Developing deep christian friendships..

…Go gently

So…for the last couple of weeks we have been exploring the

Reading: 1 John call on us as achurch to deepen our relationships with
4:7-12 oneanother….and we’ve begun with the wisdom of
Solomon….. and those who walk with the wise will become
God’s Love and wise, and those who suffer the company of fools suffer
Ours
harm…… and reflected that our closest friends can have an
7 
Dear friends, let us impact on every area of our lives that mattered. Last week we
love one another, looked at a couple of segments from James, and saw the call
for love comes to holy living and the role we can have in guarding and shaping
from God.
Everyone who loves
one anothers christian lives….so we’ve come to be thinking
has been born of about how we develop deep Christian friendships that shape
God and knows and impact every area of our life that matters.
God. 8 Whoever
does not love does And that’s what I want us to do this week… if our closest
not know God, christian friendships can shape and impact our lives, how can
because God is
we go about developing them?
love. 9 This is how
God showed his And look last week some of the conversations I’ve had are
love among us: He
about recognising the different challenges this represents to
sent his one and
only Son into the different people….aged…..business….young people….singles …
world that we marrieds……. youth…..toddlers….. different challenges for
might live through different age groups……. keenly aware of that……
him. 10 This is love:
not that we loved So We’re going to look at 3 key practices that will enable us to
God, but that he discover, nurture, and invest in our friendships.
loved us and sent
his Son as an Lets pray….
atoning sacrifice for
our sins. 11 Dear
friends, since God
so loved us, we also Now I want to start by considering that the act of friendship
ought to love one inherently involves, and is embraced by the very activity of
another. 12 No one God……
has ever seen God;
but if we love one From our reading we read v7…. love comes from God….. I
another, God lives believe with all my heart that we are made to love, made to
in us and his love is
made complete in
reflect the image of God in relationship…..I believe we are
us. made in the image of God and therefore made for
relationship, but more than that called into relationship and
that the work of God involves connecting us together ….with
Developing deep christian friendships..…Go gently

him and with one another…in talking about the reconciling work of Christ Paul
writes in ephesians….
19 
Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens
with God’s people and also members of his household (ephesians 2:19…
In communion we will kneel or stand together at the communion rail alongside
the whole church of Christ thoughout space and time, and we will declare…we
break this bread to share in the body of Christ…, though we are many we are
on ebody because…we all share in th one bread………………..
God intends to gather us together. A part of the work of God IS to draw us
together

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, wrote it this way……..

True community, is only made possible by God’s power, through Jesus Christ’s
death on the cross and the Holy Spirit’s ongoing transformative work in our
lives. In other words, we don’t just “build community”; rather, we receive the
community that God has established through Jesus.

From our reading /////v12……if we love one another, God lives in us and his
love is made complete in us.

A part of God’s activity, a part of the work of Christ is to establish us within the
family of God, and within that to use us to bless and care and nurture one
another.
And that leads me to the First key practice that I think we need to be
cultivating in order to discover and invest in and deepen our relationships with
one another, in the manner which God intends for us….

And that..is the practice of Attentiveness

How silly it would be for us to leave God out of the equation when thinking
about deepening our relationships. Attentiveness is the spiritual practice of
paying attention to what God is doing, in us, and around us, in our
communities and in and through the lives of others. And it takes time to do.
Attentiveness is the deliberate act of reflecting on what God is doing…… over
the last four years we have talked about a set of spiritual practices that we are
wanting to explore as a means of our discipleship, as a means of our following
Developing deep christian friendships..…Go gently

after Christ. Dwelling in the word we are familiar with… dwelling in the world…
is something I think we need to do more of…. It is the act of regularly reflecting
on Who God is sending to us, and who we are being sent to. It is paying
attention to who we have conversations with, looking for places where we
connect with people, looking to see where God might be orientating us
towards another, and crucially who God is orientating towards us…
Note how its two directional….. if God’s plans and purposes are to connect us
together then it is not just about looking to see who God might be drawing
alongside you as a friend… it is also about looking to see who he is drawing you
alongside………I believe God’s plans and purposes willl be for you to both be
blessed and to be a blessing as a result of deepening relationships within the
community of faith
Every week I try and have a space where I just do that work of reflection,
paying attention to how God might be leading and directing me. It’s not
something that can be done on the hoof alone…. But requires a reflective
practice, and means adopting a spirit of enquiry…..
Take time every week to pay attention to what God is doing and reflect on who
you’ve been speaking with.. who you connected with..who you could have
connected with…..Who is God drawing across your path….who is god
prompting you to ring, or go and see……..
Attentiveness to the work of God is a key attitude and core spiritual practice
that we need to develop.

The second practice I want to suggest to you this morning is the practice of
Presence…….

