You talk for hours. You share more laughter and tears than a heart could contain. You overflow with joy at the thought of her and pray for her often. She is a gift. She is beautiful treasure. She is your friend. And friendship has never been a common thing. There are acquaintances a plenty, but a friend… you fold down into the depths of your life. Encouraging love and gentle correction sharpen you like iron. Making your life richer, fuller, even more fruitful. She loves deep, imperfectly, but true. And trust and love is the binding agent that keeps you weathering life’s storms and bright sunrises together.

Do you have an image of her face in your mind? I know you do. It’s the sweetness of friendship, but haven’t we all tasted a sweet friendship sour? Watched the days of life sharing turn into days of wondering whatever went awry? God gives gifts and sin is always a thief. Gossip, jealousy, pride… the ultimate friendship killers. And we all must remember this, because no temptation has seized us except what is common to man. I hear James chapter 3 reverberating in mind….

Who is wise and understanding among you? By his good conduct let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom. But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth. This is not the wisdom that comes down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic.  For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice.

Friendship’s ultimate thief. We break our own hearts, our own lives, our own friends upon our own sin. This is a simple reminder to refuse it.

Have you ever called someone friend who broke your heart upon their own sharp opinions and merciless judgments? Some people unknowingly, even perhaps, unintentionally, throw our name to the wind. It can leave you feeling desperate pursuit of trying to recover it.  The humble realize that we don’t ever have regain reputation. God gives favor, and God turns the hearts of Kings. God lifts and God tears down. We don’t ever have to fight for ourselves. We can always give to Him, and He knows our hearts. We don’t ever have to go around trying to restore the goodness of our own name.  And we all need to know this, because who hasn’t been touched by gossip’s greedy hands? The experience shatters trust, disrupts unity, and fails to reveal Christ’s love in any deep sense. It is the saddest thing. And we are all the victims and the guilt-ridden concerning such sin.  But the truth remains that we could grow up in Christ. We could become the mature…the older… the godly women who refuse such sin and expose it for what it really is.

There is no group on earth that desires relationship more perhaps than a woman. The disposition God granted women is all at once warm, life-giving, refining, and sweet all gifts granted through women of vastly different personalities, backgrounds, side-stories, with different dreams, callings, and lives. Yet the image-bearers bear this beautiful relational aspect of God. It adorns us from the earliest days of life and we will wear it forever.

But we fell into darkeness, into sin, into the crux of enemy hands, and our only hope is a redeemer. But will we let Him redeem us from all of this? All good things are up for tainting and so the enemy seeks to destroy the beautiful image of God set in a woman. And in doing so he seeks to destroy that woman and all those around her. We can play to his hand or we can be wise to the game. This one is filled with deceit. It can leave you feeling falsely innocent and victimized. It can lie and tell you that your actions are justified for any number of irrelevant reasons. Because the envied woman of the hour is always set on the chopping block and the hackers hack and too many think that the exercise is biblical and loving but it is in fact ungodly and  insincere.

We gossip. We slander. We tear down. We malign another image bearer, and we rarely repent and confess it. We are not justified in these actions and the mature will avoid every expression of such animosity.

Surely jealousy and envy taints ones perception of everything. *That is not the wisdom that comes from above but is earthly natural and demonic for where jealousy and selfish ambition exist there is disorder and every evil thing.* The sin misinterprets the best of good intentions and disregards sweet motives and exploits the imperfections and the sins of others by not applying the grace to them we so deeply want for ourselves.

Every single woman wrestles with insecurity to greater or lesser degrees. Questions about value, acceptance, likeability flood the mind, but the woman seeking and granted by grace a decent measure of security in Christ will avoid comparisons and assumptions. She will always hope, always trust, always persevere, and she will not fail in loving because she is empowered by God to not think often of herself but to think often of others. Her pursuit won’t be toward whom she finds pretty or popular in whatever group it will just be those God gives her to love some for a time and a season and others for forever.

This whole friendship thing every last one of us can deeply skew. To be a friend is not primarily dinners out and funny conversations peppered with ego boosts. To be a  friend is to pray to think deeply about what someone else might need in the realm of encouragement not criticism. The fruit is always evident. Biblical correction builds up. Correction that falls short of the biblical prescription always divides and separates and is rarely fruitful in any lasting way.

Even rebukes are loving encouragements, wounds from a friend not kisses from an enemy, and this always done biblically. There is no expression of friendship pure that will side step the commands of Scripture. All correction should always first be done face to face and privately, not in gossip rings.

We want friendship so much but we are too broken to have it in any lasting way without Christ breaking open His flesh for us.

The Gospel alone affords us friendship.

Having the mind of Christ alone is our only way to this grace of sharing meals, prayers, and lives in any sort of enjoyable and sanctifying way. All this judging of hearts and dissecting of persons is to boast deeply in self. Love doesn’t attempt to sit in God’s place ever; it sits at the feet of others and washes them with tears because people, to the wise, are like Jesus and worthy of our love though we all offer love in imperfect ways yet in flesh.

God can redeem the beauty of the image He set in woman. And this is grace. He can secure a woman and teach her to find the most soul-satisfying friendship in Him.He has called us friends. Yes, we desire friends we see to day to day or week to week. We desire those God-given forever friends whose love span miles whose presence washes us with refreshment. But all of these friends fail. They forget to call, forget to invite, forget to be gentle or kind… they sin, we sin. And we can either fault and blame and crucify them or we can let Jesus cover their sin as He covers our own and we can cover them with love and acceptance anyway. We do not have the right to sit as God in another person’s life, but we do have the freedom to give God’s love in lavish and underserved, beautiful image bearing ways.

What we need is an awakening of biblical friendship. So many of us are walking around wounded too deep, not letting God’s Word heal and mend our brokenness. I am telling you the truth, unless you are a friend of God you cannot in any way be a friend to anyone else. The healing of our own brokenness is found in Him. Greater love has no one than this that He would lay down His life for his friend. And, beloved,  He has called us friends. So we really can be one.