You think you will always stay close with your best friends from high school. That probably won’t happen. After high school, you’ll meet lots of new people and will probably develop more meaningful, deeper friendships with some of them. Don’t think that you are a bad person when this happens. It is natural.
PETER N., AGE 22
Your personal character and integrity aren’t the only factors that determine the kind of person you’ll become. There’s an outside influence you’ve got to consider: people.
We don’t mean just any people—like your roommate or the people down the hall or your parents or your professors or your employers. These are the people you’re stuck with, for better or for worse. (C’mon, it’s not that bad.) We’re talking about people who are much more fun, much more special and much more influential. We’re talking about your friends.
Ah, friends. They’re probably a very important part of your life right now. Your friends have always been there for you. They basically got you through high school. Unlike your family, who want to change you, your friends accept you for who you are, just the way you are. They don’t judge you. No wonder the wisest man who ever lived said, “A real friend sticks closer than a brother” (Proverbs 18:24).
To get you started, we want to give you a few tips on how to form friendships. We’re going to start with the most important friend you’ll ever have, and work our way down from there.
There are several criteria you could use to choose friends. In fact, we’re going to ask you to place the following qualities of friendship in order of importance:
__ Has a cool car
__ Gives you lecture notes when you don’t go to class
__ Has your best interest in mind all the time
__ Buys beer for you
__ Forgives you no matter what you have done
__ Loans you that cool car
__ Loans you money
__ Knows you better than anyone else
How does your list look? What’s the number one quality you look for in a friend? Wouldn’t it be great to have a friend who knows you better than anyone else? Well, guess what? You already do. His name is God.
Now, you may not believe us, because you probably think God has a lot more important things to do than be your friend (like run the universe). Yes, God is very involved in our world, but His first priority is you. You don’t have to just take our word for it. Here’s what the Bible says about God’s knowing you:
Not even a sparrow, worth only half a penny, can fall to the ground without your Father knowing it. And the very hairs on your head are all numbered. So don’t be afraid; you are more valuable to him than a whole flock of sparrows (Matthew 10:29-31).
This isn’t fairy tale stuff. The God who knows everything (it’s called omniscience) and can do anything (that’s called omnipotence) knows you completely. And here’s the kicker: Even though He knows everything about you, He still loves you unconditionally. “This is real love. It is not that we loved God, but that he loved us” (1 John 4:10).
So far in this book we’ve talked a lot about leaving home. Even if you aren’t leaving home in a physical sense, you are in the process of leaving as you take on more responsibility for yourself. You will always be a part of your family and your heritage. You can never truly leave your family, no matter how much you’d like to at times.
Even though it might seem as though your family wants to run your life, you need to embrace your family as your friends. We’ve put this category of friendship right below God in importance, because no other earthly friendships will be more important to you.
This includes your parents and grandparents, your siblings, your uncles and aunts, and your cousins. If and when you get married, your spouse and your children and eventually your grandchildren will become your best friends.
Perhaps you don’t feel this way about your family. At this stage in your life, your friends may mean more to you than your family. Believe us when we say that your friends will come and go, but your family will always be there. Blood really is thicker than water.
You may come from a family with real problems. We aren’t experts in the field of dysfunctional families; if you need help to figure out how to handle your particular family situation, your pastor or priest may be able to direct you to someone who can help.
There is one thing we can tell you for sure, however. There is a way to overcome your family challenges, and it’s not going to come from trying to change them. The greatest thing you can do is to love your family members where they are and pray for them every day.
Our good friend and mentor John Trent has written about his relationship with his father, which was difficult for as long as he knew him. John never stopped loving his dad, even when his father, on his deathbed, still refused to give John his approval. John never let his father’s dysfunction stand in the way of his own success and his responsibility before God, but he also never stopped loving and respecting his father.
We all need spiritual leaders in our lives, people ordained by God to watch over us and to pray for us. If you have never made friends with your pastor or priest, you are missing out on an incredibly rich friendship. If you’ve never been in the habit of going to church, now would be a great time to start (more about church in chapter 11).
