Tag: friend

How To Make Good Friends: Not Everyone Who Claims to Be Your Friend, Is Actually A Friend

On By pastorjonathanIn Family, parentingLeave a comment

Some people will say they are your friends, when they are not. No one is really immune to this. Even Jesus had a friend like this, “His name was Judas.” If you don’t know about Judas, Judas was one of the twelve disciples and he betrayed Jesus with a kiss (just so you know kissing on the cheek was/ is an eastern greeting much like a handshake is today in the west)

advice on friendship

Better is open rebuke than hidden love. Faithful are the wounds of a friend; profuse are the kisses of an enemy. (Proverbs 27:5-6 ESV

Sometimes your friends are the ones who tell you what you don’t want to hear. Sometimes the people who tell you what you want to hear are your enemies.

There was a little bird that was flying south for the winter. He had a late start and the snow had already started to fall. The snow quickly became ice on his wings and grounded the poor little bird in a barnyard. He was sitting there muttering to himself, “Stupid snow” wondering what he was going to do to get out of this mess.

Just then he saw a big old heifer walk his way. He thought, “Cow’s are nice, this cow will help me.” She lazily walked over to where he was, and then walked just passed him. His wings were frozen to the ground now and he couldn’t move. He craned his head back to see if she had left him behind but as he looked straight up he saw her tail go up and then all of the sudden the sky grew dark and the poor little bird found itself covered in manure (cow poop)… The bird was extremely mad at the cow!

Full of negative self talk the bird thought, “now everything is worse! Life really stinks. Not only am I stuck in a barnyard, but this cow just unloaded on me… what a mean and selfish old cow.” But despite the stink, the manure had another effect. The hot steamy pile of poo also served to melt the ice off of the bird’s wings! The bird soon realized this and began to tweet. “I’m free!, Tweet, tweet, I’m free! Tweet, tweet.” Just then a cat was passing by and heard this pile of poo tweeting. The cat dug in as fast as he could. The bird now realizing that someone was there helping him out of the poo tweeted even louder… then soon as the bird was free…. the cat ate it!

There are a few lessons from this story that are clear in this passage as well.

  1. Not everyone who dumps poo on you does it for your bad. Sometimes what you need feels like someone just dumped poo on an already bad situation. A friend will rebuke you to your face.
  2. Not everyone who is eager to help get you out of poo is there for your good. There are people that will say things and it will feel good to hear them, but they are serving themselves by saying them… not you.
  3. Finally, when you are in the middle of what you feel like is poo… don’t tweet about it! The people who respond and tell you what you want to hear… are not your friends. Another Proverb says it like this:

A man who flatters his neighbor spreads a net for his feet. (Proverbs 29:5 ESV)

True friends are honest. They don’t always take your side. They are willing to tell you when you are wrong… But that’s not what we like to hear, is it? We love putting people around us that tell us what we want to hear. We want to be right in our own convictions and opinions. Solomon also says to take the high road. It is better to speak the truth now and offend someone short term than help them go down a destructive path.

Whoever rebukes a man will afterward find more favor than he who flatters with his tongue. (Proverbs 28:23 ESV)

One of the things I do as a pastor is that I marry people. Part of that is pre-marriage counseling. I always tell the couple up front, “If I don’t think you will make it, I won’t do your wedding.” I’d rather risk offending them and let them work on whatever issue it is that caused the red flag then flatter them for the moment and see them get hurt later! There have been times where someone else did the wedding, then the couple hit thr roadblock I warned them about and they have come back for marriage counseling and advice because I told them the truth to begin with.

People who care about you will confront you, people who care about what you think of THEM will only tell you what you want to hear. Life is too short to entertain deep level friendships where people only tell you what you want to hear. Look for people who will tell you the truth, even when it hurts to hear it. (By the way,

How To Make Good Friends: To Make A Friend, Be A Friend

On By pastorjonathanIn Family, parentingLeave a comment

Sometimes when we think about finding friends we can put the focus on “others” instead of focusing on us. But that’s not healthy. The kind of friends you are looking for aren’t looking for friends who can just mooch off of them. (If they are, something is wrong). You have to be friend material. You won’t find the right kind of friends, until you can be the right kind of friend.

advice on friendshipDrive out a scoffer, and strife will go out, and quarreling and abuse will cease. He who loves purity of heart, and whose speech is gracious, will have the king as his friend. (Proverbs 22:10-11 ESV)

Did you catch that? No one likes a scoffer. No one likes hanging out with the dude that says, “this sucks” all the time. No one likes hanging out with a drama queen. People might endure it, but they aren’t really looking forward to it. It’s the girl who knows how to give a sincere compliment and who isn’t threatened by someone else’s success that everyone wants to have as a friend. You want to be popular?  Try going to school with a positive attitude and talk about everything you like. No meanness about stuff you don’t like. No harsh judging. Just compliment the good. You’ll start attracting the right kind of crowd

Whoever covers an offense seeks love, but he who repeats a matter separates close friends. (Proverbs 17:9 ESV)

Then also guard your mouth. No one likes to be around a gossip. Some of you know first-hand what it is like to have your relationship destroyed by someone who shared your secrets. A friend covers over your weakness out of love for you. It’s when you betray secrets that you lose the title of friend.

