Saturday Scripture Speaks - Friendships

 This is a topic that I've wanted to broach for a long time, so I'm going to take the plunge and "just do it." 

Proverbs 18:24 (Today's New International Version) says, "One who has unreliable friends soon comes to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother."

This verse has been crying out to me for at least a year, probably much longer. I am one who has a very difficult time letting go of friendships - I want to be everybody's friend forever. And I want them to reciprocate. The trouble is, that is totally unrealistic.

Ever since I've been old enough to know what friendships were, and to cultivate them, I've held onto them with a tight fist. In high school, I figured my friends would be there until the rapture. Little by little, though, they all began to make their own way into the world, leaving poor pitiful me behind. Our friendships died. 

I mourned, and continue to mourn, my lost friendships. I don't always understand why things go as they do and quite often I try too hard to keep an ember burning. 

How important is it that I have a ton of friends? Further, how important is it that I have even one?

When God made Eve for Adam, He did it because Adam needed a friend. I always thought that God should be enough - I really wouldn't need friends as long as I had the Lord.

We're made to need each other. I think that's why I love Facebook so much. I'm able to keep in touch with a lot of the friends I had lost for so long. We're cultivating whole new friendships with each other.

Sometimes friendships die because the friends are just plain "unreliable." I've experienced a lot of those kinds of friends too - most often in the last five years or so. I've not been wise in choosing all of my friends.

I think it's time we pray over our friends and friendships a lot more than we probably already do. I want to have reliable friends. And I don't want to come to ruin.

And though I need friends, I must remember that when all of them leave me, I still have a Friend Who sticks closer than a brother - Jesus. He doesn't leave me nor forsake me. Our friendship is forever!