The Fellowship of the Believer

I was recently prodded to write about some characteristics that I have found to be so special, and necessary, in Christian friendships/fellowship and what is written below is my attempt to capture that in the space that was allowed for a blog post. There is much more that could be written about these different points, but I do know that these points below are what make Christian fellowship so different than the world. So here goes….

(I will add one point of clarification before I begin, though - when I am speaking about friendships, it is female friendships with other females or male friendships with other males, unless it is someone you are dating or your spouse OR the single person or couple is interacting with another couple. Just so we are on the same page!)

The first point that I want to touch upon is that the friends that you should be looking for in godly Christian fellowship are those that put God above the relationship. What does this mean exactly? You want a friend that puts God ahead of you and, therefore, points you to God as they are looking to Him. You want a friend who spends time looking to God first. You want someone who doesn’t need the friendship - for their acceptance, for their attention, for their identity - because they already know they are accepted by God. You don’t want a friend that will be loyal without thinking or one that is competing with you for appearance’s sake in the church, but you do want someone who, along with you, is looking to the joy that God desires for His people in His objective truth and says, together with you, “let’s both look at that as our standard of joy and hope.” A lot of times friendship in a local church can start backwards with putting the caboose (friendship) before the engine (God) and, as the analogy shows, it can have an affect on the relationship moving forward well or rightly. But when each individual in the friendship is looking to God first, it is not being inward focused, it is beneficial for the friendship not only for discerning who is best to be taking counsel from in the first place or how not to be partaking in a man-focused form of fellowship, but also from the place of both friends resting in God above all else and not needing that friendship for their self-worth.

The second point is this: I would suggest that an individual of adult age look for friends across age ranges instead of life stages. I know this is a common thing in many church groups - to group people by life stage - but I think it skews the vision of friendship a bit. Now there is a brief explanation that I must give here - dependent children under the common age of adulthood, normally the age of 18 or 19, will obviously be interacting with other children of varying ages and will know the adults through their parents, BUT when you reach college or university age - at a time when you would be interacting with people of differing ages in your university classes or at your workplaces - I do think it is beneficial for these individuals to begin to start integrating into the life of the church gathering instead of continuing the life stage process. Okay, so here is my why: Friendships should be based on that common ground of being worshippers of God - that constant line that continues throughout a life regardless of life stage and that persists regardless of what may come and go in a person’s life. That is what ties the believers together. And whether a woman is single or is married or is married with kids or her kids moved out and got married or she was just recently widowed, the thing that will remain the same throughout every or any aspect of those life stages that she goes through is that she is a worshipper of God. That is the constant. And doing that, continuing on in that first and foremost, will be beneficial to any or every life stage that she may or may not be a part.

The problem that I find happens with life stage groups is this: Individuals will pursue the life stages. And when they get into the life stage group, they will just talk about that life stage with that group. And this can be unhelpful to the whole group of women in a lot of different ways. For one, it breeds a type of “keeping up with the Jones’” that leads to a lot of quick marriages and un-thought-through pregnancies. If a friend jumped up to the next life stage because they got married, well…I might never talk with them again as often if I don’t try to get married, too. It becomes a competition or - even worse - an almost classist type of system in the local church. And the people who say “Oh look, I got everything on my bingo card!” tend to be the ones that are looked at as having everything all together because they got through all the life stage checklists, which isn’t the best metric - it’s not whether they have all the things. That’s putting the focus on the externals. Because having the things doesn’t mean you are actually doing the things rightly. People can have babies and not be parents in the godly sense of the word. People can get married and not really have a marriage. It also makes it come across like people’s lives are over if they are not in one of these life stages anymore, or that they cannot begin their lives until they become part of one of them. But this is not the point of friendship and, as I will say in the next point, all of that is focusing on the externals and the surface instead of the internal.