A friend is the one who will let you know when something is wrong. I remember sitting at a fancy place to eat. We looked up from our table and watched a woman walk by. She looked nervous like she was about to meet someone. She must have just come from the bathroom because she had on these high-heal shoes that had toilet paper wrapped around the heal. Everywhere she walked she was pulling about 4 or 5 squares of quilted northern…. I didn’t know what to do. A friend would have known what to do, a friend would have looked her in the eye and told her. “You’ve got TP on your shoe. Go back to the ladies room and clean it up.”

A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity. (Proverbs 17:17 ESV

When the sky falls for someone, be there. You can’t be there for everyone.  And that is what makes a friend a friend, you choose to be there for them. Who will you choose to be there for?

You want to make a good friend? Then be a good friend. Start focusing on serving others and one day you will look up in your moment of need and realize that you are surrounded by incredible friends.

How To Make Good Friends: Who You Pick to Be your Friend Matters

On By pastorjonathanIn Family, parentingLeave a comment
  1. Who You Pick To Be Your Friend Matters

Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm. (Proverbs 13:20 ESV)

I wish someone would have hammered this in to my life when I was your age. It would have helped me walk away from some stupid friendships. I still would have cared for those people, but they wouldn’t have been on my most influential level of friends. So when they said, “Hey, lets go get drunk,” I would have said, “that is stupid” and maybe I would have had enough guts to say, “you are going to ruin your life.” I cringe now to think about what could have happened and I wish I had known to say something then.advice on friendship

I made a different group of friends later and I still had pressure from my new group of friends, but it wasn’t pressure to do bad things. My new friends said stuff like, “Man I was reading my bible the other day and…” or “Hey let’s go look for a new book at the Christian book store.” And “Let’s go to taco bell and then play mini-golf.”

Make no friendship with a man given to anger, nor go with a wrathful man, lest you learn his ways and entangle yourself in a snare. (Proverbs 22:24-25 ESV)

You need to look around at your first level of friends. If they are losers, then you’re going to be a loser. If they sass their momma, guess what, you’re going to want to sass your momma. You will be like your friends.

We take on the characteristics of those we hang around. If you hang out with a crew that cusses up a storm… you will be cussing up a storm. You hang out with a guy who gets mad and throws stuff, you’re going to throw stuff. The writer of Proverbs says that friendship with angry people is like a snare. Now I realize that we don’t live in a trapping society so I’m going to help explain that you:

To snare an animal you set out a food source (preferably on a path that the animal takes). Then you lay out a stick or two to hold open the hoop and the animal steps in. Once it is caught if fights and fights against the snare, all the while it’s own effort is what causes it to stay trapped. So the writer is saying, don’t trap yourself with bad friends.

Now the reverse of this is also true, if you hang out with a crew that rakes widow’s yards… you will be raking widows yards.

There once was this lady at one of our old churches named Miss M. Everyone thought she was mean. She talked bad about everyone, including the pastor, the youth pastor (that was me), the music minister, she would have talked about you if she had met you. She was a mean and bitter gossip… The only problem is that I didn’t know she was a mean and bitter gossip and I saw her back yard was full of leaves. Some of our youth were looking for something to do and begging for an activity and so I said, “Ok, grab a rake, gloves, and leaf blower if you’ve got one, we’re going to rake leaves in Miss M’s yard.” So we did.

She came home about half way through and it was like a light switch changed in that woman. We saw her smile. She went in and made lemonade for the students and me. The next week at church instead of running her mouth about the pastor or gossiping about folks she was bragging on our students.

That was a decade ago, I was recently back in town and I saw her in a restaurant and she came across the floor and hugged my neck (still all smiles). Those kids have grown and gone different ways but instead of having memories of where they hurt one another, tore others down with their speech, or did stupid stuff, they have a ton of memories about how they encouraged each other and did great things to help others.

Who You Pick to Be Your Friend Matters.

Why Your Parents Care About What Kind of Friends You Have

On By pastorjonathanIn Family, Uncategorized1 Comment

Nobody wants to be rejected. When I was in middle school, it was cool to have jeans with holes in the knees. You could actually buy jeans with holes already in the knees! Some manufacturers also sold jeans with reinforced knees that were more difficult to rip. Guess which kind of jeans my mom bought?… I had to work extra hard to put holes in the knees of those jeans.

So tearing up a pair of jeans to fit in and making your mom mad is one thing, but what if something larger is at stake? What if in the process of looking for the acceptance by others, you lose a part of yourself? What if you give up more than you gain? What if next year you don’t know those people anymore but you still carry scars from the stuff you’ve done?

