One who has unreliable friends soon comes to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother. Proverbs 18:24
“Every real friendship is a sort of secession, even a rebellion. It may be a rebellion of serious thinkers against accepted clap-trap or of faddists against accepted good sense; of real artists against popular ugliness or of charlatans against civilised taste; of good men against the badness of society or of bad men against its goodness. Whichever it is, it will be unwelcome to top people. In each knot of friends there is a sectional “public opinion” which fortifies its members against the public opinion of the community in general. Each therefore is a pocket of potential resistance. Men who have real friends are less easy to manage or “get at”; harder for good authorities to correct or for bad Authorities to corrupt.
Hence if our masters, by force or by propaganda about “Togetherness” or by unobtrusively making privacy and unplanned leisure impossible, ever succeed in producing a world where all are companions and none are friends, they will have removed certain dangers, and will also have taken from us what is almost our strongest safeguard against complete servitude. But the dangers are perfectly real. Friendship (as the ancients saw) can be a school of virtue; but also (as they did not see) a school of vice. It is ambivalent. It makes good men better and bad men worse.”
C.S. Lewis in Four Loves on “Friendship” (Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #1202) excerpt from chapter 4.
Today marks the start of the first-ever Global Gathering in Dubai, UAE, for Global Trust Partners. We convene as 27 men and women from 15 countries for the week. Most importantly, we come together as as good men and women aiming to ask God through confession, prayer, and fasting to clean up what is bad in the global church.
Pray with us that our coming together will make us all better. And make that same difference where you are! Lock arms with other generous people to make a difference. You will develop bonds deeper than family ties, these will become friends for who you will give your life in collaborative service to Christ.
Find people who will look you in the eyes regardless of the challenge and say, “With you!” These are some of the greatest treasures in the world. They are the people with whom I find myself. Their friendship makes me a better person. Go make your community or your world better today through friendship.