True friends

How many ‘true friends’ do you think you have? We all have ‘friends’ and ‘followers’ on social media, but how many of them would we class as true friends? How many of them would we really want to share our lives with? How many of them would be there for us when we needed them? We all need true friends. We’re not supposed to live life on our own; we need the help of others, and they need our help too. In the perfect world of Eden, Adam still couldn’t make it by himself, so God said, ‘I will make a helper suitable for him’ (Genesis 2:18 NIV). It’s not about being the most popular, with the most amount of friends. It’s about how deep that friendship is. It’s no good if we have lots of friends, but we can’t really trust any of them and can’t tell them about our lives. We need friends who we can be completely vulnerable with. The Bible says: ‘A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother’ (ESV). When we’re going through tough times, it can be helpful to have a close friend facing things alongside us. And it can be even more helpful if that friend has experienced and overcome the things we’re going through. And then when we’ve come out the other side of our troubles, we can be that friend to someone else. But how can we be a good and true friend to others? The Bible says we should clothe ourselves with ‘compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience’ (Colossians 3:12 NIV). And that’s a great place to start!