Cultivating Christlike Friendships
By, Sarah N.
Do you feel like making friends as an adult can be difficult, awkward, scary even? Do you feel like making friends is harder now as adults than it was as kids? Have you ever had a period of time when you’ve felt like you either had no friends or like the friendship “pool” was picked over? Have you ever been hurt by friends?
We actually get messages from people asking us questions like, “How do you all make it work? Why don’t I have friends like you do and what’s wrong with me because I don’t?” And many times they’re accompanied by sentiments like the ones above.
Those questions are really why we started our blog in the first place. We want people to know that meaningful friendships are possible and even necessary, but also that they are not easy. We have learned a lot about how to be friends and while we aren’t claiming to be the ultimate example of perfected friendship, we do hope that we can share what we’ve learned and maybe help others in their relationships because our friendship has been such a blessing to us.
So I will begin by sharing a bit of what I’ll call my “friendship journey”.
I am an only child and I grew up way out in the country, about 20 minutes from my closest friends. This and genetics probably contributed to my strong introverted nature and my ability to be totally comfortable being alone. I have never been the person that has a huge circle of friends.
I grew up with 3 best friends during pretty much my entire childhood and into high school. With these friends, I experienced great joys, but also some difficult lows, like the feelings of betrayal we felt when my closest friend in the group made some hurtful decisions that affected all of us. My friendship with the other 2 remains today, but not in the same way it was in high school and before because our lives look so different now.
Even in college I had a fairly small social circle, and I do remain in contact with some of them, but after graduating college, getting married and moving to a new city, I found myself really without friends for the first time.
The thought of making new friends was daunting to me. Not only do I feel awkward around people I don’t know, but honestly the thought of how to grow a totally new friendship was overwhelming.
I told myself many times that I didn’t need friends after all.
I am independent.
I like to be alone.
It’s ok to not make new friends, I thought.
And then my husband and I visited a church here and were greeted by the kindest young families and couples. They invited us to attend their small group where I saw their love for God and each other and I decided then that I wanted to be part of their friend-family. I’d like to say that it was easy and we suddenly became bff’s and have never looked back, but that would be a lie.
Even in the setting of a small group Bible study in someone’s home it was still hard to move from acquaintances to real friends!
Why can’t making friends be like it was when we were kids?
Wasn’t it easy then? Even if you were shy, you just walk up to someone and say “Hi! Wanna play?” “Oh I have rainbow shoes too!” And then you’re besties! But It doesn’t really work like that now, does it?
As children, our friendships were based on convenience. All of my good friendships were made at school because we were in the same class for 8 hours a day. Maybe you met your childhood friends at church, in your neighborhood, or you were on the same sports team. No matter the place, because we were kids, we didn’t really have the freedom of picking where our friends came from.
But as we get older we have so many other things calling for our time and attention. We also become more aware of differences between ourselves and others, like our personalities, values, backgrounds, etc. We also usually have more emotional baggage to deal with, too. I know that a big reason I guarded myself from close friendships after about 10th grade was because I didn’t want to experience the feelings of betrayal that I had with my once best friend.
But then I found myself surrounded by people but with no real companionship. Why?
It was because I let my childhood experiences create my adult expectations.
I expected my adult friendships to just fall into my lap and be easy like they were as a kid. I thought friendships would automatically be comfortable and require no work to begin and no effort to maintain because as a kid, I never really had to work that hard at being friends! And if a friendship did start to develop, I expected the other person to choose to end it someday soon anyways, so what was the point really?
Many of us, when we find ourselves in this lonely season, begin the search for our “person”. I’m sure you know what I’m talking about- that one perfect friend that we magically “click” with. One who shares our values and interests. One who gets us and who we feel totally comfortable around.
We can walk in her front door without knocking. We can show up in sweats and without makeup and know she won’t judge us while we eat her snacks. One that we’ll finally connect with and totally trust with all parts of ourselves. Oh, and she’s in the same stage of life as us, and likes the same shows, and works the same hours we do so our schedules always line up.