Especially if you are away from home, you need the stability and accountability of a church. You need to be around people who care about your spiritual needs. When you find a church, introduce yourself to the pastor. If the church is very large, you should get to know the associate pastor or the college pastor. Tell your pastor or priest that you want to form a friendship. “Remember your leaders who first taught you the word of God. Think of all the good that has come from their lives, and trust the Lord as they do” (Hebrews 13:7).
After God, your family and your pastor, the most important friends you can have are friends who are friends with God.
We’re not saying you should never make friends with people who aren’t Christians. To the contrary, as a Christian, part of your mission in the world is to make friends with people who don’t know God personally. We’re just saying that you should make it a priority to seek out Christian friends first. Before you can hope to be a positive influence on others, you need people around you who will be a positive influence on you.
We admit that finding these kinds of friends may not be as easy as it sounds. How do you find quality friends? Where do you look? What do you look for?
Here’s the best formula we know for developing longlasting friendships:
To find good friends, you need to be a good friend.
You can’t necessarily pick your friends and then expect them to fall in line, willing to be your friend. It’s a lot more effective to be the kind of friend you are looking for in others.
In the classic book The Friendship Factor, Dr. Alan Loy McGinnis lists these five ways to deepen your relationships:
1. Assign top priority to your relationships. Don’t be a fair-weather friend, or a part-time friend. It’s better to be a good friend to a few people than a lousy friend to many.
2. Cultivate transparency. There isn’t one personality trait that defines a good friend, but there is one quality that does: openness. If you aren’t willing to be open and honest with your friends, then you aren’t really a friend.
3. Dare to talk about your affection. By “affection,” Dr. McGinnis means warmth more than he means physical attraction. A true friend is a caring friend.
4. Learn the gestures of love. Demonstrate consideration, kindness and giving, which should take place in a true friendship as well as in a marriage relationship.
5. Create space in your relationship. Dr. McGinnis writes that the tendency to control others “gets the prize for ruining more relationships than any other.” If you want to be a good friend, give your friends room. Jealousy is a nasty trait in any relationship.1
There’s a chance that as you’ve been reading this book, you realized that you’ve already made some poor choices in friends. You may have even broken off some lousy friendships from high school, but you’re already back under the negative influence of some new friends.
First of all, the fact that you’re thinking about your poor choices is a good thing. Maybe you will be less likely to repeat your mistakes in the future. For now—and the sooner you do this the better—here’s what to do:
• Avoid the friends that have a negative influence on you (they won’t miss you).
• Don’t abandon a good friend going bad. Confront him or her in a loving way.
• If your words have no affect, be willing to cut the ties, but continue to pray for your friend.
We’ve got to admit that neither of us has any experience with the Greeks on campus (geeks, yes; Greeks, no). So we can only tell you what we’ve heard and read.
Fraternities and sororities are a time-honored tradition in North American colleges and universities. Many a successful person can trace his or her strength as a student, and later as a graduate, to a fraternity or sorority. We’re told that fraternity brothers and sorority sisters make friends for life.
That doesn’t mean that you have to join a Greek club if you want lifelong friends and valuable business contacts. We’re just pointing out one of the benefits often cited by Greek advocates.
On the negative side, fraternities and sororities seem to receive more than their share of publicity over the problem of drinking. Truthfully, the connection between college students and alcohol goes way beyond fraternities and sororities. The problem on campuses is so acute that many colleges and universities are finally waking up and doing something to curb drinking, especially the deadly practice of binge drinking.
The question you have to ask yourself is this: Is it wise to put yourself in a position where you will be continuously exposed to alcohol (or drugs or tobacco), which not only will damage your body but could also impair your relationships with others, including God? Or would it be better to live in an environment that encourages you to do the right thing, whether it’s in the spiritual, moral or intellectual part of your life?
If you just have to be a Greek, why not check out one of the many Christian Greek houses located around the country. One of the oldest and best-known fraternities is Alpha Gamma Omega (AGO), a national Christ-centered organization. Founded on the campus of UCLA in 1927, AGO has chapters on several college campuses (AGO’s website is www.ago.org). AGO’s motto is Fraternity for Eternity.
