Building Friendships

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Malcolm Webber

1. Reflect and begin a written list of what are characteristics and other elements in a relationship that would qualify in your mind as a “friendship”.

2. Pray to the Lord about that list and ask Him to add or delete from it. Do a search in the scriptures about friends and friendship. Make adjustments to your list as needed.

3. Now go before God again, ask him to lead you to someone from the church family that you can be those things to and that you may become part of the answer to someone else’s prayer for a friend.

4. Expect divine appointments and take steps of obedience to reach out to the people He brings across your path. You may find that your first step after an informal chat with a person will be to pray for them and their family, and then gradually they open their hearts to you and you to them. The key is to be proactively looking to God, asking how you can be a friend to that person and then willing to take risks (like vulnerability) or doing practical blessings (like a card or email of encouragement, or baking cookies and giving them some, or taking them out for coffee or dinner) in obedience.

5. Testify to God’s faithfulness as you see His hand at work in this.