BUT if you have a group of adult women who are all, across ages, looking to Christ and His word as every day worshippers - whether they are married or not, or have children or not - then the focus will be on the thing that is most important in all of their lives, that spans life stages, that persists regardless of age, that shapes each relationship they are in, that guides each circumstance they will face = God. Talking about His word, His objective truth as their standard. And if each woman is thinking in this way, then a single person or a married person or a married person with children or a widowed person could look at things biblically (without having to experience a life stage) and speak about God to each other about what marriage is supposed to point toward or what parenting should be or what it means to be single as a sister in Christ. You don’t have to be married to guide a married couple to each other and speak about the importance of servant leadership in a household. You don’t need to have children to speak to someone who does have kids about what parenting means, or what it means to be a father, or help point the parents to be there for their children. You don’t need to be single to speak to a single person about what they are looking for in the person they would like to marry, or what marriage means in the first place. And, to add another point - age isn’t an indicator of wisdom, the Spirit being in a life is the indicator of wisdom. Ultimately, you must look at the fruit and character of the individual before determining wisdom and whether it is there in a life or not, because a young person may be one to listen to far more than an older person, or one older person may be far better to take counsel from than another. There are many ideologies that, if we continued listening to the older generation without thought, it would be very wrong (things like segregation or the Puritan work ethic), and there are many young people who we should be watchful about what is said. It takes discernment, and placing things up against objective truth, to consider whether one should be a source of counsel. All I am ultimately saying is this - if we spent more time focusing on the individuals as worshippers of God and looking to His word and the joy that God desires for His people, it is far more beneficial for the gathering as a whole to have the age range meeting together to hear the wise counsel of the youth and the wise counsel of the older generation than to separate them all into their little life-stage specific boxes.

The third, and final, point is this: friendships with believers should be intentionally focused on the internal. Yes, I know I have to explain this one more.

So, tonight we were going through the book of Colossians with the kids and we got to the part in chapter one where it speaks about Jesus and says that He is the image of the invisible God. And my young daughter stopped on that part and said something along the lines of…because He shows us God. And we said yes, and we went into the numerous reasons how He does that:

• 1. He points to all that the Old Testament said about God - why He was doing what He was doing, what He was pointing toward, what the symbols and signs look forward to. But in order to see these points, one must also read the Old Testament. We cannot fully understand Christ without seeing how the Old Testament points to Christ.


• 2. Christ’s coming and living a perfect life and dying in the place of His people - His work on the cross - declares God’s glory and shows the full expanse of God’s attributes.


• 3. He points out what it means for God to do what He did for His people, He points out how His attributes declare that His work is sure, and He points out what it now means for His people post-cross because He is God and because of the attributes.

But then my daughter said, “But we never have a picture of Him. He is never described by His physical appearance.” And this is a beautiful question because, as we said to her, if He focused on His external appearance people would focus on this, they would sit in front of a picture and just dwell on why He looked a certain way or how He looked. It would be a physical interaction with Him. In the same way as people spend time moralistically looking through the Bible and saying “How does this apply to me? How am I like this person? What does this say to me about how I can get a similar experience?” The viewing of God shifts away from who He is, what He said, what He was doing through it all - about Him and Him alone. And as we all know from watching movies or looking at advertisements or hearing about dating, most of the time in the world things are based on the physical, as well. External appearances, people’s status, how popular they are, and so on. But God did not put this information about Jesus in the Bible. He did not care to write this down. And we are not to have pictures of Christ around in our homes or other such environments and act as if that is what He looked like (though many children’s Bibles or movies do actually do this), because He never focused on that. And this is an important thing to consider.

He didn’t focus on it because He is more concerned about the internal, not the external. We don’t have images of Him. We learn of Him through the reading of His word, which signifies how there is a depth to our relationship with Him - we must take the time to read, to learn, to understand. And, in a superficial world, that seems harder, but, you know what? It teaches us a beautiful lesson. The internal in our relationships is far greater than the external.

