Sayings about Friendship
¡ñ True friends are like Diamonds... they are real and rare. False friends are like leaves... they are scattered everywhere.
¡ñ Without humor, life is sad. Without courage, life is hard. Without love, life is hopeless. Without friends, life is impossible!
¡ñ Everyone hears what you say... Friends listen to what you say... Best friends listen to what you don’t say...
¡ñ "If all my friends were to jump off a bridge, I would not follow, I would be at the bottom to catch them when they fall."
¡ñ
The cry for intimate friendships is the heart cry of so many people. I think that in our current generation and culture, that this need is greater than ever before.
We all want a friend with whom we can share our deepest needs, hurts, dreams and aspirations with, and many of us have had such a friend at some point in our lives. In fact, last Sunday evening during our shepherd ministry time, many of you shared memories of some of your ¡°best¡± friends that you had known over the years. Some of us shared how we had lost touch with some of these people, or our lives had changed and the friendship was left to be a memory.
Our need for friendship and intimacy¡someone we can be close to is evidenced by the SUBSTITUTES that our society uses for intimacy.
Think about some of them:
1. There are more counselors now than ever before. We all have a need to confide our deepest needs to someone.
2. Look at the things we ¡°get lost in¡±¡the television and internet. We are hungry to connect.
3. Pornography is one of the biggest business in the world, with on-line access now bringing it into almost every home in America. Pornography has been described as ¡°false intimacy¡± that will steal the true thing from a man and his family. .
Intimacy is something that we all crave. It is defined as that which characterizes our deepest nature, marked by very close association, contact or familiarity.
One writer noted that intimacy is the soul expressing and fulfilling itself in another.
The greatest friendship described between two people is described in 1 Samuel 18:1-4, and we looked at the friendship aspect of it last week. This week, we are going to look at the implications that our understanding of intimacy has for our relationships.
1 Samuel 18:1-4
1 Now it came about when he had finished speaking to Saul, that the soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as himself. 2 Saul took him that day and did not let him return to his father’s house. 3 Then Jonathan made a covenant with David because he loved him as himself. 4 Jonathan stripped himself of the robe that was on him and gave it to David, with his armor, including his sword and his bow and his belt.
As I looked at the life of David, I realized that there is no record of David ever having another friendship like the one he had with Jonathan. In addition, they hadn¡¯t been boyhood friends, they met during their teenage years and their friendship lasted until Jonathan¡¯s death. What this tells me is that great friendships are rare and valuable. It tells me that intimate friendships are something to be treasured, and the development of them requires effort and vulnerability.
1. We have a need to connect with other human beings¡
i. There is an epidemic of loneliness in our society
ii. 4 in 10 Americans admit to frequent lonliness.
1. But to belong, we have to pay a cost, and that cost is vulnerability.
2. It is a cost that many people aren¡¯t willing to pay, and yet I wonder if they realize what the incredible payoff is for risking and developing an intimate friendship.
3. Just as Jonathan laid down his armor and weapons, we too must lay down our defenses and allow ourselves to be vulnerable.
a. To share our deeper parts with someone trustworthy.
b. We wonder, will I be safe?
2. Lets look at what Intimacy is:
a. Keith Miller says, ¡°In an intimate relationship, one feels safe to reveal hopes, dreams, fears, the past, including one¡¯s sins and mistakes. These things can be shared without the fear of being judged, condemned, or straightened out.
i. Intimacy happens when two people walk into each other¡¯s imaginations, each actually penetrating the secret place of each other¡¯s hearts and minds.
b. We were created in God¡¯s image, and I believe our desire for intimacy comes from our being made in his image.
c. I also believe that we need intimacy as much as we need water, shelter or sleep.
3. Intimacy ¨C what it is not
a. Marriage ¨C saying ¡°I do¡± doesn¡¯t wave a magic wand over your heads of the newlyweds.
i. Intimacy is not going to come on its own because you have chosen to live forever with someone¡in fact, it might even be harder to come by as you learn their bad habits.
ii. Intimacy won¡¯t just happen, it requires effort and hard work.
iii. I have done enough weddings to see that most couples spend a great deal more time in planning their wedding ceremony than in planning their marriage.
1. Most have no idea of what intimacy really means.
2. Most assume communication will ¡°just happen¡±
3. Many think that the strong feelings they have for each other will be sufficient to weather the storms ahead.
4. And I have yet to have counseled a couple who have had a plan for developing intimacy and closeness.
5. In fact¡I generally find resistance from them to any seminars for marriage preparation, engagement enrichment, etc. My counsel to them is this: if (the holdout) won¡¯t go get the tools now, don¡¯t expect him/her to get them once you are married, except when they might fear the marriage is collapsing.
a. Get the tools before you need them.
b. Learn to use them so you can weather the storms of life together.
c. Intimacy doesn¡¯t just ¡°happen!¡±
iv. Most of you who are married know firsthand that intimacy is something that takes years to develop, and there are many couples who never experience that ¡°knowing and being known.¡±
b. We hear the words, ¡°they were intimate together¡± and assume that it means they are having sex.
i. In God¡¯s design, this was to be the ultimate EXPRESSION of intimacy, but in our society today, it is often substitute for true intimacy. Physical intimacy is not necessarily true intimacy.
c. Intimacy does not have to contain physical intimacy to be true intimacy. Because our society has tried to define intimacy by physical acts, we have lost the truth that intimacy is at the root of friendship.
i. Just as David and Jonathan were intimate friends. The words that ¡°the soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David¡± tell us that these two young men experienced a very intimate friendship.
ii. Maybe hearing the words that two men can have an intimate friendship makes you uncomfortable. A few years ago it would have made me very uncomfortable.
