FBC Daily Devotional – November 11, 2020

Friendship, Loyalty, and the Pain of Betrayal

Week already. I hope your week has gone well for you. Pretty significant difference today compared to what it was like Monday and even yesterday until later in the day. Oh boy. But, you know, this is a time of year we should expect this and how grateful we can be that the Lord has graciously blessed us with about a week of beautiful, beautiful November weather.

So thankful for that. Well, today may be a different story, but nevertheless, we're grateful for the day that the Lord has given us. So we talked yesterday about friendship. I want to continue that idea today and then again tomorrow.

Do you have any junior high friendship stories? Wasn't that a wonderful time of life, those middle school years, trying to navigate life and figure out relationships and so forth? But thinking about friendship, my mind took me back to this incident that I am not in the least bit proud of and really quite ashamed of it.

But our family had just moved to the Chicago area, Chicago suburbs from Ohio. New church, new church home, and a whole bunch of new kids to get along with and to learn about. And one of the kids that kind of became a friend right away was the son.

His dad and my dad both had similar kind of jobs at the same place. And so we kind of hit off a friendship pretty quickly. But I was a little bit of an outsider in his circle of friends. He had another guy or two that were best friends.

And then, you know, I was just kind of a friend, but a tag-along friend. Well, you know, when you're in that position, you want to fit in. You want to be in with the other guys, right? Well, in the spring of the year, our church had gone, our youth group had gone to a camp to do some work just, you know, helping clean up the camp after winter and so forth, getting it ready for the summer season.

And a bunch of guys were there. This friend and his best friend and I were there. And then there was another guy who was in the youth group. Our family had just gotten to know his family. He was not the real athletic type, if I can put it that way.

He was more of the student and therefore a little bit awkward. And the guy that I was trying to fit in with his crowd, they were all, you know, the athletes. He loved to play hockey. They, you know, they were just that kind of, those kinds of guys.

Well, I was walking with the hockey player guy and his best friend and another buddy, and we're walking along. And the not-so-athletic guy who are, you know, I had just gotten to know a little bit and got to be friendly with, he looked at me as a friend, but I'm with these other guys.

And Ted was his name, was out in front of us and kind of by himself. And, you know, the couple of the other guys, they started making fun of him, started saying things. I don't remember what they said, thankfully.

But I do remember they were just making fun of him and laughing at him. And I'm ashamed to say, I just kind of laughed along with it. I felt terrible doing so because I felt like it was a betrayal. And it was, it was.

And yet I just kind of went along with it. I wondered how Ted felt about that. About a couple months later, I ended up going with him and his family up to Minnesota for several days. And I stayed with Ted for a week.

And we ended up having a pretty good friendship after that. But at that moment, I was a terrible friend, a terrible friend. And what that illustrates to me is just how difficult friendship can be in this regard.

A Faithful Friend and Proverbs 20:6

Friendship needs to be built on a mutual trust and respect. And that can be tenuous and not always easy to maintain. And a passage in Proverbs, Proverbs 20, verse 6, brings that out. Proverbs 26, 20, verse 6, says this.

Many a man proclaims his own steadfast love, but a faithful man who can find. You know, it's easy to proclaim your steadfast love. That steadfast love is talking about loyalty, loyalty to a covenant. We read about God as one of his qualities that is to be so appreciated is that he is marked by steadfast love.

He is absolutely faithful to his covenant, to his word. And when the Lord declares that he is faithful in steadfast love, abundant in steadfast love, we can absolutely count on that and trust him for that.

But man, not so much. It's easy to proclaim steadfast love. But then when that love is put to the test, when that loyalty is put to the test, when the man who proclaims his loyalty is then in a setting, in a mix of other people he wants to impress, will he be faithful?

Will he risk the ridicule and the rejection of those he's trying to impress in order to be faithful, in order to be loyal to his friend? It's easy to proclaim steadfast love, but a faithful man who can find.

When you find that kind of a friend, you know you've found a good friend. You know you've found a faithful friend. Now think about this in regard to the marriage relationship too, right? Every couple that comes to the marriage altar stands before the minister, the officiant, and proclaims steadfast love.

I'm going to be faithful to you. I'm going to love you till death do us part. At that moment, in the euphoria of the moment, in the rush and joy and thrill of romantic love, it's easy to proclaim one's own steadfast love.

But a faithful man or woman who can find, the faithful spouse is also one who will be a good friend who can find. A really good friend will hear those, will make that vow, will proclaim that vow of steadfast love, and then stick to it, be faithful to it through the thick and the thin, the up and the down, the in and out, through, as the marriage vow says, through sickness and in health, in poverty and in wealth, in the good days and the bad days that will all surely come.

The proclaimer of steadfast love will be faithful to that steadfast love. That's true in a marriage relationship. That's true in a good friendship. So I hope you have one or more, many good faithful friends like that.

That's such a blessing from the Lord when you've found a faithful one, a faithful friend. And I trust also that you are that friend to somebody else, to your spouse, if you have one, but to the friends that you've proclaimed your steadfast love to.

Prayer for Faithful Friendship

So let's pray and ask God to help us be that kind of a friend, one whose finding has become a joy. So our Father and our God, we are reminded today of just how crucial it is to be people marked by friends, marked by steadfast love.

Deliver us from the flighty, fair-weather friendships that can be so hurtful and destructive in this life. Help us to be faithful friends, we pray in Jesus' name and for his sake. Amen. All right, well have a good rest of your midweek day and I trust that the Lord will bless you in it.

Have a good day.