As Young Christian women, we have the power to make friendships, good or bad. We have the power to hurt or the power to love someone. I want my friendships to be deep and lasting and I hope you all hope and want the same. May all our friendships be friendships of love and filled with the fruits of the Spirit.
The Power of Friendship
In the past few weeks since a very thought provoking sermon my father gave a couple of Sundays ago on the power of friendship, specifically the powerful story of the friendship between Jonathan and David. This story is such a precious story of dedication, sacrifice, brotherly love, and kindness. It is a powerful story of how friendship can affect one’s life and shows just how much it affected David and Jonathan in the ultimate sacrifice they made for each other, Jonathan saving David from imminent death at the hands of King Saul. But this sermon provoked thought in that I began asking myself many questions.
The first question that I asked myself was, “Would you sacrifice your life for your friend?” I wondered if my friendships in the church and with those Christian friends around me were precious enough for me to be willing to give up my life freely and without question for these dear brothers and sisters in Christ. Have I shed enough tears on their account? Am I willing to sacrifice my own interests for theirs? Our life was given to us at the first day of the world when God ordained that we would be born into the world. It is a precious gift and giving it up for others is the ultimate sacrifice. I tell myself, “Why would I die for him or her?” I don’t want to die now. I want to live life to the fullest. But if you do make that sacrifice and give up your life, whether it be in a physical way or spiritual way, the Lord will reward you for wanting to give up of yoursel.
The second question that I asked was, “What makes a true friend for life?” Is it friends who give gifts to each other every 3rd weekend or a tiny little card saying, “Thnak you for being my friend” or is it the old men sitting on the porch, reminiscing over the many hardships they have endured together since their childhood and they still remain friends. They have born through the hard times and have enjoyed the good times together. Even when someone gossips about “Jo” they take it with a grain of salt. They don’t go to wrong assumptions but instead, they think of and remember that person in love.
Do you wonder? Who are my friends? Are they just superficial friendships or do we really get into the deep issues of life and discuss them lovingly with grace towards each other? Would you cry if you would hear that they were deathly ill or had been seriously injured in a car accident? Or would you just brush it off and forget about it? If you would then you are not a true friend. A friend will give up his life for his brother in Christ and selflessly love Him in spite of his faux pas and imperfections.
So my resolution this year is to work on my friendships. I don’t want them to be fluffy cotton candy but dense chocolate cake. I don’t want them to be friendships that I forget about after I get married. I want them to be friendships that last till my final breath on my death bed. Over the next year I will learn what it truly means to sacrifice for my friends and that does not mean giving them a piece of my gum or sharing my chips with them. IT goes far deeper than that. It means sacrificing your opinion on something or graciously conceding to them when you know you are wrong. It means that I am willing to say I’m sorry and to forgive them 7×70000000 times for their sins. A friendship will no longer be a superficial thing but a deep meaning that I keep stored in the depths of my heart till the day of life. I will always, as long as I live, strive to sacrifice my interests and my life for my friends because I love them, and am trying to imitate the powerful examples of Jesus and his disciples and David and Jonathan.
