What Friendship Looks Like!

We find out what true friendship looks like when we can disagree with a friend and they still show respect and love.

Those who cannot love you if you do not think the way they think do not love at all. Their love is conditional to you being just like them.

Proverbs 17:17 "17 A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity."

Proverbs 18:24 "A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who stays closer than a brother."

There are not very many people who love you so deeply that they would love you through everything. When we fall into sin the true friend tells us the truth and grieves over us. A true friend feels great joy when good things happen to us.

When we love a friend as deeply as Christ loves us we will rejoice in the good things with our friend, and we will weep over the hard things, the sinful things, and the disappointments.

A friend never feels superiority, never rejoices in the fall of their friend, and always attempts to guide their friend back to God.

A good friend allows us to be ourselves, express our opinions freely without demeaning or haughty language to diminish us as a person.

Proverbs 18:24 "A man that hath friends must show himself friendly: and there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother."

A true friend will remove themselves when their companion will not repent in order to help them learn the seriousness of their sin. A friend who loves this much grieves that they must do it, but prays for their friend to repent and return to obedience to God.

The spiritual well-being of a friend is far more important to us than even their companionship.

Matthew 24:12 "And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold."

Those who love Christ more than anything or anyone else will find themselves at times without friends. Friends will come and go as we resolve to obey Christ when most "Christians" will not love Him as we do.

Mark 13:12-13 "And brother will deliver brother over to death, and the father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death. And you will be hated by all for my name's sake. But the one who endures to the end will be saved."

We live in an apostate world now, as the end times progress toward the tribulation we will find ourselves being mocked, betrayed, and cursed for our resolve to trust Christ.

May we be so in love with Jesus Christ that losing friends over it has little impact on us. We grieve for a time and then we move on to carry out the work of the Lord, whatever He has given us to do.

Micah 7:6 "For the son treats the father with contempt, the daughter rises up against her mother, the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; a man's enemies are the men of his own house."

Matthew 10:36 "And a person's enemies will be those of his own household."

We can expect to be maligned and hated by those who love the world and the things of the world, even in the church gatherings.

The 2 Timothy 3 mentality is everywhere, and is a description of the end times church, "having a form of religion but denying God."

Timothy 3:1-5

3 This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come.

2 For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy,

3 Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good,

4 Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God;

5 Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away."

Be happy and blessed to be alone with Christ, when the time is right He will send someone to come alongside to encourage us to keep seeking Him.

Hallelujah!!!!!