Intentionally Focused week 5 sum up!

Week Five in the Intentionally Focused study is on friendship.

I think friends are so important because many times they provide fresh perspective. They hold our hands when we're hurting. They pray for us and laugh with us. They relate to us and love us unconditionally.

And thus its important that we take time to understand our individual roles in our friendships. It is so easy to say I want a good friend, a godly friend, an honest friend. However the question to pose to ourselves is: Are we the friend we want in others? We have to self access, are we a good friend? Are influential in a godly manner? Are we honest? Are we unconditional? Do we love in such a way that our friends would have no doubt in us? 

Let me put it this way, have you ever had a friend in which you only scratch the surface with? You know the one, you never get too deep or go too personal. That means that's an indication of your friendship with that person as you don't trust them to share with them. I have certain acquaintances in which I don't go very deep with, we talk but we never touch on heart to heart issues. Why does this happen? 

But then we all have that friend that no matter how frequent or infrequent you talk, we you do talk the floodgates open and you both share everything . There's a certain level of confidence in that friendship.

My point is not really for you to try to categorize your friendships BUT for you to see how do you measure up. What type of friend are you? Are you the friend YOU want to have in others?

I have been evaluating who I am as a friend. As I have noticed, I am a better friend to others than I am to my own husband at times and thus I am making a conscious effort to be the BEST friend I can be to my husband because he's the closest to me. 

Yes, I love my mom. Yes I love my friends. BUT they are NOT closer to me than my own husband. And thus he deserves the best of my friendship, the best of my time, the best of my love. It requires actual work to be a friend. It requires developing your listening skills as people want to be listened to.

Though one may be overpowered,
    two can defend themselves.
A cord of three strands is not quickly broken. (Ecclesiastes 4:12)

Granted most people associate this verse almost instantaneously with marriage. It can also apply to friendship as many are not married and need friends to be there for them. And even in friendship, God is to be apart of that friendship. 

So where do you see you can improve yourself as a friend?

~Kris