“I care so much more about you than I ever could about something
you do.”
When my eight year old nephew Ethan talked to me excitedly
about all of his friends that are coming to his birthday party and how they’re
going to be best friends forever I couldn't help but feel a little sorry for
him. You see, after 20 years of “I’ll miss you so much, I’ll call you every
night!” and no phone call, or “I can’t wait to come visit you!” and no visit,
I've become a tad cynical. As a kid we moved around a few times to plant
churches, and so pretty quickly I put true, long lasting friendships on par
with Father Christmas and just accepted the fact that people disappoint. I
hadn't realised how deep the hurt went until I found myself crying at a
friend’s party in first year because she had called me her best friend. We, as
human beings, were designed for friendship. And not just with God, but with
each other. A need for companionship is etched into our very DNA and yet
somewhere along the line we have become bad at it. Sadly this is equally as
true for the church as it is for general society. How many times have you come
to church having had a terrible week, and yet when someone asked how you were
you’d put on your ‘church face’ and talk about how great everything is? I did
it every week for at least a year. Someone once told me that problem with
Christianity is Christians. Church isn't a safe place any more. Instead of wanting
to run to the body of Christ when everything’s gone wrong, people tend to run
away from it. Why is this? Why do we struggle so much to let people in? Because
it hurts, that’s why. Because true love is sacrificial, it goes after the other
person’s best interests before your own and it is determined to love you no
matter the damage done. Jesus came to love and we put him on a cross for it.
There’s a vulnerability that comes with genuine friendship, I can easily say
that there are some people who know me so well that if they wanted to, they
could wreck me with a single word – I trust that they wouldn't, but my heart is
open to them and so I'm at risk. In order to see someone’s heart you have to
expose your own, and that’s scary. It also means allowing people to see your
dirt, trusting that when they see your mess they’ll stick around anyway. A massive problem with this part of
friendship comes with a lack of identity, When you see yourself as dirt it’s
not surprising that you think people won’t stick around, I mean, why would
they? If you think you’re a burden, then you’ll push others away before they
push you away – it’s a defence mechanism and it’s entirely logical. The thing
is, God see’s your sin, and calls you by your name regardless. We must do the same.
When you realise that the king of heaven sees you not as the sinner that you
once were but as a saint, that you utterly captivate His heart, that He is
jealous for your affections and dotes on you, smiling over you even now. When
you realise that the creator thinks these things of you it’s only logical that
His created think the same. People often tell me that no-one’s ever truly been
there for them, but that’s because they've never given them the chance to. Step
out; take a leap of faith, the people around you might surprise you.
I know this is all a bit messy, and it’s all good and well
to stand here and say “Be better friends!” but how? I whole heartedly believe
that one of the ways we will see revival is from people on the outside looking
in at our genuine, fully committed, sacrificial love for one another – but how
do we get there? How do we go from being Sunday acquaintances to brothers and
sisters?
1. 1. Be honest. In order for people to be able to
catch you when you fall, you have to show them that you do fall. At one of the
Dangerous Bride prayer meetings, God was talking to me about this idea of his
girls going from strangers to sisters; and how a culture of honesty needed to
develop. It was when I was praying into that that he told me to be honest, to
come to my sisters and bare my soul. I was terrified. Here I was in front
of a group of wonderful woman who all seemed far more together than me; and I
had to be brutally honest about the fact that I lie, and struggle with lust and
alcohol amongst other things. I braced myself for the awkward silence; or the
glare of judgement but instead it created an onslaught of people opening up and
baring their dirt to Daddy God in front of their sisters, I’ve never felt more
loved.
That being said, honesty is a two-fold thing.
Not only are we called to be honest about ourselves and where we’re at, we’re
also called to be honest about others. Friends care too much about you to let
you sell yourself short or settle for anything less than Gods calling on your
life. I have a guy mate who’s quite flirty, and at one point it looked like he
was getting close to one of the girls who I knew he didn’t see in that way. And
so, despite the fact that he wasn’t really doing anything wrong, I sat him down
and I called him on it. Why? Because I want him to be a man of merit, I want
his yes to be his yes and I love him too much to not tell him off when he’s
letting himself down. Friends don’t bite their tongue, and in the same way that
I was honest with him about how he doesn’t treat women well enough, he’s honest
with me when I cross a line or am too flirty, it’s a two way street and I
couldn’t be more grateful for his input into my life.
2. Be honouring. Firstly, honour has become such a
hokey Christian term that I felt the need to define it. It either means 1. High
respect & Great esteem or 2. The quality of knowing and doing what is
morally right. So why is being honourable important to a friendship? Why should
morality matter within our relationships? Because when you decide that no
matter what you will honour someone, you set a standard the likes of which are
rarely seen in today’s society. You don’t do to others what they do to you,
none of this ‘eye for an eye’ business, no matter how they treat us we must be
honourable. We must determine to honour and respect people not because of who
they are but because of whose they are, not because of what they’ve done but because
of what Jesus did, and when we do this people will realise that no matter how
much they mess up they’re still loved and we will see communities transformed.
There’s a story about a woman in an African village who was fairly plain
looking, and then one day a man came up to her father and told him that he
wanted to give him ten cows for his daughters hand in marriage. The father was
shocked, told him that ten cows were too many and said he’d give him his
daughter for just three. The man insisted on paying ten cows and so the father
gave in. Once they were married, a rumour started to spread throughout the
village of this woman being the most beautiful woman in the whole village
because a man had paid ten cows for her, and slowly, as the rumours spread this
once shy and plain woman began to transform into a woman that truly was worth
ten cows. When we call out the gold in people, they will start to shine.
In a world where marriages more
often than not end with divorce, children are growing up fatherless, and
depression is at an all-time high, nothing is more counter cultural than love.
We, as Christians, have become very good at over-complicating things when Jesus
himself told us to love God, and love everyone else. Our job is to love people,
its God’s job to do something about it.
Thanks for reading Babette's post! Do leave comments and the like and share with your friends! : )
No comments:
Post a Comment