Power Of Friends Series

A genuine friend offers wise counsel, even a healthy clash of views. This counsel, even in the form of loving disapproval, as shared among friends, is healthy.

Perfume and incense bring joy to the heart, and the pleasantness of one's friend springs from his earnest counsel. Proverbs 27:9

Friendship allows open and sometimes difficult counsel to be conveyed to our lives.

Proverbs 28:23 - He who rebukes a man will in the end gain more favor than he who has a flattering tongue.

Illustration:

I had one of those little embarrassing moments the other day. One that could have been a big embarrassing moment. I was in the office on my way to a meeting when Janet said, "Pastor you need a Tissue."

Was I embarrassed? Well yeah.

Was I thankful? Oh yeah. Think what it could have been like?

Proverbs 27:5-6

An open rebuke is better than hidden love! Wounds from a sincere friend are better than many kisses from an enemy. (NLT)

Such a counselor is a friend to be cherished.

In our tolerance we have mistakenly judged Godly candor to be wrong. We have lost the ability to allow friendships to sharpen us.

III. Compassionate yet Challenging

Candor is always balanced with Compassion

I'm not as prone to manipulate people's emotions as I am to forget them.

Stuart Briscoe, Leadership, Vol. 11, no. 1.

A trustworthy friend has compassion the leads to appropriate action.

Proverbs 25: 20 Like one who takes away a garment on a cold day, or like vinegar poured on a wound, is one who sings songs to a heavy heart.

Distresses and afflicts him the more; as he cannot sing himself, he cannot bear to hear others sing; such rather should be condoled and wept with than to have songs sung to them.

Proverbs 17:9 (NIV)

9 Whoever would foster love covers over an offense, but whoever repeats the matter separates close friends.

"Do not forsake your friend and your father's friend, and do not go to your brother's house in the day of your calamity. Better is a neighbor who is near than a brother who is far away" (Prov. 27:10).

Solomon understood that we had an obligation to those around us.

Proverbs 21:13 - If a man shuts his ears to the cry of the poor, he too will cry out and not be answered.

Proverbs 24:11-12 (NIV)

11 Rescue those being led away to death; hold back those staggering toward slaughter.

12 If you say, "But we knew nothing about this," does not he who weighs the heart perceive it?

Does not he who guards your life know it? Will he not repay everyone according to what they have done?

In The Masculine Mandate: God's Calling to Men, author Richard Phillips writes:

There are two statues in Washington D.C. that together tell a remarkable story. One is the massive memorial to General Ulysses S. Grant that stands at the east end of the Reflecting Pool, literally in the morning shadow of the U. S. Capitol building. Visitors can hardly miss this majestic depiction of the legendary general atop his war stallion. Grant's military leadership was decisive to the Union's victory in the Civil War, and he is considered a symbol of the force of human will, an icon of the strong man who stands against the storm when all others have shrunk back.