1. But having a biblical view of intimacy instead of the world¡¯s definition is essential to understanding this properly.
2. The world sexualizes everything that is holy and good and tries to bring it down to their level.
3. God¡¯s view of intimacy goes way back to the Garden of Eden where man and God knew intimacy with one another.
d. Intimacy is not the goal but the journey: Our interaction with another person is a journey towards self-disclosure and knowledge of the other. It will never be complete because of the endless nature of intimacy.
4. Barriers to Intimacy:
a. Some of us resist intimacy with others.
i. We prefer life on the surface where it is safe. We think like this:
1. The more intimate I get with you the more vulnerable I become.
2. The more you get to know me the more I am likely to lose you because to know me is NOT to love me.
3. If you know me less you might love me more.
4. If you know me too intimately, you will realize how inadequate I am, how fearful, insecure, worthless, unlovable, lonely or what a loser I feel like I am.
ii. Others of us are constantly sabotaging our intimacy with others by testing them¡our fear of abandonment leads us to keep people at arms length and yet demand from them what we won¡¯t give them ourselves¡and then when they reject us, we say, ¡°I told you so.¡±
1. When you trust another person, you also shudder when you take that step of trust¡what if they don¡¯t accept me?
2. What if, this closest person I know doesn¡¯t receive what I share?
5. Steps toward Intimacy:
a. Warning: Not every person you meet is destined to be a close friend.
i. Pray that God will open your eyes to someone that you can develop a close friendship with.
ii. If you are married, begin with your spouse.
iii. Or begin with an existing friendship that you have.
b. The first step is take time.
i. How is love spelled? T-I-M-E.
ii. Just as many of our best friendships were while we were young teens, it was because we had time to simply ¡°hang out.¡±
iii. Make plans to spend time. Write it in your calendar. Make appointments¡standing appointments to be with this person you are trying to grow closer to.
iv. I heard a pastor talk about blocking off time for their wives in their calendar and guarding that time as sacred appointment time, that nothing except the death of a church member would interfere with.
c. The second step is to ask questions.
i. For many people, we are most comfortable talking. But asking questions is tough. It invites the other person to open up. It requires that we die to our own desires and listen to someone else.
ii. Ask deeper questions¡like how someone feels about something. Get below the surface of what people think about things.
iii. To ask questions means you listen without judgment. That¡¯s equally as tough.
d. The third step is to be vulnerable.
i. This requires telling something that is hard for you to talk about. You might have to ask if the other person wants to hear about it.
e. The fourth step is to be there for the other person in thick and thin.
i. Be committed to the other person in such a way that you are willing to set aside your own agenda for their needs.
I am going to move to the conclusion of the service and the Lord¡¯s Supper by pointing out some of the Supernatural reasons why intimacy is so important for us. It is because it is important to God.
6. Created for Intimacy
a. The doctrine of the Trinity: three persons ¨C Father, Son and Holy Spirit ¨C exists as One God, in relationship. God is in relationship, intimate relationship for all eternity.
b. Let me read to you a passage from the high-priestly prayer of Jesus, it describes the intimacy that Jesus has with the Father as well as God¡¯s aspirations for you and I do have the same relationship with one another:
c. John 17:20-23 "I do not ask on behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in Me through their word; that they may all be one; even as You, Father, {are} in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me. "The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me
i. It is no wonder that we feel a sense of completeness when we enter into relationships and likewise we feel incomplete when we are in isolation. It is because we were created for intimacy. We were created for relationships with other human beings.
ii. God not only created us for intimacy, He gave us the capacity for intimacy.
1. For us to chose to settle for something less than God¡¯s best for us is sin.
7. In the same way, Jesus became vulnerable for us. He brought us into a relationship by which he calls us His friends. This passage from the last day of Jesus¡¯ life, just before He celebrates the Last Supper, exhibits to us the intimacy he was modeling for us as well:
a. John 15:11-15 - 11 "These things I have spoken to you so that My joy may be in you, and {that} your joy may be made full. 12 "This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you. 13 "Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends. 14 "You are My friends if you do what I command you. 15 "No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you.¡±
b. Did you see the way that Jesus used the word ¡°friends?¡± Three times he uses it in this passage:
i. Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.
1. huper: "In behalf of his friends" or "in the place of his friends."
ii. You are my friends if you do what I command you.
1. The intimacy we have with Jesus is contingent upon our maintaining our relationship with Him and our responsiveness to His Spirit within us. The fact that the Bible says we can ¡°grieve¡± the Holy Spirit (by disobedience) shows that what we have with God is an intimate relationship. We can ¡°hurt¡± God, if you can imagine that.
iii. I have called you friends for all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you.
1. Perfect active indicative, permanent state of new dignity. A slave was one who had to do something because it was required. That was the state under the Law. But a friend does it because he wants to. He does what he does in response to his friends love for him.
c. Think about the love of Jesus. He gave up his throne in heaven, set aside his divinity to become man, the creator becoming the creature, and chosing a lowly carpenter¡¯s family instead of a king¡¯s family. He draws his disciples from common, unschooled, unimportant men and then lays down his life for them, and us, by dying for our sins, taking the punishment you and I deserved on the cross. He knows that Peter will reject him. He knows that Judas will betray him. He knows that you and I will reject him for years, push him away, do our own thing many times and ignore Him. And He has the love for us to call us his friends?
