Comments on: Are You A True Friend?

By: Ben Toh

Ben Toh — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 05:08:12 +0000

Thanks, Brian, for reminding me of God’s inclusivity, though He is THE most exclusive Being.

By: Brian Karcher

Brian Karcher — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 14:53:40 +0000

This is an edifying statement, Ben, for people who have been excluded from the organizations of men:

“God demonstrates the most marvelous inclusivity toward sinners. The most elite and exclusive of all clubs is the fellowship of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Their joy, satisfaction and fulfillment among themselves is sublime, exquisite and perfect; it can never be improved upon. But what did this perfect trinitarian community do? They decided to open up their fellowship to sinners. They invited the most worthless, vulgar and unqualified scumbags (us) to join their exquisite club.”

By: christian

christian — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 12:12:58 +0000

As a Christian, true friend we must have a pure heart, Good behavior, especially good relationship with God. If we have a good relationship with God more peoples think that you are good in physical and spiritual life. But before you have a good relationship or being a true friend we must to know God personally through follow and knowing his words.
In this passage in social network i learned that money cannot buy happiness, because money is an temporary things that anytime can will lost. But being true friend or have a good relationship in one another it is everlasting.
i conclude that we must trust and depend on God always, especially in difficult situation.also put our hope to God …

By: Ben Toh

Ben Toh — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 18:31:42 +0000

At the time I wrote this, the Social Network was favored to win the Academy awards for best picture. But then the King’s Speech gained momentum after that and subsequently won.

It is interesting that these 2 front runners for Best Picture dealt with themes regarding friendship:

* In the Social Network, the friendship failed among 4 friends, for what I considered a deadly spirit of exclusivity and elitism.
* In the King’s Speech, the friendship of the king and the speech therapist blossomed beautifully through out the movie.

By: Ben Toh

Ben Toh — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 18:18:41 +0000

Thanks, Grace, for your influential friendship in the love of God. As I have personally witnessed each time I have visited you over the last few years, the spirit of honesty, openness, and transparency is truly refreshing and uplifting and transcendent. May the Spirit of the Lord anoint you all the more as many more students come to see the joyous friendship of Christ through your community of Christian love.

By: Ben Toh

Ben Toh — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 18:09:40 +0000

Hi Mark, Thank God that you enjoyed your amazing spiritual family in Christ in UBF. It reminded me of Tim Keller's new book, King's Cross. The first chapter is about the Trinity. Since the Trinity is utterly different, "Instead of self-centeredness, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are characterized in their essence by mutually self-giving love. No person in the Trinity insists that the others revolve around him; rather each of them voluntarily circles and orbits around the others." Surely, this is the very essence of friendship, and of Christianity, since we are made in the image of God (Gen 1:26,27). In Keller's words, "If this world was made by a triune God, relationships of love are what life is really all about." Thank God that you enjoyed trinitarian love and friendship in your spiritual family. May God bless you to pray for and include other friends, as you were included in this family of triune love and friendship.

By: grace

grace — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 13:13:15 +0000

I remember before while I was testifying about who am I before God change me or how God change me to a group of students. They were so amazed because they thought that I am sinless like Jesus because I teach the word of God. From then on one by one they also shared their struggles and they felt that they can I can still accepted them and will not turn my backs on them. Our relationship became more meaningful. I remember Jesus how he approached sinners like the samaritan woman, the tax collectors or even judas who betrayed Jesus he did not condemned them instead he show his undying love and grace and helping them to repent and have new life with him. Jesus is our true friend and if we imitate the way he approaches us we could win new true friends in Jesus.

By: Mark Sadie

Mark Sadie — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 15:43:35 +0000

To be truly included and accepted in a circle of friends where everyone accepts you as you are, is indeed amazing. But it’ll be more amazing if our friends introduce us, like my UBF family did, to Jesus Christ, that like Dr. Ben said, included as his friend and best of all, He died for me and you.

By: Ben Toh

Ben Toh — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 04:47:20 +0000

Thanks, Noah. We all love a friend who will share their inner heart with us, and thus communicate to us a spirit of trust and inclusivity. I am personally moved by my wife because she trusts me with her heart and life, though I know that I am not worthy of her love and trust. But because she does, my heart is moved and touched by her spirit of inclusivity toward me.
As you implied, we human beings are too sinful to truly love others with. We need Jesus, who though he should have excluded us because of our sins, yet, he included us at the cost of his life. Praise God!
May God bless you to be a friend to many, as Jesus is a friend to you.

By: Noah

Noah — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 04:35:13 +0000

Basically people think that way, that friendship centers inclusion. I also thought that I could be satisfied with a friend whom I wanted to be loyal to me always but that develops selfishness and it’s a childish thought. But on spiritual point of view, including a person, treating them as brothers or sisters may build strong friendship though they’re far from you or they’re not beside you, as long as you value one another and hide nothing. It develops loyalty and trust, and I think that depends on how much you are aware of the things going on between you and your friend? Anyways, I’m not a perfect friend that everybody should desire, besides, why not Jesus be the center of our friendship or why not Jesus be our friend?

By: david bychkov

david bychkov — Sat, 29 Jan 2011 14:41:20 +0000

my comment above should be here…

By: david bychkov

david bychkov — Sat, 29 Jan 2011 14:39:53 +0000

great prayer topic, Henoch… During the last CIS directors conference, while having group Bible study (leaded by M. James Kim, thank you once again M. James) we were so moved of Jesus Christ who called himself “a friend of tax collectors and “sinners. (and prostitutes)”. what is we called for – To have the same attitude (Phil. 2:5). During last 1 or 2 years it was very hard for me to get rid from the feeling that I’m trying to use people somehow in my tries to reach them or to invite for Bible study. But I think there are so many abilities to reveal God love and Gospel to the people even withouth all our agenda, if I just really try to follow Jesus who was friend for all kinds of sinners.

