We have all had friends and some of them have been life long friends even when you don't hear from them but occasionally, you are still friends. I have friends like that and I think any one of them would come to my rescue if I needed them. To tell you the truth, I don't have very many like that, but a few. Let's see what a true friend is like.
1 Samuel 18:1 "Now when he had finished speaking to Saul, the soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul." This was not a weird love like we see in this world today but a Godly love for each other.
1 Samuel 20:17 "Now Jonathan again caused David to vow, because he loved him; for he loved him as he loved his own soul." This is a true Godly friendship, when a true friend loves and will do anything for his friend.
Job 2:11 "Now when Job's three friends heard of all this adversity that had come upon him, each one came from his own place--Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Sophar the Naamathite. For they had made an appointment together to come and mourn with him, and to comfort him." This is what true friends do, they mourn your loss with you, they help where help is needed. We need to be friends like that, don't we?
John 15:13 "Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one's life for his friends." I heard a story of a man that was waiting execution and he had a wife and children and someone in the crowd knew that and he volunteered to take his punishment for him because he had no children or wife waiting for him. I don't know if he was a friend or brother, I have forgotten but the moral is the same regardless. He was willing to lay down his life for this man, and he did lay down his life, they allowed him to take that man's place.
Psalms 41:9 "Even my own familiar friend in whom I trusted, who ate my bread, has lifted up his heel against me." Have you ever had someone whom you thought was a true friend turn against you? I have and it hurts, it hurts to the point that you lose sleep over it and cry over it and never understand why and they won't tell you why. This friend of mine would never tell me why or talk to me. She died a very untimely death not too long after and I felt so bad that nothing was ever taken care of. I tried. I am sure a lot of you have had the same experience.
3 John 5 "Beloved, you do faithfully whatever you do for the brethren and for strangers." So to be a true friend, we need to be a faithful friend and if we are a faithful friend, maybe our friends will be faithful to us.
It's so important for us to be a faithful friend, not just a surface friend as long as things go well but in hardship and loss, whatever the occasion is, be there for our friends. I want to be that kind of friend, don't you.
Grandma Joan I would also like to have that kind of friends too as I am sure you would.
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