An Invitation into Deeper Relationships

What are some of your favorite memories? How many of them include other people, and specifically, friends? What made those memories special? Laughing so hard you couldn’t catch your breath? Sharing a secret? Doing something questionable and hoping you didn’t get caught? Being there for someone? Or someone being there for you?

Real friendships include late-night movies, attending funerals, talking about romantic interests, and growing closer to God. They don’t break with disagreement but grow stronger. True companionship allows space for silence and for sharing struggles and celebrations. Faithful friends are difficult to find, develop, and maintain. They require intentionality, sacrifice, and humility. Yet they’re so important because real community is where we learn, grow, and become who we become. And when it comes to following God, our faith often grows strongest through relationships with others.

That’s why we recommend going through this with someone you want to grow deeper with. If you don’t have someone in mind, perhaps you will by the end. We’ve included seven short stories to explore how the Bible models deep and healthy friendships. By exploring these stories, we can hopefully draw closer to God and others.

Before our first study, here’s some context for friendship and the Bible.

First of all, the Bible’s not a “how-to” guide for friendships. Instead, the Bible includes plenty of real-life stories packed with wisdom about relationships. Friendship itself is a theme in the Bible. More than that, it’s the very nature of the God whom the Bible introduces us to.

Historic biblical Christianity teaches a rather hard-to-understand but life-changing truth: God is the Trinity, meaning three persons and yet only one God. Make sense? Probably not. But instead of trying to figure it out exactly (believe us, people have tried for thousands of years), the point is that true community is best seen in the loving and timeless interaction between God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, whose outpouring of love for one another was so great, it led to the creation of the world.

A great example of this loving and supportive community is in the gospel of Matthew, the first book of the Bible’s New Testament. The gospel means “good news,” and Matthew was a friend and follower of Jesus.

Open a Bible and read Matthew 3:13-17.

Did you notice all three persons of God? Jesus, God the Son, is submerged under the water to mark the beginning of his ministry. God, the Holy Spirit, takes the form of a dove and lands on Jesus’s shoulder as if to say, “I’m with you.” And God the Father audibly honors and blesses Jesus in public while reminding him of how much he loves him.

The Bible traces the story of this relational God inviting human beings closer than they ever thought possible. One of the first is a man named Abraham, who is called a “friend of God” (James 2:23). God talks to another leader, Moses, “face to face, as one speaks to a friend” (Exodus 33:11). Fast forward a few thousand years to when Jesus calls his followers his “friends” (John 15:14-16). And then the Holy Spirit brings these believers in Jesus together into what’s supposed to be the most authentic community in the world: the church (Ephesians 4).

This community was created so that those who belong to it take care of each other, worship God together, and serve others in the world in unity and love. If we were going to draw it, it might look like this:

But it doesn’t always look like this, does it? Many of us experience shallow or broken relationships. Many of us are lonely. Some have been abandoned. The church is full of people who don’t model the love of God seen in the Trinity. And we might struggle to define “true community,” because so few of us have experienced it.

So together, let’s walk through these Bible stories and apply the wisdom we see. Reading, reflecting on, and responding to them might help us become the friends we want to find and model to the world what true community looks like. It may be a bit messy. It’ll definitely be hard and require vulnerability. But God made us for friendship with him and others.

Maybe a good place to start is with this prayer:

God who sees me, you hear my thoughts and desires. You’re aware of my deepest fears and struggles, and you know me better than I know myself. Typically, I like to keep my true self between me and you, but you made me for close friendships. In this moment of quiet, open my heart to your friendship, and the friendships of those around me. Help me to see, know, and love others, the way you see, know, and love me. Amen.

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