The Blessing of Friendship

The past couple of weeks, I've been really thankful for the friends that God has placed in my life. It's one of those things that I sometimes forget to be thankful for, but friendship is something that is so fundamental within the Church. Christian community is something that God desires for us to experience- He is such a relational God and not only desires for us to have a relationship with Him, but also to experience a deep Christ-centered friendship with others as well. I've realized just how blessed I am with friends who not only love me like Christ, but daily point me to Him and challenge me to serve Him more and grow in my faith. These are the friends that have rejoiced with me when new paths in life are revealed and new plans that God has for me come into focus, and these are the friends that cry with me and pray with me and sometimes just sit with me in silence when things are hard and I'm going through trials that I can't understand. They're the friends who encourage me to grow and learn all that I can about our wonderful Savior, and they are the friends who aren't afraid to rebuke me in love when I'm living in sin or have lost my way a little bit. They love me like Christ and are daily images of how Christ loves the church because of the way they sacrificially love and challenge me. That's Christian community; that's the blessing of friendship.

The writer of Hebrews really summed up what Christian community is supposed to look like in Hebrews 10: 23-25. 

"Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful *side note: I love this because it is so powerful. Our hope in Christ is a foundation that can never be shaken because HE is faithful to never change and His promises will never change. (another post for another time)* And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another-and all the more as you see the Day approaching." 

So we are to hold onto our hope in Christ. He promises that we will never be shaken and His promises are true because He is always faithful and never-changing. We are to encourage and challenge each other towards loving like Christ and serving others without abandon and without thinking much of ourselves. We are to love and live like Christ loved and lived. Christian community needs to be something that is always prevalent in our lives. When we have Christ-honoring fellowship with one another, we impact our community in ways that we thought might have never been possible. The way that we love each other like Christ loves us is noticed by others and when we love our community in this way then people's lives are changed because of the way Christ is at work in us. Making disciples of one another is something that is so important and a huge blessing to us when it is carried out. Having friends who strengthen and encourage you to be more like Christ every day is an outward example of Christ's love for you by the way they live. 

I hope that this post was an encouragement to you. It was simply an overflow of the thankfulness that I've been feeling when I think about just how blessed I am by the friends in my life. I pray that you are daily reminded of Christ's love for you by the friends that God has blessed you with. Hug them a lot and thank God for them daily- they are the little-Christs that pour into your life daily. It's such a beautiful way that God lavishes His love on us. He is so good.