Guardrails for Friendships

Friendly Guardrails

There have been few messages that I have preached that have received more positive feedback than the message I preached last week. Many of you were able to share with me that the message had a direct impact on you and either encouraged you and/or provided help in one way or another. As a reminder, we saw how John encouraged others to love one another by these “Green Thumb Rules”

1. Love is others Focused.

2. Love Does

3. Love is Intrinsic

4. Love is Modeled

I think these are great realities for us to understand. They help us build a framework for loving others.

Of course, we learn from a very early age that friendships can be problems. Parents ask teachers about the friendships that their children develop in the early school years. We choose activities to involve our children so they can avoid poor choices in friendships. Nobody tapes the 4 “Green Thumb Rules” on their son or daughter and puts them into a group of poorly behaved children. Instead, we do what we can to develop guardrails to help our children.

As parents, Cindy and I used guardrails for our kids. One of them was church. We made church and church activities a priority for our family. We were at church all the time. Consistency builds quality. For example, the Army fitness program taught that 3 workouts a week just maintains fitness. To get gains, you must work out more. Spirituality is not exactly like working out in a gym but if your only spiritual exercise is once or twice a month, you wouldn’t expect the Master fitness trainer to be happy with that. A second guardrail that we established as they got older was the rule, “Nothing good happens after 11:00 o’clock”. We expected our kids to be home before 11.

Just like those guardrails that we used to raise 2 kids that we think are great, there are guardrails in the Bible that help us develop healthy friendships.

God’s Guardrails

The 3 most recognized friendships in the Bible are David and Jonathan, Ruth and Naomi, and Paul and Barnabas. We never hear that David and Jonathan have any problems between each other. Ruth is, of course, the perfect daughter in law to her mother Naomi. Her loyalty to Naomi is the perfect standard. Paul and Barnabas only differed on whether John Mark could be trusted. It seems a little difficult to identify with these characters because they are so perfect.

That brings us to a 4th friendship – Peter and Jesus. Now Peter is a guy who is really relatable. He sticks his foot in his mouth. He promises his friend, Jesus, that he would stick by him come whatever. He trusts Jesus enough to take a step on the water but not enough to stay up. I like Peter. He seems more like me…and probably more like you – imperfect.

Imperfect people need help. We need guardrails to keep us out of trouble – whether we are the ones causing it or the ones receiving it. The Bible will offer many guardrails for up. Too many to discuss today. I just want to highlight a couple today to equip us to have healthy life-giving friendships.

Guarding our tongues and guarding our boundaries are 2 important concepts that we need to understand to be able to have healthy life-giving friendships. Let’s take a look.

Guard Your Tongue

God Wants Us to Cultivate Life with Our Words

It is clear that Peter, the fiery fisherman, learned the importance and power of words. In his 1st letter he wrote:

1 Peter 3:10 NIV

For, “Whoever would love life and see good days must keep their tongue from evil and their lips from deceitful speech.

The wisest man who ever lived (other than Jesus) was Solomon. He wrote that:

Proverbs 15:4 NIV

The soothing tongue is a tree of life, but a perverse tongue crushes the spirit.

I heard a Christian comedian once said that he had the gift of sarcasm. I wondered if the people who were close to him would have agreed. The phrase Gentle words translates into the original as “a tongue of healing”. It describes "a restoration to health after a disease”.

Jesus taught that it is not what goes into the mouth that corrupts. Unfortunately, it is often what comes out of the mouth that corrupts when it comes from a sinful heart. Listen to this unbelievable story out of South Dakota…

More than a thousand firefighters battled a wildfire for two weeks in the Black Hills of South Dakota. The fire started August 24, 2000, and was not contained until September 8. Meanwhile, more than eighty thousand acres of valuable timber burned.

Janice Stevenson, forty-six, was arrested on suspicion of starting the fire. She pled guilty to second-degree arson, was sentenced to twenty-five years in the South Dakota State Penitentiary, and ordered to pay restitution in the amount of $42,204,155.48.

Federal investigators who filed charges against Stevenson say she admits stopping by a road on August 24, lighting a cigarette, and tossing the still-burning match on the ground. “Rather than putting out the fire,” an affidavit said, “she looked at it and decided to leave the area.”

Like starting a forest fire, producing a “wildfire” with our tongues requires little effort. Rumors, half-truths, grumblings, sarcastic remarks, hurtful things said in the heat of anger—all of these smoldering matches have the potential for burning down acres of office morale, family peace, and church unity.[1]

Friendships are destroyed by what comes out of our mouths. Just like Stevenson, our words light a fire and then we just leave it to burn. One preacher said, "What potential lies within our words! We are endowed by our Creator with the capacity to bring either genuine, substantive help to those around us or to inflict incalculable lasting harm upon them—all of that by simply opening our mouths!"

