friendship on Commitment

It’s been said home is the place where they have to let you in. While it’s a reach to say I’m friends with each of my family members, our relationships thrive because we share a mutual, understood res...

Though Jim was just a little older than Phillip and often assumed the role of leader, they did everything together. They even went to high school and college together. After college they decided to jo...

Fitting in is about assessing a situation and becoming who you need to be to be accepted. Belonging, on the other hand, doesn’t require us to change who we are; it requires us to be who we are

LORD our Lord, how majestic is Your name in all the earth. You set Your glory above the heavens. We see your power in galaxies that spin in space, and see your care in the sparrows feeding in the snow...

Several months ago, I visited Akagera National Park in Rwanda. From the safety of our Land Rover, our safari guide pointed to a lone gazelle grazing on the savanna and asked, “Do you know what that is...

Have people in your life that will chase you and come after you with love when you are struggling or not at your best.

Community is the fruit of charity and is expressed in friendship which brings forth and nourishes loyalty, trust, sincerity and mutual understanding. … Friendship in Christ not only favors the develop...

Happy marriages are based on a deep friendship. By this I mean mutual respect for and enjoyment of each other’s company. These couples tend to know each other intimately—they are well versed in each o...

Context matters. According to the Terman Study, which followed one thousand study participants from childhood until their death, the people we surround ourselves with are who we become. We see those a...

Everything significant starts with relationship. At the end of the day, your faith, your family, your work, and your leadership are all based on who you relate to and how you relate. Your life is moti...

Mike Mason recounts how his friend Daniel Adair once said: Whenever I meet someone new, I take that person and fix him or her in my heart. To do this, I literally see that person as a star, and I ...

We need to admit the mind into Christian fellowship again. We need the mind disciplined in Christ, enlightened by faith, passionate for God and his creation, to be let loose in the world.

The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our own image. If in loving them we do not love what they are, but only their po...

The lectionary text for this week begins at 15:9, but as I shared last week, this text should be read as a part of a larger unit, which includes the lectionary text for last week (15:1-8). Context P...

Edward T. Hall likened the effects of culture to an iceberg. Some aspects of a culture are overt, in clear view above the waterline, so to speak. But most are hidden deep below the surface, forming th...

In each of my friends, there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. By myself I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity.

For several years, Jason and I nurtured a friendship that led us to decide to work together because we knew each other so well. But things soon became complicated between us. I began to notice some tr...

The lectionary text for this week begins at 15:9, but as I shared last week, this text should be read as a part of a larger unit, which includes the lectionary text for last week (15:1-8). Context ...

He is your friend who pushes you nearer to God.

Ralph Waldo Emerson describes a true friend as a person with whom I can think aloud. This absence of the need to put on a façade is an essential and foundational aspect of all genuine friendships. He ...

Digital connections . . . may offer the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship. Our networked life allows us to hide from each other, even as we are tethered to each other.

In his book, The Enormous Exception, Earl Palmer tells about a pre-med undergrad at the University of California, Berkley, who became a Christian after a long journey through doubts and questions. A b...

It was impossible for me (Doug) to become Mark’s friend. He always avoided eye contact with me though I would smile and say hi as I passed him in the dorm. I had no idea what was going on in his heart...

Friends are individuals who are relational assets and not liabilities. Friends are those whom God escorts into our environments because there is something they need to be for us in order to help us be...

Friendship ... is born at the moment when one man says to another "What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . .

Gracious God, we come before you with humility, recognizing that doubt has led our decisions. We have allowed fear to lead, rather than love. Because of this, we have been unkind to our families, our ...

Friend. We use that word too loosely. Too flippantly. We use it too generously. And most damaging of all, we give the title to people who haven’t earned it. I recognize that using the word earn makes ...

The best mirror is an old friend.

All true friendliness begins with fire and food and drink and the recognition of rain or frost. ...Each human soul has in a sense to enact for itself the gigantic humility of the Incarnation. Every ma...

Every man has reminiscences which he would not tell to everyone, but only to his friends. He has other matters in his mind which he would not reveal even to his friends, but only to himself, and that ...