by Clarence Hill
Friends are to a couple as oars are to a boat. They have something to do with the momentum, the direction and the balance of a person’s life. If the oars are doing their part, great momentum can be created to get the canoe to where it is going. If an oar is only used on one side of the canoe, progress will be a struggle. It will be hard to navigate a straight course. If an oar is of low quality and breaks easily, it could cause more difficulty than good. The topic of friends and our marriages is terribly important because wrong friends and even the absence of friends have caused marriages to fail and lack progress, while the right friends have saved marriages and caused marriages to rise to new levels in growth and love.
Friendship in its purest form is a relationship of mutual affection or esteem where two parties share a common bond or interest. It is easy to see that most people desire the mutual delight of friendship. Because this matter of friendships with others will exist for better or for worse and has such a great effect on a marriage, it is only wise to recognize the importance of this aspect of life and handle these relationships correctly. However, there are some that don’t believe that true friends exist anymore. Some have even given up on having friends at all. There are even those who become like atheists are towards God. They try to act like real friends don’t exist. They make a show as though a true friendship wouldn’t be sweet to their soul. They often behave as though they are fine without friends, all the while commenting about how they “can’t trust people” or how they innocently just “keep to themselves”. Why would there be such comments if having friends and good relationships didn’t matter? While it is true that this present culture of self-indulgence and individualism has created a certain level of distrust in all forms of relationships, the desire for camaraderie and companionship often remains prevalent despite human inadequacies and the pain of past disappointment. Command or no command, popular or unpopular, friendship is a desire that yet exists in the heart of man and in the very heart of God. Most have tasted, at least for a moment, the sweetness of a good friendship.
Friendships are one of the great wonders of the Bible. Abraham was called, the friend of God. Moses spoke with God face to face as a friend speaks with a friend. David had Jonathan as a friend. Jonathan loved David as his own soul. Jesus also enjoyed friendship. Toward the end of his ministry, he began to call his disciples friends and no longer servants. Friendship was so true to Jesus that he used the term friend to address Judas, his betrayer, when he was in the moment of being handed over to die. Jesus gave the disciples his life and successfully made friends out of ordinary men with real faults. For the Lord to work toward such a goal, the creation of friends, as a part of the fulfilling of his life calling, he obviously knew the value of friends. If the Lord purposely built friendships as part of the success of His life’s purpose, it is a mark of wisdom for couples to do the same.
The disciples were marked as friends because Jesus was able to share with them the great treasures that he understood from the Father. Friends are for the sharing of the treasures of the heart. All of your dreams, passions and struggles (good and bad) come pouring out before a friend, without the slightest backlash of contempt or disdain. Even when you’re wrong, they let you get all of the poison out of your system. When you are done, they look at you, as if to say, “Are you ready to receive some good sense and get on level ground?” The Bible says, faithful are the wounds of a friend, but the kisses of an enemy are deceit. Friends are people that love you enough to give you the truth. Friends are a shoulder to lean on, a hand to wipe away tears, a mind to contend with, a soul to stand beside and a heart to believe in. If you ask them enough times, they’ll give you just about anything. They’ll even lay down their lives for you. There is no greater love expressed in a human relationship than in that of friends. Jesus said, “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”
You may argue that a marriage expresses the greatest love in a relationship. This is not true, because you can be married and not be friends. Being married commits you to certain duties (of life, provision, care and intimacy), but friendship in a marriage allows acts of duty to be performed out of desire and not empty obligation. Hopefully, all couples can come to enjoy the blessing of being married and being friends. This most certainly would show a love that neither marriage nor friendship could express alone. Words fail to describe what King Solomon’s wife expressed when she said, “This is my beloved and this is my friend.” What a testimony! This article will not reach the vast treasure of the many aspects of friendships. The glory of being married and being friends is a treasure worth finding! For now, we will focus on the friendships that exists or that should be formed with couples or individuals in relationship to your marriage.
It is vital to understand the effect of friends, the wisdom of having friends and why it can be so hard to find good friends. Understanding and using these truths rightly will be like going out and hiring some field hands to help you weed the garden of your marriage, break up the soil thereof and prepare it for the harvest of many joyful and fruitful years. The wisdom is that while you may do o.k. gardening by yourself, with friends, the same quality of labor and care that you would put into your marriage will now be done on a far greater scale than you could ever accomplish alone. With proper friends, you no longer have to wonder about what effect the outside influence of a friend is having on your marriage. You will clearly see the benefit of having likeminded friends who love God and who desire to see your marriage prosper.
The words and the lifestyle of friends can greatly influence your desires, plans and ways of thinking as a couple or as individuals. It is so important to choose friends that are sober about life, that whether single or married they point you towards God. When it comes to having singles as friends, it is not Biblical wisdom to generically condemn having them as friends. However, it is necessary to know what kind of single person to have as a friend. Here are five things that will help to tell you if your single friend is a benefit to your marriage:
- They will freely rebuke you if you say anything evil about your spouse or if your behavior is unfit for a married person. They won’t casually laugh and ignore these small signs of major problems.
- They will turn your heart back towards home when they see your lifestyle or cares leading you down a path away from your spouse. In fact, if they catch you spending too much time with them, they will resist you or begin to distance themselves from you. They understand the danger of an individual losing the priority of their marriage.
- They are busy doing God’s will with their own lives. Your time is not spent counseling them day in and day out about their “purpose in life” or their next relationship.
- They don’t fill their lives with video games, shopping, the latest trends and “living it up”. On the contrary, they are sober and live as Paul said, where they “care for the things of the Lord.” (1 Corinthians 7:32)
- They are servants. When they see the opportunity to help you, they avail themselves. However, beware that not all help, no matter how sincere, is good. Many singles are in a great struggle, overwhelmed by the culture, though they are sincere in their desire to be a friend to you. Therefore, be careful of your sentiment towards them, because some have the desire to serve and not the capacity. They may very well want to baby-sit your children to give you a night out, but be warned against putting your children in the care of an unstable person (someone in and out of pornography or personal sexual sins), lest the end be worse than all! If they are offended at you inquiring about their lives, then that should tell you what kind of place to give them in your life.
Whether your friends are married or single, a great signifier of any person’s character is whether or not their lives are open and accountable to someone else of good character. “For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. But he that doeth truth cometh to the light that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.” (John 3:20, 21)
If you can form a relationship with another couple where the husbands are friends and the wives are friends, sacrifice to make it work. These kinds of relationships are invaluable. So many excellent things can come out of such a relationship. For “as iron sharpens iron, so doth a man sharpen the countenance of his friend”. The very countenance of your marriage can become beautiful. When two couples, who put Christ first, develop a friendship that continually reaches to grow stronger in Christ, you have found the recipe for generational blessings. Be sure that children are very much aware of and influenced by the friends of their parents. Even your friends on magazine covers and on the T.V. will help to form your children and the destiny of your marriage. Choose the right friends, be the right friends and your marriage will be what God ordained it to be.
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Remember to read
Friendships Part 2 –
see how Jesus purposefully handled his “friends”
in different ways.
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