Daily Encouragement: Year 2, Day 105
From Handbook to God’s Promises
GOD’S PROVISION OF A SPIRITUAL FAMILY
Friends Indeed
Read Proverbs 12:26
Think of how many times we use the word friend in everyday language: “I’m going to a friend’s house”; “My friends and I are going out Friday night”; “She’s my very best friend”; “He used to be a friend of mine.” Perhaps the most careless use of friend is when one speaks glowingly of the large number of friends he or she has. Interestingly, this is the opposite of the biblical perspective, outlined in the passage for today.
Only one man in all of Scripture was called “God’s friend”—Abraham (2 Chronicles 20:7; James 2:23). David had only one close friend—Jonathan, the son of Saul (1 Samuel 18:1–4; 20:42). And out of the hundreds of people who followed Jesus during His earthly ministry, He called only 12 of them His “friends” (John 15:15).
Do you recognize the common element in each of these examples of friendship? It is that the friends were in covenant with one another. God made a covenant with Abraham, who was then called Abram (Genesis 15:18); Jonathan and David made a covenant with each other (1 Samuel 18:3); and Jesus began a new covenant with His disciples (Luke 22:20).
Proverbs 12:26 is only one of many verses in Proverbs that illustrate the implications of friendship. That the righteous choose friends carefully is evidenced in the examples above. Such friends don’t question loving wounds received from one another (27:6). But most of all, a person who has a true friend trusts this friend to stick closer than anyone else will—even closer than a family member (18:24).
Where do you find friends like that? How can you heed the warning of this passage and be sure that the friends you choose will turn out to be the right ones? Ironically, you have millions of such friends if you are a believer in Christ. Because Christ initiated a new covenant that binds all believers together through His shed blood, every believer is supposed to be a true friend to you, and you to them. Not an acquaintance, a companion or a buddy, but a true friend. People who would lay down their lives for you—and you for them (John 15:13).
God’s Promise: In Him and in His church, you will never lack a friend.