The ideal friend. Sounds perfect, right?
But there is a danger lurking here.
It is all too easy for our ideal to become our idol.
You see, when we create this imaginary golden image of a friend, we are really saying, “Ok God. I’ve laid it all out. I’ve designed the perfect friend! I know exactly what I need in order to be happy, now you just go and find her and bring her to me!” That should make God’s job easier on him, right?
But, there is a reason we have this desire for that perfect friend, and it’s not because God needs our help. God designed us to long for connection and acceptance. But we can never find fulfillment in our “person” no matter how many boxes they check off on our “perfect friend checklist.”
Why do we think we can find our satisfaction somewhere in God’s creation, when we already have full access to the Creator himself?
Our quest can only be completed in Christ, for He is our True and Better Friend.
In friendships, and in life, Christ is our source.
It’s through Christ that we can know friendship with God. Let’s think back to Genesis: After Creation, Adam and Eve walked in intimacy with God in the garden, but that relationship was broken by man’s disobedience. But Christ restores this relationship through his perfectly obedient sacrifice on the cross, bringing peace to the fallen, broken world.
This peace is called “shalom” in Hebrew and it includes three parts: Peace between man and God, peace between man and creation, and peace between man and man.
Ephesians 2:13-22 explains how Christ breaks down the dividing wall of hostility and creates peace between believers, reconciling them both to each other and to God. And we look forward to the complete restoration of that relationship and the ultimate realization of that peace one day in Glory.
So Christ is the source from which our friendships grow, but He is also our example. He showed us how to be good friends through his sacrifice. In John 15:12-13 Jesus says, “Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friend.”
While we may not be called to lay down our lives literally like Christ did, we can lay down our lives figuratively. This could look like sacrificing our time to help them move; or sacrificing our comfort by engaging a new friend in conversation; or our desires, putting their needs above our needs.
Another way Christ is our example is through his service. In Mark 10:45 Jesus says of himself, “…the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
Imagine the king of heaven serving us! And this isn’t him serving us as if we are his master, telling him what to do. It is really Christ serving God by humbling himself and ministering to us out of love. Think about what our friendships would look like if we would humble ourselves and lovingly serve our friends as an act of worship unto God; True service is giving of ourselves without expecting to receive anything back;
Philippians 2:3-8 says, “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”
Ours is not a culture that values humility.
In fact, our culture invites us to cultivate our pride and defend our personal freedom above all else. But just as pride prompted Satan’s rebellion and fueled Adam and Eve’s desire for knowledge apart from God, it also stands in the way of our becoming like Christ.
Pride is one of the most powerful forces of our sinful nature. But our flesh’s primary characteristic is directly opposed by the primary characteristic of Christ in this passage. That is his humility. And Paul is telling us to have this mind among us; to have the mind of Christ in us- how?
By doing nothing from selfish ambition or conceit; by counting others more significant than ourselves; not looking at our own interests, but to the interest of others. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2:16 that we already have the mind of Christ if we have entrusted him with our souls. And in Galatians 2:20, Paul writes that if we have been crucified with Christ, that we no longer live but Christ lives in us. So in this way, his thoughts can be our thoughts, his ways our ways, his love our love, and his humility our humility. It is only through Christ that we can be like Christ. It is only by his strength that we can follow his example.
So, we have established that Christ is our example through sacrifice and through service. Next, he is our example in sodality. This is just a fancy word that means “fellowship” or even “fraternity” like brotherhood or sisterhood, but I’m a big nerd and love alliteration, so I had to find a third word that started with “s.”
Anyways, when we consider the gospels, we see that one of the first steps Jesus took when beginning his work was to choose the circle of companions that would support him in ministry and in life. And even within the 12 men he chose, we know that he was especially close to 3 of them: Peter, James, and John.
