If you are into new year resolutions, I hope strengthening friendships will be one of your commitments. We need to intentionally cultivate friendships in a lonely world because we need friends. Here are five things you can do to build friendships.
1. Spending time
Studies have shown that there is a direct linkage between the time spent with a friend and the intimacy of the friendship. You can’t do friendship on auto pilot. You need to invest time in your friends.
2. Listening
Perhaps the most important practice in friendship — empathetic listening. If we love our friend, we would want to know them better, and to know them better is to give them the gift of listening.
3. Sharing
Friendships are built on conversations. When one speaks the other listens. And where friends are concerned, we will “speak the truth in love” as our default. We will risk sharing things from our hearts.
4. Sharing meals
If there is one universal human activity, it is eating. Sharing meals with our friends provides the context for spending time together and for meaningful conversations. And if one is pressed for time, well, everyone needs to eat.
5. Doing things together
Often, friendships are a by-product of shared activity. Anything, from having meals with our friends and their families to doing ministry projects together or pursuing hobbies of shared interest, will lead to the strengthening of the bonds of friendship.
Followers of Jesus share one Friend — Jesus Himself. And it seems the above-mentioned five activities for building friendships with our earthly friends apply to our friendship with Jesus as well.
1. Spending time
Jesus is with us all the time. Yet, to grow in our relationship with Him we need to carve out time to hang out with Him; times specially set apart for communion with Him. This may mean different things to different people. Many of us are committed to daily quiet time, but the goal is to attend to the presence of Jesus.
2. Listening
Jesus speaks to us and to know this friend better we need to listen to what He says. He speaks to us in various ways, but the primary way is through His word. Therefore we study the Bible not just to get some theological truths but to hear Jesus speak to us.
3. Sharing
The other pole in conversation is speaking. Even as we commit ourselves to listening to Christ, we also speak to Him. The book of Psalms shows us we can tell God anything. The Psalms range from joy and thanksgiving to lament and petition.
4. Sharing meals
Friends bond when they eat together, and the Lord’s Supper is a meal that Jesus shares with us. When it was first observed, the eucharist was part of a proper meal. Indeed, all meals are sacramental if we remember that Christ is always with us.
5. Doing things together
When we remember that Christ is always with us, all of life is life shared with Him. And maybe we need to change from thinking that we are serving the Lord to remembering that we are serving with the Lord — that God is working and He invites us to be part of His mission in the world.
How do we nurture friendships? We hang out together, we have good conversations, we eat together, and we do stuff together. May 2023 find us drawing close to all our friends.