LIVING THE CHRIST LIFE

hi guys, been a long time since my last post, any way, the title is a question in one of the comments posted about the “is there such a thing as “Just Friends”?” article, this is such a good question and i’ll be posting another article so please continue to support our blog. by the way the suggestion about the font size will be done. thanks guys. God bless!

 IS THERE SUCH A THING AS “JUST FRIENDS?”

Lately in our church we have been experiencing “revival”, but it’s not the kind of revival that you think, the revival that I am talking about involves friendships and courtships. This may sound funny, but it’s as though the singles in our church are suddenly in the golden age of enlightenment with regard to courtship and friendships with the opposite sex that there is so much happening behind the scenes. C’mon guys I know that you see it too.

And this is where this article comes in, I believe that many young people including young adults think that they know what to do about what they feel about a certain guy or girl, but in reality are moving more in a worldly mindset regarding this matter, rather than looking at this from the lens of God’s Truth and what He says about friendships and courtships.

At this point I want you to understand that I am not an expert, and that I don’t know everything there is to know about this matter, but somehow I believe that God has allowed me to learn and to see some things in my courtship and friendship with my wife to be able to share these things to you. So let’s get started.

In the area of friendships with the opposite sex, I just want to say that you can have or form friendships with the opposite sex and that there is nothing wrong with it, but (here it comes guys) to think that we can have completely platonic or “harmless” friendships not involving any emotional attachment is for me the height of naiveté. Because if you take our everyday lives as an example, when we hear some of our friends say the phrase “we’re JUST FRIENDS” somehow in the back of our minds we are already casting some doubt about it, because experience has taught us that many times these “friendships” end up in disaster with both parties having emotional scars that are carried for a lifetime. And this is what I would like to address to all of us reading this right now.

First of all we need to guard ourselves, like I said, there is nothing wrong with friendships with the opposite sex, but the problem lies in the way we handle and look at these friendships. And guarding ourselves is one of the best things that we can do to prevent this. So how do we guard ourselves? 1. Be a man or woman of noble character. What does this mean? It means that you are not just using the friendship as an excuse to “TEST THE WATERS” trying to fish for hints of whether he or she is into you, or DELIBERATELY using the friendship to fill up the loneliness in our lives. Again we are talking about friendships with the opposite sex here. To be a man or woman of noble character means that first of all, SPIRITUALLY, YOU are growing and guarding yourself and then this love for the LORD and the growth that you experience translates itself into your friendship. Question is, “ARE YOU GROWING?” 2. to guard ourselves from falling into this trap we need to be honest and have a deep understanding and grasp of our sinfulness and depravity. This is so vital if we are to guard ourselves, scripture tells us that “our hearts are deceitful” and have you ever taken time to think about that word? “deceitful” if you were to tell someone that they were deceitful, I don’t think that they will see it as a compliment, if someone did acknowledge it as a compliment I’d be very afraid, and yet that word is associated with our hearts! And I think we need to understand that the full force of the meaning of that word should imbed itself in our minds when we are dealing with our emotions, desires and longings. Because this is so crucial when it comes to friendships with the opposite sex, many times we hide behind the disguise of “friendship” but if we were honestly and brutally true with ourselves we would find that in the deceitfulness of our hearts we are merely masking our motives with what I call the “FRIENDSHIP CARD”. So let me warn you right now, if you are in this state I pray that you protect yourself by getting a good look at what our heart is truly like. 3. we protect ourselves by leaning on the grace and mercy of the Lord, and living in the light of the glory of Christ. If we agree that our hearts are sinful then the ONLY way to protect ourselves and our brothers and sisters is to LOVE THE LORD WITH ALL OUR HEART MIND AND STRENGTH. The only way that we can have godly friendships is if we come to a realization that we are recipients of grace and as recipients of grace we want to be channels of that grace to those around us, and believe me if our mindset is like that then we will not only build up other people around us but build up the church as well.