Additionally, John is referred to as “the one whom Jesus loved” at least 5 times in the Bible. Jesus was “friendly” with most people we see him interact with, but we can tell that he held these three friends especially close. He shared some of his most special moments with them like the transfiguration and his agony in the garden. At the last supper, John is said to have reclined against Jesus as he asked who would be the one to betray him and John is the one whom Jesus looked down on from the cross and charged with caring for his mother upon his death. That by itself should give you a good idea at how valuable this friendship was.
These three friends were witnesses to Jesus’s most miraculous moments and his most difficult moments. They were loved by him, worked alongside him, and remained devoted to him even when he was no longer physically with them. Is a friendship like this even attainable, much less to be expected?
I believe the answer is yes. Everybody can have a friendship that is meaningful, long-lasting, intimate, and enjoyable. But remember how we can’t expect it to fall into our laps as naturally as it did when we were kids? I’m going to give you 3 things that you are going to need to practice in order to cultivate meaningful friendships. Just remember that these steps come after establishing our relationship with Christ and setting him as our source and our example. We will not find fulfillment in earthly relationships if we aren’t first looking to God as our portion.
So, back when my husband and I were visiting this small group Bible study I made the decision to try to grow my friendship with these ladies. And I mean that very literally, I even told my husband one day, “I want to be friends with these people and if that means you have to stay and make small talk with the other husbands after the study then you’re just going to have to be ok with that!”
And that’s basically the first step; Choose to be available. Everything is about being intentional and making purposeful decisions for our intended outcome. So choose to be available when you can, not just by making time in your calendar or by choosing to miss some other activity, but by purposely making your time with this potential friend quality time.
Jesus spent basically his whole ministry being “available,” even talking to people that a 1st century Jewish man wouldn’t typically associate with, like tax collectors, the Samaritan woman at the well, and people with various ailments and disabilities. We have to keep our vision of who could be a potential friend very open, and be available to anyone God chooses to put in our path, regardless of age, ethnicity, politics…
So after I forced my husband to chat up the other guys and we all became more familiar with each other, I had a choice to either remain here at this happy sort of mediocre level of friendship, or commit and really dig into these relationships and be vulnerable. And even though this is probably the hardest part of friendship for me, I am so glad that I chose to be vulnerable with these ladies and really let them get to know the real me.
Being vulnerable is intimidating.
It’s dangerous. It can backfire. But I just think about those little hermit crabs on the beach. They live their lives in these shells, and as they grow, they eventually have to scoot their ugly little naked bodies out of the shell where they’ve been living, and leave it behind as they expose themselves to the danger of predators and the heat of the sun, but the point is that they are moving into a bigger, better space where they can continue to grow and flourish. Where they actually are more protected than they were in their previous shell.
This is what it’s like to be vulnerable. The risk is great but the reward is greater. There is a purpose in the process. So I gradually started to open up (and gradually is a good thing. Nobody needs to unload their entire mental and emotional history on the first coffee date, ok? So as I gradually opened up to my new friends, I gave them a chance to really know me and accept me, just like Jesus really knows all of my weaknesses and struggles and he still loves me. And guess what, in return, they were more vulnerable with me and this give and give situation felt really good! It feels really good to be known and to still be loved!
This consistent availability and vulnerability eventually proves our dependability as a friend. And I think that’s the goal we really want to get to. We want someone (and to be someone) who we know we can depend on when it counts. We don’t want to be left hanging when things get hard or scary. This takes time for sure. There can be pain for sure.
But as friends who want to model Christ in every part of our lives, we have to be willing to show up and stick around, even when things may be uncomfortable for us.
Can you imagine if Jesus was a fair weather friend? What point would there be? But instead we have Christ as our source of peace with others and as our example for building and maintaining friendships. I know this is true because I have experienced it. Those ladies in that small group Bible study are still with me today, over 13 years later, always teaching me how to be a friend and showing me what it’s like to be fully known and loved anyway.
So let us all choose to cultivate purpose in our relationships and we will get just a taste of what it will be like to spend eternity with our One True Friend, the only one who could ever really be our “person”.
