Choosing Friends

For the single woman, friends are one of the best deals of your season. As it says in Proverbs 12:26, “The righteous should choose his friends carefully” (NKJV). Yesterday we considered friends who sharpen and spur us on to godliness.  Today we want to look at two more friends that Scripture exhorts us to pursue.

First we should pursue friends that mentor. Titus 2:3-5 commands the older women to be training the younger women. We should all be aggressively seeking out other women to help us grow in the admirable qualities of biblical femininity. And if you are that older woman, I want to encourage you to consider passing on your experience and wisdom to those behind you. We need it! So, stop a moment and consider your friends. Young women, we should ask ourselves: “Do I have a friend from whom I am learning some aspect of biblical womanhood?” And older women, ask this question: “Am I faithfully imparting biblical womanhood to at least one friend?”

And secondly, let’s look for friends who need friends. It’s so easy, isn’t it, to get comfortable with our close friends? While longtime friends are a huge blessing from the Lord, we are also called to reach out to the new person and the lonely. “Let brotherly love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers,” exhorts Hebrews 13:1-2. Remember what it was like to be new or not know anyone? To see other women chatting excitedly and to have no one to talk to? To choose our friends carefully means we must guard against selfishness and laziness. So let’s take a look around us: “Who is one woman I should reach out to?” It can be as simple as introducing ourselves to a visitor at church, or inviting a quiet woman out for coffee, or including someone new at our weekly lunch with friends. May we all commit to helping new friends not feel new for very long.

Let’s not miss out on these two great friendship opportunities. Somehow I think we may all be surprised to find that we are the ones that end up with the good end of the deal.