GOING ON?” More than likely you are going to be nice and tell them not much and maybe chat for about five minutes about old times and then walk off, get something to eat and forget about them until the next time you see them. So, true friends are a rarity. If you call somebody your true friend, you have a special trust with that person that nobody else understands. Your relationship and friendship with another person is based on what you have in common, or what you have gone through together as people. True friends don’t have to try to impress each other.

The Bible describes Jesus as a friend who sticketh closer than a brother. This is a perfect example and model of the kind of friend you should want to be and should put out the energy to be because the people that say they are your friends, when it comes right down to it, how close are they going to stick to you? How deep does your friendship really go? Thank God he looked past our faults and saw our needs!!

How would you describe a true friend? Thoughtful? Listening? Meaningful? There for you? Someone who can tell you what they think without you getting mad? I guess what I am meaning to say is that you can have a lot of acquaintances in your life but to really find a person to whom you can relay your thoughts, tell how you feel, cry with, laugh with, and just be yourself, is a very difficult find.

I don’t know whether or not you can only have 4 or 5 and be blessed but I do know it is true that friendships do mean something to people and are important. And, as you develop friendships, you begin to realize that even though the friend might have some personality defects, you have to look over their personality flaws, quirks, and odd ways and guard your friendship. Even if this means keeping your mouth shut when they say or do something dumb. Your friendship with that person goes much deeper than one mistake. Jesus Christ called Judas friend even after he had had betrayed him to have him killed. Talk about forgiving! Even after betrayal to have him killed, he still favored his relationship with Judas.

Guard it (look over flaws), nurture it (don’t let something hurt it), keep it (don’t lose it, its worth sacrificing for), and like Jesus, no matter what happens to you, remember one true friendship is worth keeping!

by Tyler Sullivan