So, would you? Lay down your life? For a Friend? For a stranger? As believers we are called to love enough to lay down our lives for our friends. I was thinking about this, and a couple of words that have seemed to take up residence in my life recently, and it hit me like a rock to the skull. Laying down my life - dying - giving a kidney - wouldn't be as difficult as making time for someone. Wow! That hurt. You see I have trouble with people. I find it easy to say I love everyone and I really try to be accepting and loving towards all people but I don't always make time for them.
Relationships require intentional activity. The dictionary defines intentional as something done on purpose or deliberate. And there is the struggle for me. Ultimately, I'm lazy. In my lifetime I've met and known a lot of people. Some I remember because they made an impression, many I don't recall more than their name or face and oftentimes not both. You see that introverted personality of mine created a large gap in building relationships. It kept me from going below the surface with most of the people I met. The reality is most of them I have very few memories of what might have transpired in that relationship. They say hindsight is twenty, twenty and in some things I would agree, but with memories we tend to remember things either better than they were or worse and if we don't make a point of marking that moment then we might not remember at all.
Lately, I've truly been convicted about being more intentional in my relationships. There are many levels in our friendships - some truly are just surface relationships and some go a little deeper while very few make it to that intimate level of knowing everything there is to know. Christ is the most intimate relationship we can have. Why? Because He knows it all. Everything we think, everything we do. The things in the light and the things in the dark. The things we want Him to know and the things we don't. We can't hide from Him. People only know what we let them and some only know what they see.
In the past six or seven years, I've come to realize the importance of intentional relationships that are more intimate. I have a very small list of people who know all or most about me. Those people I would trust with my life and I would do anything for them. I even expect them to hold me accountable. Because they know my weaknesses and if I truly trust them, then I know that when they call me to task its because they love me and know my weaknesses and my strengths and often can see what I can't.
Beyond those relationships I'm seeing a need to be intentional in giving of my life. Words of encouragement or just time. That's hard for me. You see I'm an enabling co-dependent. For those who don't understand that it means I really like to be in control and most of the time I think I can fix all your problems so I map everything out and when you don't follow the plan it really messes me up. So to ask me to lay down my life - my plans, my time, my schedule - just to talk or be with you is harder than if you ask for my life blood. That I recognize this in myself has taken me years. I'm working hard at it and striving to deepen the relationships that need deepening and trying to make time for those that just need my presence. It's hard and I can't do it on my own power or strength. That's why I have to be even more intentional in taking in the love that only Christ can pour in through His word, prayer and fellowship with other believers. Without Him filling me up then I can't pour into other people.
Proverbs 18:24 (NIV) One who has unreliable friends soon comes to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.
I don't want to be an unreliable friend and I want to be the kind of friend that counts as family. To be there in the good and bad. But to do that I have to be intentional. And that's just plain hard.
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