Take friendship, for example. We don’t pick our friends based on their hair colour or their eye colour or their skin colour or whether they are tall or short. We also don’t pick our friends based on their popularity or by how much money they have or what their status or title is. The physical appearance of individuals or their physical facade is not the foundation of our friendships. We are to consider our friendships - if they are truly godly friendships - by if what they are saying to us is good and true, if they are a good example to us, if they desire (as we do) to point each other to Him and the joy that He desires for His people according to objective, and not subjective, truth. This is internal and it puts the emphasis on depth and character. Truly knowing a person is asking questions, getting to know who they are inside, asking what they think about particular topics. And it takes an intentionality and an involvement that is much “harder” to do than most people want. Because look, If you talk on the phone with someone, or over Zoom, what do you have to do? You have to ask questions. You have to inquire about them. You have to think of them and what they are doing and what their interests are or the conversation will likely die and it will be incredibly awkward. Same with writing a letter. What do you have to do when you write a letter? Ask questions. Inquire. Get to know a person more. And no one really wants to do those methods of communication as much. Why? Because they are considered harder. Or at least potentially more awkward.

I know that this article is about characteristics of godly friendship and fellowship, but, since our spouses should be our most bestest of best friends, let’s look at dating and marriage for a brief second as another instance where this is highlighted. So many people focus on the physical for marriage - whether it be the selection of a spouse based on the individual’s looks or charm or wealth or, being more church-specific, that marriage happens and the couple can have sex. But both of those reasonings are faulty for a number of reasons and will have detrimental effects on a marriage. When a person is dating, that dating time is primarily for the couple to talk, to get to know each other, to talk through what they believe or what they think about certain topics, to see how they think about God, to get an understanding of the other person’s character. The physical appearance of that individual is not the biggest thing - their internal is the biggest deal and it is important to know that internal before you begin a lifelong covenant with the person. Physical appearance will wax and wane and people who are focused on this will look elsewhere for relationships that satisfy this desire. But a couple that has put in the work to get to know each other, what they are interested in, what their thoughts are, what their beliefs are, how they would work through things together, this will be a difference and a deal-breaker. My husband then, if I use myself as an example, will come to know me as he is supposed to - as though we are one, as much as I know me (do you see how becoming one is not just physical?) and, in light of that, he will be my greatest confidante, my most trusted counsel, my co-decision-maker, the one I go to first for my emotional or spiritual or mental-thought processing (apart from God), the one I delight in conversing with. When I go to my other female friends it is with things that my husband and I have already discussed. And the sex part of this discussion of marriage hinges on this understanding of being intentionally focused on the internal qualities of the spouse, as well. There are so many people who have come up to me and talked about how the sex part of the marriage shows your love. This is the love part. And I cannot tell you how many speakers I’ve heard say “couples, you just need to have sex. Women you need have sex when your husband wants it” but they very rarely point out what it truly means for a man to be the servant leader of his household. But the latter is WAY more important to discuss than the former. Why? Because it gives a very beautiful picture of marriage that highlights how sex is not the primary focus of a couple’s marriage. Because if you discuss it the other way around, by pointing out how the man should be interested in the mental, the spiritual, the emotional aspects of his wife’s life, how he will serve her and initiate conversation with her and inquire about her interests and highlight her strengths and talk through things with her and delight in growing to know her more and more and, if the couple has kids, he will be the first to teach and train them up, he will be the first to be involved - this is a servant leader, and WHEN THIS IS HAPPENING, yes there will be sex and it will be desired. But there is a difference. Do you see? The being interested in her internal life was there first, the oneness in terms of knowing her like herself was there first. Not the other ways around. Because people can have sex with people that they don’t even care about. Couples who have been married for forty years who are living completely separate lives and rarely communicate with each other can have sex because the church says that couples have to have sex, but the sex doesn’t make the marriage and the sex doesn’t show love. The internal of the person you are married to matters more than physical appearance and the physical act of sex. The same could be said about the intentionality of focusing on what’s going on on the inside of an individual when it comes to parenting, as well - you can be in the room with your kids and watching them do things, but what the Bible says is important for a father, for example, is not that they are in the proximity of their children when they are at home and just watching them play or do their homework or that they live in the same house with them or drive them to a church building. Like I said before, people can have children but not be parents. It’s that the being interested in the internal makes the physical presence of the parent mean more. What is important is that the father is involved, is inquiring about their life, is teaching and training them up, is interested in their lives.

