Who wouldn’t fancy listing one of their life goals to be a Never-Failing Friend? Seriously, do you know anyone who desires that any Relational Equity they cultivate to be marred by failure? But guess what? All of us, including me, will fall short if the bar we set is to be a Never-Failing Friend, because guess what? There is only One. One who is always there when His friend is having a miserable time. One who knows the perfect word we need to hear for encouragement. One who literally sacrificed His life for our benefit. There is only One Never-Failing Friend. But you know something else? A fear of failure should not diminish our aspirations to be that type of companion, it should challenge us to up our game in an attempt to accomplish that goal.

Reading Dane Ortlund’s Gentle and Lowly (admittedly I was unsuccessful on the first attempt a while back), I was forced to face the reality that our culture, myself included, has “lamentably impoverished the category even of friendship between humans…if we allow the world around us in our present cultural moment to dictate to us the significance of friendship, we not only lose out on a reality vital to human flourishing at the horizontal level; we lose out, even worse, on enjoying the friendship of Christ at a vertical level.”

Although I find myself in agreement with the research that describes how diluted many forms of friendship are today compared to those from periods in the past, I struggle to consider Christ my friend, a member of my Posse—that seems to be a stretch even for me. After all, He can’t offer me a ride when I need to drop the Jeep off to be serviced, He can’t hand me a tissue as tears spill down my cheeks, and He doesn’t mow my yard when I’m out of town. That’s a Never-Failing Friend in my worldly view—someone who has my six, offers assistance when necessary, and supports my ideas no matter how quirky they may be. And Yet…perhaps He does—only He uses the hands, feet, and vehicles of people in my sphere of influence to serve as the Never-Failing Friend.

So now I am forced to examine my own relational circles, using Ortlund’s imagery of “concentric circles narrowing in to a bull’s eye” to consider the people in my life. Granted, I am blessed to have several close friends as I express in the post entitled Tuesday People, those who really know me and, at least most of the time, “get” me—we have what Ortlund describes as “simply a mutual delight to be in each other’s company.” Often, I find myself relishing the Ordinary Time spent in the presence of my friends; we are not engaging in holiday celebrations or celebrating milestones, we are just doing life together. However, there is a mental obstacle to allowing this mindset to permeate my thoughts about Jesus, but that is exactly what I should be doing.

Consider this: “Here is the promise of the gospel and the message of the whole Bible: In Jesus Christ, we are given a friend who will always enjoy rather than refuse our presence. This is a companion whose embrace of us does not strengthen or weaken depending on how clean or unclean, how attractive or revolting, how faithful or fickle, we presently are. The friendliness of his heart for us subjectively is as fixed and stable as is the declaration of his justification of us objectively.” Doesn’t this describe the type of Never-Failing Friend we should all aspire to be?

“Won’t most of us admit that even with our best friends, we don’t feel fully comfortable divulging everything about our lives? We like them, and even love them, and go on vacation with them, and sing their praises to others—but we don’t really, at the deepest heart level, entrust ourselves to them. Even in many of our marriages, we are friends of a sort, but we haven’t gotten naked in soul the way we have in body.” Naked in soul?!? That results in a few Stepped-On Toes!

“What if you had a friend at the center of the bull’s-eye of your relationship circle, whom you knew would never raise his eyebrows at what you share with him, even the worst parts of you? All our human friendships have a limit to what they can withstand. But what if there were a friend with no limit? No ceiling on what he would put up with and still want to be with you.” That’s what I call a Never-Failing Friend, and although I am confident that I will continually fall flat on my face, I refuse to relinquish this as a life goal. Who else is willing to up their game in this pursuit?

I would treasure if you would take the time to complete this sentence in the comments section below: I would describe a Never-Failing Friend as ____________________________.

Reference:

Ortlund, D. (2020). Gently and lowly: The heart of Christ for sinners and sufferers. [Kindle version]. Crossway.