Second, talking about friendships with the opposite sex is not something we take lightly, why? Because we were designed by God to have attractions with each other, now you have to pay close attention to what I am about to say, we can cultivate friendships with the opposite sex, but we must understand that because of the way that God has designed us, we need to be extra careful about how we deal with each other (girls with guys and guys with girls). Because God has gifted us with our sexuality and He has given us an intense attraction for the opposite sex in order to solidify His mandate to subdue the earth and to procreate. And if we are naïve in our thinking about this matter, it would be like thinking we can play with fire and not get burned. And because of this, in answer to the title of this article, “There is no such thing as JUST FRIENDS”, because even if you don’t have feelings for that guy or girl friend that you have, the other person might have feelings for you but is just hiding it or denying it. Point is, if we are not careful and if we approach this issue without being aware of how God designed us we will end up using our friendships as a means to get what we want and to fulfill our desires.

Third, now that we have been informed about this, there is one issue that I would also like to address. And that is how we have a wrong view of friendships, even for many Christians today, we use friendships as a means of getting to know the other person, now there is nothing wrong with getting to know the person, but what is wrong is our worldly view of “getting to know” what many youth and young adults are doing right now is they are using friendships to see if the other person will “fit” THEIR lists of preferences, many are looking for that “compatibility factor” if he will cater to my needs, if she will understand me, if this guy or girl will be the answer to my needs. And many times it is more of a self focused desire for OUR sinful wants to be fulfilled, and we are looking at our “friendships” as a means of getting it. And when this person or that person does not give us what we are looking for they are no longer our friends and when this person gives it he or she is our best friend or as we like to call it our “VERY SPECIAL FRIEND”.

This is very prevalent today, and I like how Carolyn McCulley says it in her book “Did I Kiss Marriage Goodbye?” (which I recommend that you read whether you are a guy or girl), she says, “I know how tempting it is to hang out in these undefined friendships where the best you can get is a blurry, part time boyfriend (or girlfriend) at least some attention is better than none, right? Nope, sorry, I’m no longer convinced of that. For one, I find it challenging to guard my heart and keep my peace before God in these “hopeful friendships”.” In the same book one of her friends called this “the buddy approach” and he says this, “I crafted what I thought was an ingenious approach to women: the “buddy approach”…I saw it as a safe way to take a chance—to see if a relationship could grow without the pressure of formal dating and terms like “boyfriend” or “girlfriend”. If the friendship began to disappoint I could always just say, “oh, maybe you misunderstood me, we’re just friends”…to make matters worse, my expectations for women were set by movies, magazine covers that caused me to fantasize about perfection and to overlook the real and available women right in front of me. I realized that honesty about the deep friendship I enjoyed with Candice meant I had to quit looking out for the corner of my eye for other options. She deserved my full attention. Traditional wedding vows often include the phrase “forsaking all others as long as you both shall live”. I knew I needed to start practicing the art of “forsaking”. And I believe that for many of us we need to forsake our preferences and start focusing on what truly matters.

If our friendships are to be God glorifying, we must have to first rethink our perspectives about friendships. And it all starts with the Giver of these friendships.
Please watch out for the next articles. Thanks and God bless.

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Sorry for the long absence, we’ve been very busy at church lately, because we are organizing a Parenting seminar. Anyway, continuing our discussion about cyber dating, we ended our last post with a warning of not opening too much of ourselves to the opposite sex when we chat.

Now why is this so important? Because you need to realize that when you reveal intimate things to the opposite sex, a bond begins to form and that bond may start out to be in the form of harmless friendships, but later on if we are not mature enough we begin to move towards entertaining feelings beyond friendships that are either misguided or are very deceiving.

Dear reader, please hear me out in this, we cannot say that we’re old enough or mature enough, let us be reminded that our hearts are deceitful and that many times because of our pride we refuse to submit to God’s word. Remember pride comes before a fall and haven’t we fallen so many times already? How many times do we need to be burned in order for us to realize that fire is hot!?

And so in conclusion to this post, here are a few reminders for our chatting:

1. Chat only when needed, because if you have nothing to talk about the temptation to chat about trivial things is greater and this is not
God glorifying and edifying.
2. Chat about Godly things.
3. Do not chat about personal feelings about each other.
4. Do not use the web as an excuse for testing your “compatibility” with the other person.
5. Do not “go fishing” for information about the other person.
6. Lastly in everything that you do honor and glorify God.

I know that this post is very short, but I am planning to follow up this topic very soon. God bless and thanks for reading.