Friendship- Men’s Breakfast

How many people know you?

53% of Americans say that they have between 1-4 best friends, with 8% saying they have no close friends.

How would you define friendship? How does a friendship founded in Christ look different than one that lacks that bond?

Biblical friendship exists when two or more people, bound together by a common faith in Jesus Christ, pursue him and his kingdom with intentionality and vulnerability. Rather than serving as an end in itself, biblical friendship serves primarily to bring glory to Christ, who brought us into friendship with the Father. It is indispensable to the work of the gospel in the earth, and an essential element of what God created us for.- Jonathan Holmes

Friendship is God’s Plan, Abraham and Moses are referred to as God’s Friends, and Jesus uses friendship to describe the relationship he has with his followers.

The Results of Friendship

Companions help live life with joy and endurance (Ecc 4:9-12)

Companions provide wisdom or corruption (Prov. 13:20

Proverbs 13:20 ESV

Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm.

True friendships are there for all of life (Prov. 17:17)

Proverbs 17:17 ESV

A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.

True friendship is molding (Prov. 27:17)

Proverbs 27:17 ESV

Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another.

True friendship corrects sin (Heb 3:12-13)

Hebrews 3:12–13 ESV

Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.

True friendship stirs up on another (Heb. 10:24)

Hebrews 10:24 ESV

And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works,

300 Quotations for Preachers from the Early Church Friendship Is Better than the Light

A friend is more to be longed for than the light; I speak of a genuine one. And do not wonder: For it would be better for us that the sun should be extinguished than that we should be deprived of friends; better to live in darkness than to be without friends. And I will tell you why: Because many who see the sun are in darkness, but they can never even be in tribulation who abound in friends.