Keeper Friends Are Treasures
Friends. Genuine “Keeper Friends” are there for you when you need encouragement, sympathy, comfort, support. You often shadow one another. At times you both may sacrifice for the benefit and good of the other.
Faithful friendship. How well it is illustrated when four men wanted to get their paralyzed friend to Jesus for healing. Unable to get into the crowded room where He was, they persisted by cutting a hole in the roof, and lowering him down. Jesus not only healed the paralyzed man, He commended his four friends for their faith. (See (Mark 2:1-13)
Jesus had many friends. Among His twelve disciples, three were even closer—Peter, James, and John. Women followed Jesus, some even contributing funds to His ministry. He felt “at home” in Martha’s home in Bethany which she shared with her sister Mary and brother Lazarus. Jesus taught and mentored His friends whenever they were together, but He also enjoyed their fellowship.
Supportive friendships hold each other accountable. Sometimes schedules will need rearranging. Friendships cost time, respect, agape love and plenty of prayer, but genuine friends are worth all the effort. Friendships may be long-term or seasonal.
One of my longer friendships began after church one Sunday when Lib, a woman I had never met, invited my family to her house for Sunday dinner. There was a catch. “I don’t have enough food for all of us, but we could share,” she told me. “You look like someone I’d really like to get to know. Besides our children would enjoy some new friends too.”
I never imagined what I was getting into that Sunday we lugged our dinner to Lib’s house and spread it outdoors on a picnic table. The next week her family came to our home, bringing their dinner. We did this every Sunday after church for over a year. We were shy young moms living in tiny box houses on shoestring budgets while our husbands worked crazy shifts at Florida’s newly established Space Center and were often gone days at a time. Between us we had seven children near the same ages. Lib and I were born the same week and the same year. Sisters in the Lord.
As our friendship blossomed and our relationship with the Lord grew stronger, we decided we needed to pray for our children on a regular basis. So, at exactly 8 a.m. we prayed together on the phone, for just five minutes, every weekday morning. For seventeen years!
When our family moved 450 miles away, Lib and I still kept in touch by phone. Then many years later on a Mother’s Day weekend her husband and four sons buried her between a giant oak and a blooming gardenia tree. “She, who loved flowers and plants, would have approved,” one son wrote me.
In the ensuring years I have “collected” some wonderful female friends who have offered me nurturing emotional support, advice, counsel, encouragement, and prayer coverage. In turn, I have done the same for them. While we have seen each other through trials and heartaches, we have also had a lot of laughs.
Not all Keeper friendships are at the same level of reciprocation. You may find some friends have less time than others to keep in touch. Some are busy moms. Some have full-time jobs. Others travel with work or ministries. Some are active community volunteers. Some are caregivers to ailing spouses or parents. Others babysit grandchildren. And the list goes on.
God knew how I needed the unique giftedness of all my special friends. Among them are writers, widows, homemakers, grandmothers, and career gals. To keep our friendships vital we keep in touch via phone, text or email.1
I hope you have some “Keeper Friends” too. If you don’t, ask God to help you find them. You will be blessed!
Prayer: Lord, thank You for the gift of friends, especially those I count on who love and support me in trying times as well as smooth-sailing ones. Help me remember to thank them for their faithfulness. Help me to be a very faithful friend to them too. I pray in the name of Jesus, Amen.
Scripture: Now when Job’s three friends heard of all this adversity that had come upon him, each one came from his own place… For they had made an appointment together to come and mourn with him, and to comfort him. (Job 2:11 NKJV)
Scripture: The Lord is your keeper; The Lord is your shade on your right hand…The Lord will guard your going out and your coming in. From this time forth and forever. (Psalm 121:5,8 NASB)
Footnote:1. Excerpted from my book Cast Your Shadow: Influence on Purpose, Available on Amazon.
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