By: Henoch

Henoch — Sat, 29 Jan 2011 13:57:17 +0000

Christine, same was absolutely true for me. If there wasn't a perspective of having bible study with a person soon i didn't consider that kind of friendship worth pursuing. But then i realized: isn't this another way of using people? i was using people and not really loving them. it is a 'fancy' way of using people but still wicked and wrong. When i look at Jesus, i see the Son of God genuinely enjoying people just the way they are. This is the kind of friendship i truly long for and the kind of friend i want to become.

By the way, our main prayer topic for our little one (Sam Paul) is that he may become a friend of God and a friend of people.

By: Christine H

Christine H — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 15:50:19 +0000

I remember that same lecture from John Armstrong and was equally convicted by the same question: “How many non-Christians would consider you their best friend?” I used to feel like if a friendship I had with someone wasn’t leading them to Bible study in UBF that it wasn’t something I should be pursuing. I felt completely disconnected from the world, like I was in a bubble and didn’t know how to interact with everyday people who I met in my classes in college. I eventually learned that there are many ways to reach out and love others and that God can use all of them. I learned that God has given me the gift of making friends, and now I offer that to Him and pray that as I reach out in friendship that others would experience the love of God through me and that our time spent together could lead to deeper trust and ultimately conversations about the gospel and Christ. It was so liberating when I realized I could be myself and use the gifts God has given me to reach out and love others, and trust the outcome to God.

By: Ben Toh

Ben Toh — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 21:55:11 +0000

Thanks, Henoch. I remember the very lecture John Armstrong gave about having non-Christian friends. It also convicted me. So I restored my friendship with a childhood friend who is an atheist, as well as members of my own family. When I did, I realize that I had hurt them by subtly cutting off or cooling off my relationship with them after I had became a Christian. I also began meeting several church planters in Chicago weekly, who belong to the organic house church movement. My wife also began to befriend older neighborhood Catholic ladies. They began studying the Bible with her, and gave monetary offerings to our church out of thanks for friendship. It is surely hard to be a friend to others, like our Lord. It is even harder to get out of my own “exclusive Christian club” mentality.

By: Ben Toh

Ben Toh — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 21:45:53 +0000

Thanks, John, for Aristotle’s advice to value truth above friendship, and the observation that non-Western culture tends to uphold loyalty to friends above truth. This just came to me that it seems like God did both: God valued truth/justice so that he condemned his Son who bore our sins (2 Cor 5:21), yet he valued our friendship enough to sacrifice his Son in our place (John 15:15).

So, how do we emulate what God did? I think that through the cross, and by the help of the Spirit, we may be humbled enough to not feel any superiority or exclusivity toward anyone else, especially among our fellow brother and sisters in Christ.

Don’t you think that we perhaps should not distinguish between missionaries and “sheep,” that is, indigenous Bible students? As previous posts have raised, it seems as though missionaries or shepherds come across as better or “more worthy,” because they sacrifice for sheep, and therefore the sheep should just be thankful.

By: Henoch

Henoch — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 19:30:18 +0000

Ben, thanks for your thoughts on friendship. i have to admit that my way of dealing with friends was very exclusive. For one, i had not realized that virtually all my true friends were UBF people. i hardly had any Christian friends outside of UBF and even worse hardly any friends who were not Christians. When Armstrong was speaking about Jesus who was called a friend of sinners, it really struck me. Armstrong asked the congregation: "how many unbelieving people would call you their best friend?" This question was devastating. There is so much i can and should do about it. I should make every effort possible to nurture relationships with people outside of church and be a generously loving friend. But it is not easy to make that kind of shift and i easily backslide in the old ways of how i subconsciously prioritized whom to write back or not, whom to give a call or not, whom to invite for dinner or not, etc...

By: John Y

John Y — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 02:12:25 +0000

I agree Ben, but I think true friendship in general leads to a spirit of inclusivity, but also entails the risk of being excluded.
I’m told that Aristotle said of Plato (loosely paraphrased), “If we are to be true lovers of wisdom, we must honor the truth more than our friends, and so destroy even that which touches us most closely if truth so demands.” There’s a proverb in the Bible that says something similar about better a situation where you get wounds from a friend than kisses from an enemy. I’m sure all of us might affirm this in theory, but I wonder if it is more difficult to put to practice depending on our cultural upbringing.
Once our ministry invited a physician-philosopher to speak before a predominantly UBF audience. After a brief assessment of our ministry and particularly noticing many Asians in our ministry, he wondered aloud whether in non-Western cultures we tend to uphold loyalty to friends over truth. In Western culture (influenced by Aristotle evidently) supposedly we tend to uphold truth over loyalty to friends.
I have no idea why he randomly brought this point up after observing our ministry as a complete stranger. But his astute observation about friendship and truth has stuck with me every since. For the record, I hope I would value truth so much that I’m willing to risk losing a friendship, but even as a Westerner by culture, I find this very difficult to maintain in practice.

By: Ben Toh

Ben Toh — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 22:11:09 +0000

Yes, Joe, Dr. Lee did refer to UBFers as the Dirty Dozen, as well as the Green Beret. Personally, I loved both analogies tremendously when I first heard them, as I considered myself as being among God’s elite forces on the earth! He had a way to inspire and encourage. As someone else said, “Dr. Lee made serving God fun!”

By: Joe

Joe — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 18:57:03 +0000

I do not recall Dr Samuel Lee ever comparing UBF members to the Green Berets. But in quite a few of his messages, he (indirectly, at least) compared us to The Dirty Dozen. I like that much better.