Who Are Your Friends?

Over the past few weeks, God has been putting friends on my heart. He’s been reminding me of my friends, the importance of the friends I have in my life and how blessed I am to have those people in my life. As I went to a local coffee shop today to write this blog, the WIFI password for today was FriendsANDCoffee. When I saw my WIFI password written on the receipt I just chuckled as I knew that was the Lord.

The Bible talks about friendship quite a bit. Psalm 133:1 says “how good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity!” (NIV Translation). We are called to live life together. The Bible tells us “For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.” Matthew 18:20, ESV Translation. When we gather together, Jesus is with us.

Not only are we supposed to live life with one another as friends, but Jesus also calls us friends. One of my favorite passages in the Bible comes from the book of John where Jesus calls us friends. John 15:13-15 says “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.” (ESV Translation). In this passage we see that Jesus calls us to lay down our lives for our friends. In fact, he says there is no greater love than to lay down our lives for our friends. What does laying down your life for your friend look like? I believe it can look like many different things. It can look like being there for someone, putting them before ourselves, helping them when they are in a time of need, serving them without looking for anything in return, loving them unconditionally and simply just doing life with them. When I think of someone that really did lay down their life for their friends, the obvious person I think of is Jesus. He laid down his life in a way that no one will ever be able to do again. He literally laid down his life so that we could live eternally with the father.

The other thing God has been reminding me is that you become like who you spend the most time with. Who are you spending your time with? Who are the people you talk to about things that come up in your life? Are those people pointing you to the Lord? The Bible tells us “make no friendship with a man given to anger, nor go with a wrathful man.” Proverbs 22:24, ESV Translation. We really do become like those we are spending our time with. If we spend time with someone that is angry or unhappy, we become angry and unhappy. If we spend time with someone that is constantly joyful, their joy tends to be contagious. The friends I try to choose are the ones that point me to the Lord. The one’s that have good attitudes about life and love deeply. When I started making decisions to surround myself with those types of people, I realized I was becoming more and more like them. Their joy really was contagious.

While I consistently surround myself with good friends, there is one that I surround myself with more than any other friends. Jesus! Proverbs 18:24 says “there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.” ESV Translation. The friend that sticks closer to us than a brother is Jesus. He is the best friend we could ever have. And the best part is, he is always with us. When we aren’t with our earthly friends, we still get to be with Jesus. If there is anyone I want to be like, it’s Jesus. The prayer I consistently pray every day is “Jesus help me to be more like you.” Sometimes I fall short, no doubt, but I want that to always be my prayer. I want to be like Jesus. The more we spend time with Jesus, the more we learn his heart and the more we become like him.

So today, I want to encourage you to make that your prayer. Ask Jesus to make you more like him. Spend so much time with him, that there is no option but to start acting like him. To start serving others like never before, to love deeply, to be full of joy and to lay down your life for your friends, just like Christ laid down his life for us.