Friends and Love are Synonymous

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

When someone is our friend, what is important to them is important to us and what is important to us is important to them. This is the true nature of friendship.

Those who only want to boast of their own things and have no interest in ours, especially things of the Spirit, then they are not friends. They may be occasional acquaintances but they are not people we share our deepest heart with, we remain distant to protect what is precious to us.

Jesus Christ is our best friend. We can take everything to Him at any time of the day or night and know He cares and will respond to us.

John 15:15

"No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not understand what his master is doing. But I have called you friends, because everything I have learned from My Father I have made known to you."

Those who ignore us, gossip against us and diminish our calling and heartfelt desires are not our friends.

Proverbs 17:17

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

A friend loves at all times, walks through everything with us encouraging us to do and be seeking Christ.

Proverbs 27:10

"Do not forsake your friend or your father's friend, and do not go to your brother's house in the day of your calamity; better a neighbor nearby than a brother far away."

Our brothers and sisters in Christ are our family and they love as Christ loved.

1 Corinthians 13:4-8

"4 Love is patient, love is kind, it is not jealous; love does not brag, it is not arrogant.

5 It does not act disgracefully, it does not seek its own benefit; it is not provoked, does not keep an account of a wrong suffered,

6 it does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; 7 it keeps every confidence, it believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things."

God has shown us what love looks like in His word, if our friend does not demonstrate this love then they are not a friend but someone to avoid.

2 Timothy 3:1-5 "3 But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come.

2 For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, slanderers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy,

3 unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good,

4 treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God,

5 holding to a form of godliness although they have denied its power; avoid such people as these."

May we be grateful for those friends who care deeply about us and may we care deeply about our brothers and sisters in Christ. They will be the ones we will spend eternity with and who enjoy Christ more than anyone or anything else.