You see I’ve lived through that. I’ve been the new guy at school desperate to make new friends. I’ve felt isolated like everyone was staring at me and been in social situations where I was just praying for someone to rescue me from my isolation. Just someone to talk to so I didn’t feel so…. weird.

Finally someone walks over and asks you a few questions. Part of you is relieved that you are at least talking, another part of you wonders if this isn’t part of some cruel joke? Then they say something you know you should disagree with like “let’s all go murder a bunch of helpless kittens.” And the one thing you swore you would always be against, you find yourself invited into. You have a choice to make: do you violate your conscience and join them in murdering kittens or do you risk another hour of social awkwardness?

Your friends probably aren’t tempting you to murder kittens. It’s more like gossip. Maybe its drug related or pressure to do sexual things to fit in. It could be looking at dirty pictures or watching movies that you know you’re not supposed to watch. Hanging out in places your parents told you not to go. Some of you “feel” this need to be accepted so deeply that something that you were normally against you would now go and watch, observe, participate in just so you would not feel awkward.

The irony is that even though you feel it so intensely, the moment of social isolation will pass and may even be forgotten, but you will carry the scars left by the destructive things you have done with your friends.

That’s how it happened for me. It wasn’t murdering kittens, it was underage drinking. I knew my grandfather was an alcoholic. But when a friend said, “let’s go get drunk.” I caved under the pressure. Then one night they put a fifth of vodka in my hand and said, “drink this.” I downed it faster than it takes most people to drink a soda at their favorite fast food restaurant. That was probably enough alcohol to kill me. If I had been a smaller person I would have died that night. As it was, I threw up and they threw me in the back of a pickup without my clothes. When I passed out and they couldn’t wake me up, they propped me up against a dirty toilet in a filthy bathroom with a space heater. It’s a miracle that I woke up at all the next day.

I don’t have those friends anymore, but I do carry the scars around from what did while I was with them. That day I realized I needed to make a change in my life, I needed better friends. I didn’t realize it then, but I realize now I was learning Proverbs 13:20 the hard way.

Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm. (Proverbs 13:20 ESV)

Have you ever felt pressure to fit in? There are somethings worse than being socially awkward. Your parent’s care about what kind of friendships you have because they know that your friends have the capacity to pull you up or pull you down. They also know that you most likely won’t keep your friendships, but you will keep the scars (or trophies) from what ever you and your friends did together. If you don’t have good friends now consider praying and asking God to bring some incredible people into your life.

 

A Reflection on Being Your Pastor and Friend

On By pastorjonathanIn About Jonathan, Family, Ministry, student ministry3 Comments

Today I am reflecting on the years I have spent in ministry and counting it a blessing to be considered a friend to so many. I’m celebrating four years serving in my current ministry context and nearly fifteen years in ministry all together (counting the near eleven years I spent with my first church). Recently I was listening to a Tim Keller Podcast in which he made a statement that pastors have a unique privilege and responsibility to be a friend to those to whom they minister and as such they often make friends with people who given ordinary circumstances they would never be friends with…

I find this to be true in my own life. I have the awesome opportunity to walk with people of all walks of life through some of life’s most painful and sacred moments.

There have been moments when we were all scared or saddened by life’s events. I have been in the room when we got the news of cancer. I’ve done my share of funerals and hugged the necks and held the hands of the grieving. More than enough times I’ve been called up late to the hospital when their has been an accident.  Too often I’ve held a broken infants in my hands. I’ve seen the tragedies of life and walked with families through the worst parts. I have been one of the few who were ever welcomed into the world of the hurting and I have found that you don’t walk through the valley without developing some kind of kinship.

There have also been moments of joy beyond expression. I’ve held hands and plunged you beneath the water and pulled you back to the surface in baptism based upon your confession of Christ. I’ve been in the room when they said the cancer is in remission. I’ve held healthy newborns and helped sneak an air-horn into graduation ceremonies. I generally get the best seat in the house when it comes to weddings and among other things I get to say, “you may now kiss the bride.”  I’ve shared in some of the happiest moments that life has to offer and found that you don’t reach the summit of the mountain without developing a friendship along the way.

Beyond sharing these moments with you I have prayed with you and for you. I have poured myself out and asked God to allow me to pour some more. To this end I spent years of my life studying His word so that I might be a competent expositor, leader, administrator, communicator, teacher, counselor and ultimately a better friend. I have begged God that I would clearly speak the truth even when you might not count me as a friend because of it. Because my greatest desire for you is to present you complete to Christ.

I’d be a fool to think that friendship is a one-way street. Through the years as you have made me a part of your family and welcomed me into your homes. I have been blessed beyond measure by your friendship. I have learned valuable lessons.  I have eaten vegetables from your garden, dear meat from your freezer and mullet from your cast net. Along the way I confided some of my own fears and insecurities. You have loved me, been to my wedding, held my children, and hugged me and celebrated my birthdays (though sometimes I would like it to pass in obscurity) and anniversaries.  Thank you for being a faithful friend to me and counting this pastor as your friend.