Now I am not saying not have meet up times with people. As you have seen from the points above, there still is face-to-face interaction. BUT the focus on the internal more than the surface makes the in-person interactions meaningful. And often the not-in-person methods of communication can only serve to uphold and strengthen the meet up times because they have to be more intentional. With that said, there are a couple points that I want to touch on when it comes to meeting up face-to-face.

The first point being that, many times, there is a greater potentiality in face-to-face interactions for the surface to take precedence over the internal and the intentionality. It is much more plausible for a person to be like “we meet up all the time, we see each other a bunch” and people could come away with the impression that the relationship is strong when it is actually quite hollow. There are so many ways that people can be distracted and/or lack meaningful conversation when in-person. Because we can sit in a room with a person and see them physically, we can sit in a room and do different things with a person at the same time, we can go to an amusement park and ask if they want funnel cake and if they want to go on roller coasters with us, but this doesn’t mean that we know that person. Someone can work with someone else for years and their discussions have solely revolved superficially around work and tasks and then they find out down the line that that person has been involved in something and are surprised about it, but this could very well be the case if there wasn’t any actual intentionality in the discussion to do the “harder” things that we discussed above. There are just more distractions, more ways to not talk, when you meet someone in person that it really takes a lot of interest on both parties' part to not let that enter into the mix and to purposefully make that time meaningful. I know this is back on the dating conversation again, but there is one thing that I always mention to people when they talk with me about dating or date nights - you have to be very careful about these, you have to be very intentional about these, the both of you have to really guard this space, because they have the potential to fall into the externals very, very fast. Either it will be the situation where you will be out with a group or it will just be the two of you but you are out of the house at a location where you have numerous distractions, like a movie theatre or mini golfing or a concert or a busy restaurant, and you don’t have moments to talk, you don’t have moments to get to know the person well. Whether it’s money focused, or fun focused, or what have you, this shifts the frame to the physical and there have been numerous times where I have heard of a couple becoming tired of the marriage relationship down the line because the fun was gone, the pursuit or the chase was gone, the guy taking the girl out for fancy dates had dwindled. Dates pre-marriage need spaces for intentional discussions of what’s on the inside of each one of you (thoughts, beliefs, interests, concerns) and superficial dates for the sake of dates don’t help a marriage once you’re married. Especially if it’s not focused on the internal, if it’s not reinforcing the foundation, and most especially, if that is the only time that, or the only spaces where, you are spending time together. Now, again, I’m not saying to never go to a movie with your spouse - my husband and I watch plenty of movies together and even when we’re at home watching a movie, we still want to put a lot of “work” into making sure that the line doesn’t get skewed for the health of our relationship.

The other point that I wanted to mention is that, to make it meaningful and intentional, there must be that element of involvement by the individuals, all of whom have an interest in that friendship and strengthening the depth of the relationship. So, just like long-distance friendships work well when both parties are intentional about keeping in touch through the harder things of phone calls or text messages or zoom chats or letters so that when they do meet face-to-face their conversations are on the foundations of these previous discussions, non-long-distance friendships rise and fall on this kind of intentional involvement or lack thereof, as well. It might not seem like it, but it’s true. The purposefulness must be there. Christian friendship is intentional, involved and internally-focused. Instead of focusing on the external things like His appearance, God highlighted the internal when it came to Christ’s imaging of Himself: we can know who He is, what are His characteristics, what He said. We can find this in His word as we take the time to get to know more about Him, dig deeper, ask questions - and find endless wonder! Similarly, the focus on the external in our relationships is not as important. The most important thing is the meaningfulness of the internal. And that takes an interest that goes deeper than the surface, the superficial, and the woo.