Made for Friends

"...Better is a neighbor [friend] who is near than a brother who is far away."     Proverbs 27:10b.

As we approach the latter half of Acts 2 in our sermon series, where early Christians shared their lives with each other in ways we can't imagine doing today, I think it's fitting to consider one aspect of sharing lives together in Christ: friendship. It is something so good, yet something that can be so hard to find. But I want to encourage us today - in part because I need the encouragement - to consider the friends we may or may not have nearby and take a few steps towards planting, watering, and growing them.

First, friendship is something we all need. In his book "Made for People," Justin Whitmel Earley makes the case that God has baked friendship into how we reflect his image. God's own trinitarian relationship is the basis on which our friendship is formed. This fellowship is a sweet, deep, and refreshing grace from God. And like fellowship with God, our friendships are soul-shaping, sin-fighting, pain-feeling, burden-bearing, prayer-giving, need-filling, and joy-sharing. Friendship is God's ministry towards us to help make us more like Christ and to give us a taste of the deep love and communion we have with the Holy Trinity. And it's not just friendships generally speaking, as good as our long-distance friendships can be. It is friendships as applied locally, where you live, and in real life.

Second, even though it is good, friendship seems to be hard for everyone. If you look up the stats on friendships these days you'll find what might seem appalling at first, but a creeping feeling inside your heart will resonate with what feels very familiar. As a whole, people have far fewer close friends than even 30 years ago, have lost friends to time, distance, and world events, and are spending less time building meaningful friendships to begin with. We often move and though we may have friends from a distance, we feel the loss of friendship day to day. When we try to gain friends, the demands on our time leave little room for them, or perhaps the demands on other people's time leaves little attention for us. We often don't even see it happening, but we find ourselves looking around one day realizing we are very alone. I'm sure many of you resonate with these thoughts - I certainly do.

But as Acts 2 reminds us, living a Christian life means being near people, sharing life with them, and enjoying the fellowship of the Lord together. Or another way to put it - to be Christian is to live life in the context of local, Christ-centered friendships. I think the hardest part is that this isn't magical and utopian, as Acts 2 seems to feel to us sometimes. Friendships can be unnatural, unavailable, and simply hard work. But as hard as it is, we can take action towards one another to deepen our bonds, open our friendships to new people longing for friends, and plant new seeds with others to see the fruit of fellowship grow.

A few encouragements, as I wrap this up:

I hope your friendships grow this year, both in number and in depth, and that we can each find the sweetness of God's fellowship toward us in one another.

P.S. A special plug for Men - the Men's Ministry has assembled a team of guys to host weekly, informal hangouts that are open to any of the men from Christ Church to attend. It's an informal, low-commitment way to find opportunities to build genuine connections with other men while doing things you enjoy together. These will begin the week of February 22, and I would encourage you all to check out the Men's Ministry Facebook group for details about upcoming hangouts.