The Current Friendship Crisis In the World

The Current Friendship Crisis                                   11-10-13             by Capt. Kelly Durant

Proverbs 17:17

A friend loves at all times, And a brother is born for adversity. Proverbs 18:24

A man who has friends must himself be friendly, But there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.

2. Here is verse that can change your life… John 15:13 (GNT)The greatest love you can have for your friends is to give your life for them.

This attribute has caused men in battle to jump on a grenade in order to give their lives to stop the killing of all of their friends close by! Tomorrow we honor our vets, and we must recognize the honor they deserve! Many soldiers and people throughout history have sacrificed their lives so that others would not be hurt or killed. This is absolute love! A true friend is one who loves all the way and he will do anything, even die for you! Would you do that?

In the past decades I have noticed that a majority of people in society do not have many friends. This is a crisis in my opinion! In others words when you get a flat and need a ride while stuck on the side of the highway, who are you going to call? A large majority of people don’t have family nearby anymore either, so who will help?  Sometimes we as pastors are the only ones others call on for help and this should not be, you must cultivate friendships!  In this nation, and worldwide, there is a crisis of people not having a friend when they need one!

I observe that a few of you have a few friends, but a few more of you have only one or none though so let’s explore the dynamics of friendship. You need friends!  Proverbs 18:24 A man who has friends must himself be friendly, But there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother. The first prerequisite to having friends is that you yourself must initiate it, cultivate it, promote it, and it means that you must be friendly!

3. Friends usually are people that you enjoy hanging out with, people with the same common interests, people with similar backgrounds, quite often they are around the same age as you, and from the same race and country as yourself; these are common things but a friend can be anyone really! Look how diverse the disciples of Jesus were! But what more makes you and I be a friend to each other? It is in the sharing of our pains, burdens, and also blessings with others. 

When you are young, and start hanging with young friends you learn about life. You see life’s situations, you may see divorced parents, you observe one has a father always drunk, and you discover new things about people’s feelings, pains, and passions. Most young people are idealistic and accepting of one another despite differences, but what happens as we age?

As we age we are like cement. (Castillo who works with cement can relate to this, ha!) When we are young the fresh cement is soft and drying and people come by and leave their handprints and writing in it and then it dries hard, never to be changed. We all have seen sidewalks like this. So after certain experiences, what happens to us? Most people get bitter and protective and stop having friends! They dry hard and as a stone cold rock, keep others out! They become a rock and an island to their selves. Only you can fix not having friends.

4. I will define how I see what friends are. They are a people that are loyal and they are there when you need them and they sacrifice their time or material goods for you when needed. A friend is emotionally close to you so there is a connection that grows over time. And finally, a friend is a person you trust and have no fear of them harming you either by stealing, or speaking damaging words behind your back, and they never betray you.

To begin with, the values, or glue that causes people to stick together are inherently Christian. To make this clearer, do you see that basically only a Christian can have the values needed to maintain a friend relationship: The values of love, forgiveness, the serving one another foundation.  But be careful, you need to discern just how Christian the person is!

Jesus says in John 15:14 You are my friends if you do whatever I command you. What was Jesus greatest commandment? To love God above all things and love your neighbor as yourself!

Only love can motivate a person to sincerely connect to others, and be loyal and trustworthy to them. Only Jesus transforms the character you and I have to remake us into friendly people and we learn to kill our pride and selfishness so we have noble sacrificial hearts.

5. Let’s examine the quality of loyalty, or as some would define it as faithfulness.

God has always modeled to us His loyalty, and in particular we capture this through the forgiving loving and sacrificial actions of Jesus Christ.

Psalm 119:90 Your faithfulness endures to all generations; You established the earth, and it abides.

Here is also another thing involving faithfulness, we must forgive the offenses of our friends.     2 Timothy 2:13 If we are faithless, He remains faithful; He cannot deny Himself.

Within loyalty we conclude there is the attribute of sacrifice as well. Soldiers from all countries if captured by the enemy will always remain loyal and never share any damaging info about their country.  This means that even under torture, they sacrifice their lives. This sacrificial loyal quality we also know about took place within the first Christian matters in Rome.

Loyal until death is a faithful quality still happening in the world today with over 157,000 Christians being killed every year for their faith! They are being killed by extremists and the news media will not divulge these horrific acts! There are 2,400 media outlets in the U.S. controlled by only 6 corporations and they are not loyal to Christian values! To know truth, don’t trust the mainstream media that has an agenda diametrically opposed to Christ but rather search in Christian sources and alternative conservative ones.

6. Let’s examine the quality of connection, or as some would define it as an emotional attachment. What defines what this is better than “love”? Love is a the strongest emotion that exists and God even commands that we love Him (back, since He first loved us).

Matt 22: 37 Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. 38 This is the first and great commandment. 39 And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. 

