Never give up on a friend

Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. - Romans 12:15 

No one is meant to live a lonely life. People need one another. It’s important to fellowship, talk, laugh, cry and smile with one another. Life is about relationships and it’s crucial to have healthy ones. Yes, it’s inevitable for relationships to end, sometimes badly, but that shouldn’t stop us from making new ones.

We sometimes base our understanding of relationships on past, hurtful relationships. It's those past hurts and feeling of rejection that holds us back from allowing a new person into our lives that can bring joy and love. Instead, we can learn from those past relationships and grow because of them; we shouldn't let the hurt and resentment stop us from expanding our relationships in life.

Friends become family and that starts by new friendships, new beginnings. Starting up a conversation with a stranger can be intimidating and weird but you'll never know where that exchange can lead to -- maybe a strong friendship.

And when friends become like family you get to know all parts of a person, all of their hurts and sensitivity towards things. When that door is open it strengthens the bond and you can feel trust building up.

When you see a friend in trouble you’re moved to help, you’re moved to intervene. But when that friend takes advantage of your help, at times you’ve had enough. Although it may be frustrating to help someone who can’t seem to hop off the hamster wheel of their issues, we can’t lose hope. Maybe that person doesn’t have any hope, so they depend on you to help them.

Isaiah 61:1 says “The spirit of the sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.”

It goes on to say how it’s our duty to comfort those who mourn, “proclaim freedom for the captives” and to help one another. We can’t think to ourselves “these people got themselves into their own mess. I warned them, I’m not saving them from this.” When we react that way to someone’s suffering it’s like rejecting Jesus.

God sends people to us so we can preach the Gospel and lead them to Jesus and introduce him as their Lord and Savior. He sends people to us because He knows that we can help them. He gives us the words to speak and comfort people.

We may let our emotions get in the way and lose our patience but the person who needs a friend is lost.

We can’t become prideful and condescending when we “have it all together” that we think we know better because we follow God’s commandments. When we reject others we are forgetting one of God’s biggest commandments: to love one another. The word says not to slander one another, “to be peaceable and considerate, and always gentle toward everyone” (Titus 3:2) for at one time we were where they are.

My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.

— John 15:12

But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy.

—Titus 3:4-5

Edited April 2021