Friendship: Our Generation’s Great Need!

At the start of 2023 I felt prompted to pay attention when ministering to issues of mental health. This is of course not at all a new subject to me as I am trained as a psychiatric nurse. I therefore began to pray for people in public meetings, in particular depression, anxiety, insomnia, addiction to prescription medication, and other related issues. And as is often the case when we pay attention and pray for something more, we see more breakthroughs. It became even more clear that our world is full of loneliness, anxiety, double mindedness, and rebellion.

This definition allows for ‘bad days at the gym.’ It also allows me to measure my growth.

I also became aware of a shift in thinking by some. This shift was from mental health as a goal to mental fitness. In other words if I am pursuing physical fitness, then I can allow myself a bad day at the gym. Why then can mental fitness not be a valid expression. We should allow ourselves a bad day in the context of a journey of increased mental fitness.

I have for a long time used a definition of mental health, but I saw that it fitted mental fitness, equally well, if not actually better.

 

My definition is: The ability to experience conflicting emotions of good and bad news, while still being responsible for my behaviour and responses to life.

This definition allows for ‘bad days at the gym.’

2023

Little did I know that 2023 would put me in a very stressful situation, one which would affect my physical health and increase my awareness of issues of mental fitness. My willingness to pursue healing for mental health for others in fact involved me being sent to a school which I hadn’t attended before. I experienced being triggered by situations, and felt that I was shown an option of quitting, burning out, or succumbing to the stress and anxiety. I didn’t do any of those, but it
was as if I needed to understand what it felt like.
As I reviewed the effects on me I began to see more clearly the following questions:

Have you looked down the self destruct barrel?
Have you shut the door and not let anyone in?
Are you accumulating ways to cover your pain?
Have you looked down the corridor of burn out?

During that time I was blessed to have friends that I could talk to and of course a straight talking vife. But I was also very aware that this is not the case for everyone, and that many do not have
people or do not know how to talk and trust people with these kind of intimate issues.
You need a friend. The simple experience of having friends that I could access and talk to, seemed so very
fundamental, but perhaps not as common as I thought it should be. I began to wonder if age alone or the combination of growing older and the culture of our world
has caused us to stop making friends. Making friends implies effort, work, and intention.

The Holy Spirit, Jesus’ Best Friend

In the middle of these events  I read Good Morning Holy Spirit for the first time. Yes, I know it took me a long time to get to this classic, but I did discover that I was by no means alone. There was a simplicity in the book, which I had heard others express, but somehow I needed to read it, when I needed the friendship aspect in particular. I began to wonder as I read if we may have lost the identity of the Holy Spirit as the best friend of the groom. I love the emphasis on the Holy Spirit to help us heal our ‘mother wounds’ but in that process I saw that we must always ensure that we do not lose the aspect of friendship. In fact it may be that this affects our approach to being friends.

For instance if our Holy Spirit is one who waves a magic wand for us in a crisis, we may try to be that for our friends. But if our Holy Spirit is a friend we will in turn live this out in our friendships.

Being Friends.

We are the most connected generation in history, yet we may also be the loneliest. We can connect with millions around the world, have social media sites telling us how many thousand friends we have and yet be lonely.

I also listened to a podcast during this season that described what friends do. As I listened I knew that there was a kingdom version. But first the 4 themes of this secular podcast. 

Friends:

Sit in the mud with you

Know You

Have difficult conversations with you

Model how to serve others.

It was just after I listened to this I found myself in the centre of the very stressful scenario. 

Into that a man was sent to provide me with support. I had met him once, but quickly he became a sounding board for me, and was one of very few who knew the details of the situation, due to the requirement of confidentiality. Very quickly he and I coined a phrase: “my friends answer the phone.” This was what I needed.

Not only did it create a culture between us, it highlighted the strange culture which has emerged since the rise of zoom. The tendency to book phone appointments, when sometimes we just need a spontaneous phone call to be answered.

The four themes which I heard on the podcast have parallels in Jesus.

John 14:15: 

The one who comes alongside.

He left us the Holy Spirit. The one who comes alongside to help. He sits in the mud with us.

Romans 8:27

The Holy Spirit knows us

John 14:17

The Holy Spirit is truth and will have the difficult conversations with its.

John 14:26

The Holy Spirit lives to serve Jesus and make His name known.

Sitting in the mud.

Further I meditated on sitting in the mud. I began to see the language of mud and mire in the bible. There are so many references. The psalmist giving us perhaps the most famous: He lifts me up out of the miry clay and sets my feet upon a rock.

Using my imagination I saw that when I sit in the mud with a friend I can allow my tears to wash the mud from their eyes, and little by little, perhaps without words, enable them to see a little more clearly. But then I saw that if I allow the river of living water to flow from my belly, it will begin to create a river and that will lift them little by little out of the mud. It is often not about doing something, but about being there, in the mud, answering the phone.

Difficult Conversations

My journey involved having to have difficult conversations. They did not all have the desired outcome but I began to gain confidence in this area. In particular relying on the spirit of wisdom to manifest. I knew that if my heart was right that I had nothing to fear. I also opened myself up too being more willing to receive input, knowing how high the stakes had become in trying to solve a very traumatic situation.

Being known.

Some years ago I was given a gift which I didn’t need, yet I wanted, it was a deep lesson that the best gifts are not related to monetary value but to being known. Being seen, known, loved, and valued is one of the greatest gifts we can give someone else. I was privileged to experience this. The trauma and conflict of the situation caused me to question what I was doing and to second guess myself. the relationships God gave me in that season gave me the feedback and confidence I needed to keep moving forwards.

Serving others.

I have known and practiced for many years, that if I am having a hard day, then my best cures are either to remind myself what God has done, or find someone with greater needs than mine and serve them. That continued to be my experience and I was often healthily distracted into serving. The greater needs around me lifted my behaviour and my mindset to the Greater One and the greater purpose.

Summing Up.

The Holy Spirit is our best friend, and we have constant access to Him. As we learn friendship with the Holy Spirit we will learn how to be and to have friends. Perhaps the highest calling in terms of love is ‘Phileo’ love, brotherly love, where we have shared values. We need friends, not fair weather friends but those who will be there for us, whatever the weather and going beyond that the friends who will hold up a mirror and show us ourselves, even in the midst of the storm when we are windswept and not looking or feeling our best.

As I observe the growing number of leaders who ‘blow’ their lives up in one way or another, I believe that friendship is a major deficit. We need to learn to make friends, to have friendships before we have a platform, and that we never lose the capacity to receive healthy and constructive feedback and input.

As individuals we need it. We owe it to the bride, the church, and the world needs an example of how we walk out our christian lives.

I have written in the margin of my bible an old quote which I am sure came from Bill Johnson. It is alongside the words of Jesus in John 15. Jesus gives the commandment to love one another and then goes on to say that we are his friends if we do what he commands.

The quote from Bill is: A friend is what we qualify to be, when we learn to love.

May that be my life journey from here until eternity.