Guard Your Boundaries

The earliest boundary dispute took place in the Garden of Eden. With the sin of Adam and Eve, our boundaries were destroyed. Since we no longer had grace, we could not tell the truth about who owned what. Adam said it was the woman’s fault, not his. She “caused” him to do it. Eve said it was the serpent’s fault, not hers, for he “made her do it”. They could not admit that their own desires, attitudes, and behaviors led to their choices. They could not take responsibility for themselves. They wanted to eat the fruit and to become godlike. They thought that they should have whatever they wanted, and that God really did not know what was good for them. They chose to reach past their allotted boundaries. And God held them responsible for all those choices.

Since the fall, we have all had difficulty owning what is ours.

Frequently, when friends are arguing it becomes very difficult to unscramble all the feelings of hurt and injuries that take place. Often the desire is to hurt the other person. The beginning of healing from the situation is to own what is ours. Celebrate Recovery calls it “cleaning your side of the street”. This includes your feelings, attitudes, thoughts, choices, and actions. They need to get past reaching beyond their own boundaries or they need to learn that the other person does not have the right to reach within your boundaries. Matthew 18 makes this clear.

Matthew 18:15–17 NIV

“If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over. But if they will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ If they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church; and if they refuse to listen even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector.

If your boundaries are being violated, you have the right to express yourself…strong boundary, stronger boundary, and separation. Boundaries are about self-control. Peter overstepped his boundary one time with Jesus and Jesus strongly corrected him.

Mark 8:31–33 NIV

He then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again. He spoke plainly about this, and Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But when Jesus turned and looked at his disciples, he rebuked Peter. “Get behind me, Satan!” he said. “You do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”

Going to the Cross was the path of Jesus. For Jesus, His boundaries were focused on the will of the Father. This was an instance when Jesus took responsibility for His unique boundaries. Peter had stepped out of bounds.

Sometimes people just don’t take responsibility for their lives. This is true even in horrible situations like injury. It is not their fault, but they do ‘own’ the situation. It is their responsibility to learn to walk again. No one can do that for them, but they can be helped. Those who don’t take responsibility for their lives remain stuck because they want other people to change. They want others to make it better, and often those people will not. As a result, they are in bondage to others. Freedom comes from taking responsibility; bondage comes from giving it away. Many friends in addiction will not take ownership but continue to blame someone else for their misery. This is the essence of powerlessness.

Our guest in 2 weeks was told because of his injury in Vietnam to get a pig farm and live remotely so people wouldn’t criticize his appearance. Instead, Dave Roever, took responsibility for his life and became hope for thousands of others whose wounds were not on the outside, but on the inside.

Freedom comes from taking responsibility of the boundaries in your life. Be loving, be others focused, but do it from the strength of who you are in Christ.

[I would encourage Dr. Cloud’s book Changes that Healand Lysa TerKeurst’s newest book Good Boundaries and Goodbyes for more help].

Repairing the Guardrails

Sometimes accidents do happen, and the guardrails get damaged. Eventually the Department of Transportation will get out there to fix the damage. When the guardrails of our friendships get damaged, we would be wise to get out there quickly to fix them.

As Christians, we ought to be in the RESTORATION business. I remember Pastor Akers in the last years of his life just taking the time to write people letters to ask forgiveness for offenses that he may have given.

In the case of Peter and Jesus, the two of them left one another in very uncertain terms. Peter had denied their relationship 3 times – back to back to back.

John 21:2–7 NIV

Simon Peter, Thomas (also known as Didymus), Nathanael from Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two other disciples were together. “I’m going out to fish,” Simon Peter told them, and they said, “We’ll go with you.” So they went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing. Early in the morning, Jesus stood on the shore, but the disciples did not realize that it was Jesus. He called out to them, “Friends, haven’t you any fish?” “No,” they answered. He said, “Throw your net on the right side of the boat and you will find some.” When they did, they were unable to haul the net in because of the large number of fish. Then the disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, “It is the Lord!” As soon as Simon Peter heard him say, “It is the Lord,” he wrapped his outer garment around him (for he had taken it off) and jumped into the water.

Jesus said “Friends!” The net went into the water and the catch was too big to handle. Peter knew who it was. He jumped in the water to get to Him. For every broken guardrail of friendship, the goal should be RESTORATION.

[1]Craig Brian Larson and Phyllis Ten Elshof, 1001 Illustrations That Connect (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 2008), 129.