Here’s an exciting thought for you as you enter your career as a college student:
Wherever you are, God wants to use you to influence others.
The last message Jesus gave to His followers was to “go into all the world and preach the Good News to everyone, everywhere” (Mark 16:15). You see, as a Christfollower, your job is to be a witness for Christ wherever you are in the world. Right now, whether you’re in college or working in a job or both, Christ is asking you to tell others about Him.
Yes, you need to build your friendship network by first finding friends who share your values. But don’t isolate yourself in a Christian comfort zone (this is especially true if you are at a Christian college). Follow the example of Christ, who did not shy away from people who were considered undesirable by the religious elite.
Don’t make friends with people in order to share or endorse their lifestyle. Rather, make friends in order to influence them for Christ. Like the apostle Paul, you and your Christian friends should see yourselves as “Christ’s ambassadors” (2 Corinthians 5:20), believing that God is using you to speak to your non-Christian friends. Remember that if you identify yourself with Christ, then you represent Him with your words, your actions and your attitudes.
Whether you are dealing with your roommate, a professor, a fraternity brother or sorority sister, a coworker or a new friend in class, you need to know that you may be the best ambassador for Christ that this person has ever encountered. And just so you won’t feel any unnecessary pressure, you need to also know that it is Christ in you—not you—who will draw others to Christ. Because you are willing to be used by God, your life will be like “a fragrance presented by Christ to God” (2 Corinthians 2:15).
Because you are Christ’s ambassador, you will inevitably get questions from your non-Christian friends—questions related to God and the peace of heart and mind that you radiate. Don’t be afraid of these questions. Be ready to answer them. If you are asked about your Christian hope, always be ready to explain it. But you must do this in a gentle and respectful way (1 Peter 3:15-16).
During your college years it is a virtual certainty that you will encounter an array of lifestyles unlike anything you have ever seen (notice we said “encounter” rather than “experience”). But here’s the amazing part. If you are a Christian in a secular college, intent on living out your faith, you are going to be the one pegged as radical. Your lifestyle of living for Christ is going to be an affront and will appear foolish to those living in darkness. But don’t despair and don’t condemn. Instead, draw strength from the wisdom of Paul in the Bible:
I know very well how foolish the message of the cross sounds to those who are on the road to destruction. But we who are being saved recognize this message as the very power of God (1 Corinthians 1:18).
Wherever you go throughout your life, you’re going to meet the friendless. These are the outcasts, the oddballs, the strange. When high school students cruelly exclude and ridicule these outcasts, their behavior can be partially explained as ignorant or misguided. But full-fledged adults have no such excuse. If you deliberately contribute to the exclusion of another human being from your little group of friends for no other reason than that they’re “different,” shame on you.
Instead of excluding, try including the loner, the unlovely and the unusual person. Don’t force it, but do your best to uncover the inner beauty and intrinsic value of that person. Become a friend to the friendless.
There will come a time during your first few months away from home that you will return home—probably for Thanksgiving or Christmas. This is a grand occasion for three reasons:
1. You will get some home cooking for a change.
2. Everybody will be glad to see you.
3. You’ll have an opportunity to show your family and old friends how much you have changed—for the better.
The easiest thing in the world would be to pick up where you left off by running with the same old friends and slipping back into your old habits. But that would also be a big mistake. It’s not that you’re suddenly better than everyone back home. You don’t want to give the people you know the impression that “the fancy college boy is too good for us now.”
Pray and ask God to give you a humble and grateful spirit as you go home. Stand firm in your convictions and your new pattern of associating with quality friends, but still show consideration and love to your old friends who seek you out. And if by chance someone asks you, “What happened? You seem different,” be ready to give an answer that just might change their life.
We could go on and on about friends and friendships—as a matter of fact, we will! In the next chapter we’re going to talk about friendships that go beyond the casual to something more meaningful and challenging.