For me it is easy to get emotionally attached to people just because I do my best to love them! You can love everyone if you wake up a ask God to give you His power through the Holy Spirit. You can even look at the person on the street and feel a great love for them, even the one that has a dead face, being a beggar, prostitute, or drunk and feel in your heart sympathy that their pain and hurt with them for the lack of the knowledge of Jesus they have that has led them to such a sad desperate point in their lives.

In every person you can find reason to feel for them for all the suffering they have had, either in their childhood, or adult life. This is why we must as a Corps, and amongst our friends always have time just to talk, to share, to get to know, so we can sympathize and empathize with their lives. Technology has done us the favor of helping us connect more through Facebook, Tweeter, and email, but quite often people communicate the wrong things, the wrong emotions, and these damage the good emotions and connections that had already been set up.

7. Let’s examine the quality of trust, or as some would define it as an honoring of who you are.  Trust is when a person knows all about your secrets, your pain, your weaknesses, and they love and esteem, and honor you anyway! They also would never be unfair to you so others could have information to ridicule or humiliate you with.

Trust is what everyone wants and needs, but sadly, amongst friends and family, this gets violated! Today sadly hardly anyone trusts anyone!  And considering the violation of trust the current governments, false churches, and corrupt corporations and workplaces have modeled, there is good reason to mistrust all authorities and relationships!

A violation of your trust is the same as a violation of your right as a person, which is a disrespecting of who you are personally, which ultimately is an action of abuse against you. When people get abused they feel pain and to stop it they make their selves cold.

Matthew 24:12 And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.

8. Don’t confuse what all these values within friendships and family imply, as many have in today’s world. The law of God and certain laws of man surpass the concepts many people evaluate. We are friends but if, for example, if a good friend were to come to my home seeking refuge from the law because he did a hit-n-run while intoxicated, my duty, no matter the love, loyalty and trust, would be to call the authorities, right?  If not I am an accomplice aiding and abetting a fugitive. A friend is a friend only if they are not putting you in danger!

In the hood language of today a friend is one who does not “snitch” on you but I interpret that this is a quality of a person that is your enemy! If you have a so-called friend that commits illegal and immoral actions and then they want you to show your trust by not snitching on them, you need to recognize they are not your friend at all! I despise people who say they hate snitches! Exposure is honesty and the only way for truth to dominate over evil.

All organized crime, the mafias, business men, governments, anti-Christ religious, all of them operate with the expectancy that their friends will never expose their illegal and immoral activities.  Never misplace your trust in this kind of traitor as you may become the next “patsy” or fall guy for their cover-ups! Read books, read the news, people are killed all the time for trying to expose corruption or for not covering for their so called friends!

9.  A final thought for you about friendships.  How do you understand this verse by Jesus?

Luke 16:9 And I say unto you, Make to yourselves friends by means of the mammon of unrighteousness; that, when it shall fail, they may receive you into the eternal tabernacles.

Jesus wants you and I to be friends with those of the world, not just friends with those of your faith! I see it in churches so often when the pastors or the leaders have friends with those outside the church people immediately get suspicious, jealous, and uncomfortable. Their first thought is, oh no their time will go to these other people and not towards my interests.

Here is the issue: It is the pastors (Captains) job to be friendly and to be a socialite like Jesus was and to hang out with the publicans and sinners seeking to love them into the kingdom of God!

In all workplaces and families there are people that are going to drink, swear, and not think like you, but if you always exclude yourself from them (and I understand why you want to since most of them are proud and ugly) but separating yourself too much means you will never be showing them enough acceptance so that they will listen to you about Jesus.

Jesus when he traveled did not always have friends of his faith, he stayed with Nicodemus and other people of the world who received him into habitations. To obey Jesus you must make friends with those outside your Christian world and I do my best to do this!

10. The truth is this, Jesus is your best friend, but you also need friends on the earth as well!

John 15:15

No longer do I call you servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I heard from my Father, I have made known unto you.

This verse implies that a friend, spends time with his fellow companions, he reveals to them truths and secrets, he transmits teaching and information along that will bring them blessings and life, even eternal life! Do you do that after this example of Jesus? 

I want to challenge you here today. Some of you have looked at each other for years and never really talked in a deep conversation. I want to challenge you with making the people here more your friends! Several of you have already, but when is the last time you had lunch with someone you do not know so well here? Or even paid them a friendly visit? And others outside your world of current friends, are you trying to win them to the Lord by being friendly?

And if you have ever done anything, or said anything that has violated the trust of a person here, today is the day to make it right. Go and ask them forgiveness! Ask God to change your heart so you get ideas how you can be a better friend to those around you, in the church, within your family, and within your community! You can be proud that in The Salvation Army dozens of thousands give their lives for others daily! Prayer…