We started this series contrasting the kind of friendship social media

propagates with the kind of deepening relationships our hearts are to pursue…
and here again I think our social media and modern technology provide us with
a useful foil. I am sure you have all seen people glued to their phones or
tablets. I’ve sat in a restaurant and seen whole families disengage from one
another around a table, all plugged into their own little social network on their
phones, completely failing to be present in a room. Likewise you may have
been with a group of people and experienced the distraction of someone else
being distracted by their phone……..
Developing deep christian friendships..…Go gently

Thumb to thumb time is no substitute for face to face time…. Connecting with
each other.. spending time with each other is absolutely key.

Meaningful friendship takes time and investment in one another.

Jesus valued friendship. We see the investment of himself in his disciples. He

even declared “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for
one’s friends.”

And I get that we are busy. But what would it mean to lay down our lives for
one another? To be present. When there’s a gathering together to commit to
being there, for the sake of the other…….

What might making time and space available for discovering friends,
developing friendships look like.

Read with me verse 9 and 10……. 9 This is how God showed his love among us:
He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.
10 
This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as
an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
God made his love known, and continues to make his love known through his
presence…and the giving of himself……
If that is how love expresses itself….then what might that mean for us…in
terms of how we order our time….
I’ve joked before about the attitude of waiting by the phone for it to ring…
waiting for someone to invite us round…
What might the giving of ourselves look like in those moments……
Open-ness to each other......

Okay 3rd key practice is that of openness… a preparedness to move our

sharing of life beyond the superficial, and toward the sharing of things that
matter. James last week urging us to confess our sins to one another that we
might pray for one another and so be healed….. remember we are not
looking just at how we develop friendship in general, but in particular we are
considering how we explore and develop the five closest christian friendships
that are going to sharpen, nurture, and guard our christian lives.
Developing deep christian friendships..…Go gently

Sharing with one another at depth requires great trust and vulnerability, and in
regard to this I want to say go gently……

There is such a thing as Too much too Soon!!!

This is where that practice of attentiveness comes in again….…give the

relationship some time to develop, be attentive to the leading of God’s holy
spirit…..if we’re talking about a friendship that’s been going a while and you
want to explore taking it a little deeper, talk about that together…do the work
of attentiveness to God’s leading together……. Deliberately invite God into your
friendship together………

I’ve had a couple of conversations with guys I’ve known for a while now… that
have been along the lines of …..i’ve been thinking about friendship and I’ve
really valued some of the conversations we’ve had and wondered if if you’d be
up for exploring that a bit further as to how we could invest in each other and
develop each other..in a kind of iron sharpens iron kind a way…… one of them
asked if I was asking him on a date!!..... but these guys are Christians tso they
get where I’m coming from…I’ve done the work of attentiveness and it seems
right to me,,,and we’ll be doing that work of attentiveness these things take
time…love travels really slow……
But here’s the thing about why openness to one another is so key. We may
impress people with our strengths but we connect with people through our
weaknesses. It's when we're transparent, it's when we'revulnerable, it's when
we drop the external image, the online persona and we say, "Here's what I'm
going through, man.""Here'swhat makes me afraid." "Here's where we're
struggling in our marriage." "Here's the temptation that I can't seem to
overcome." "Here's the fear that I continue to have. How do we respond to
one another when we say those things…. FLIP it around n response to those
things what do we say…how would you respond if a friend said those things to
you? ……..REALLY…..PULL SELF TOGETHER….. JUDGEMENT? No you care you
nurture you respect you value you listen…… we start to connect and there's an
intimate connection when we're transparent with each other………I know its
risky right…but not if we’ve been practicing attentiveness, and presence….and
trusting in the leading and activity of God right?........which kind of takes us
Back to the activity of God…back to the nature of love…. We were not created
to be independent and on our own; but we were created to know him and be
dependent on him and be dependent on his people, because we are
incomplete without his body and his church.
Developing deep christian friendships..…Go gently

Okay so…3 practices attentivenesss, presence, openness and now the attitude
that encompasses them
The attitude of Love……
And now I shall show you the most excellent way, says apostle paul in
Corinthians 13….
13  If I speak in the tongues[a] of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am
only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2  If I have the gift of prophecy
and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can
move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3  If I give all I possess to
the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast,[b] but do not have
love, I gain nothing.
4 
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
5 
It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it
keeps no record of wrongs. 6  Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the
truth. 7  It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Jesus’ command is to love one another…..

And from our reading today
9 
This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into
the world that we might live through him. 10  This is love: not that we loved God,
but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11  Dear
friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another
Friendship, I believe, at its most basic is an attitude of the heart, and is an
attitude of love.
The deepening of our relationships should not be something we engineer for
ourselves, but something we explore with another in community together…. It
should not be something we demand from another…..but something we give
to another……
In communion we come to receive from the one who has shown us what love
is, and who has commanded us so to love one another….
To friend is to love, to give of ourselves in a reflection of God, it is an attitude,
that requires time, attentiveness to others and to the spirits leading, it involves
being present with one another and to one another, it requires an openness of
heart, to the self care of one another, and the generosity of love.