What your teen learned this past weekend in Edge!

This we we talked about true friendship.  We all know that friends play an important role in our lives. Good friends can help us through difficult times and be a lot of fun to hang out with, even if you are not doing something really exciting. Bad friends can bring lots of unnecessary drama and make your life miserable. God wants to be our friend, and He wants us to be an example of His love to the other people in our lives.   Not only is God a good friend to us, but He also gives us other good examples of friendship in His Word, the Bible. The boys focused on the story of David and Jonathan and the girls Ruth and Naomi.   The lessons we draw from the relationships of these two Biblical friendships are the following:

In his book The Four Loves, C.S. Lewis said:  “In friendship...we think we have chosen our peers. In reality a few years' difference in the dates of our births, a few more miles between certain houses, the choice of one university instead of another...the accident of a topic being raised or not raised at a first meeting--any of these chances might have kept us apart. But, for a Christian, there are, strictly speaking no chances. A secret master of ceremonies has been at work. Christ, who said to the disciples, ‘Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you,’ can truly say to every group of Christian friends, ‘Ye have not chosen one another but I have chosen you for one another.’ The friendship is not a reward for our discriminating and good taste in finding one another out. It is the instrument by which God reveals to each of us the beauties of others.”

Not only does God grant us friends in life, Jesus taught us by example everything we need to know about friendship. He offers us the greatest friendship imaginable!

Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you (John 15:13-15).  

“A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for a time of adversity.” (Proverbs 17:17)  Jonathan had reasons to give up on David. Their friendship was not without stress. Jonathan’s very life was threatened because of his loyalty to David (1 Samuel 20:32, 33), and yet Jonathan was certainly a faithful “brother.” And, in the end, David remained faithful to the descendants of Jonathan, caring for them as if they were his own family members.  

It would have been much easier for Ruth to simply say goodbye to Naomi and go on with her life, but a good friend is loyal. The Bible tells us, “Some friends bring ruin on us, but a true friend is more loyal than a brother.” Basically, this verse is telling us that it is better to have one good and loyal friend, someone who will stick by you like a brother (or daughter-in-law, in Ruth and Naomi’s case) than to have many friends who are not faithful. 

What does it mean to be a loyal friend? A loyal friend is someone who sticks with you during the good times in your life as well as the hard times. It is someone who loves to laugh and have fun with you but also is there to listen and help you when things are not going so great. A loyal friend is someone who is honest and wants what is best for you, even if they know that they are going to have to tell you something that you do not want to hear in order to help you become a better person and get to heaven. A faithful friend is someone that you do not have to worry will gossip behind your back because they talk to you directly if they have a problem. They care about your dreams and support you in achieving your goals. Like the Bible says, if you find someone who is a loyal friend, make sure you are a loyal friend to them because that friendship will really be priceless!  True friendships remain loyal despite adversity that might come their way.  Jonathan and David and Ruth and Naomi certainly faced adversity, yet they stayed true to their friendship.

Twice we read that Jonathan loved David as he loved himself. In the New Testament, this is exactly how Jesus tells us to love each other: “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:39). Again, Jesus is the ultimate example of this type of love. He quite literally loved us in this way when He gave up His life to save us! If you do not have a personal friendship with Jesus Christ, read about His love for you in the Gospels. David and Jonathan’s friendship was inspiring, but Jesus is an even greater friend!

Ruth also shows us that a good friend is someone who is selfless. She made the sacrifice of leaving her home and family to take care of and help Naomi, who was alone and had lost everything. 

How can you be a selfless friend? You can choose to sacrifice your preference and instead do something that you know your friend would enjoy more. You can take time to listen to your friend instead of doing all the talking. You can take the time and energy to remember and ask about things going on in your friend’s life, rather than just being preoccupied with your own life. 

This is an incredible testimony of friendship: “And Saul’s son Jonathan went to David at Horesh and helped him find strength in God” (1 Samuel 23:16). Look for that quality in friends. Choose friends who help you find strength in God. Be someone who helps others find strength in God! Love pushes us to better places. True friendship will push you to God!  

Although it was not exclusively mentioned in the parts of Ruth’s story, Naomi and Ruth prayed together and asked God to bless each other. This is an important part of what made their friendship so strong and helped them to be selfless and loyal to each other. The Bible tells us, “Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their work; If one falls down, his friend can help him up. But pity the man who falls and has no one to help him up!” (Ecclesiastes 4:9-10). Prayer is one of the most powerful things that we can do to “help our friends back up” when they are struggling or even just to “keep them up” when they are doing well.

God is a good friend to us, and we honor Him when we are a good friend to others. Scripture says, “Faithful friends are a sturdy shelter; whoever finds one finds a treasure. Faithful friends are beyond price; no amount can balance their worth. Faithful friends are life-saving medicine; those who fear God will find them” (Sirach 6:14 – 16). God is so happy when we find people in our lives to be good friends to us and when we choose to imitate His love and friendship by being a good friend to others. We are going to spend the rest of our time talking about how we can become better examples of God’s love to our friends.