Friendship

I have been thinking a lot lately about friendship. This may be a bit of a scattered post, but I just need to start it. What is friendship? Is it shown in the spending of your time with another person? Is it shown by just being who you are and letting your life be an example and model for others around you to follow? Is it keeping someone accountable or calling them on things even if it risks the friendship? Maybe it is one or all of the above.

Lately I have been wondering about friendship. I work with Youth With A Mission, (YWAM) which is a non-profit Christian mission organization. We are a pretty relational mission, at least us in Seattle are. I wonder if friendship is measured by the amount of time that you spend with someone. By this I mean that in my life I feel guilty because I don't spend nearly enought time with the people who I call my friends. But that is another issue, is time the only thing that measures friendship? I don't think so. I think that it is quality of time. The tension with that is that if you haven't spent a lot of time with a friend, the time that you do spend with them is spent catching up, or just messing around and not getting real deep.

Along with that, is friendship only when you go deep with someone? Do we alway's need to be asking the probing, deep questions in our friendships to be a good friend? What did Jesus do as a friend. That would be an interesting study. It seems to me that He had a good balance in His friendships. He spent a lot of time with His friends, but He wasn't afraid to go off into the wilderness to do what was of utmost importance, spend time with the Father. I wonder if this was a greater sign of friendship than the time He spent with the disciples, His friends? I mean, they knew that the Father was more important to Him than them. They saw His example of withdrawing from them for Him.

I think that it is a good balance of both. Friendship is in spending time and in living by example your convictions even if it means not spending time with people. I need God to speak to me more in this area of friendship. I want to pray for my friends more. I want to spent more time with my friends. And I also want to be a good friend by living out of the convictions that God has put in my life which are discipline, spending time with Him, working hard and being a good husband and father. These things can't get done if I am spending all my time hanging out with people. It is still hard, but I think it is right.