Three Types of Friends

 

“When Job’s three friends…heard about all the troubles that had come upon him₀to go and sympathize with him and comfort him”

—Job 2:11

Friends are very important elements in our lives. They can be very specific gifts from God. Friends can help us lead a more balanced life.

Friends support and encourage us. They help us bear our burdens. Friends pray for us, sometimes interceding when we simply cannot pray for ourselves.

Friends laugh with us and cry with us. They help guide us through good times and bad times.

Sometimes, friends exhort us to think differently about something. Sometimes, with deep love and affection, they may even patiently and kindly disagree with us.

Above all else, friends can encourage us to listen more carefully to the voice of the Holy Spirit within us. They can nudge us along our walk of faith.

When the Patriarch Job was tested, Scripture records that three friends came to support him. Here’s Job 2:11:

When Job’s three friends, Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite, heard about all the troubles that had come upon him, they set out from their homes and met together by agreement to go and sympathize with him and comfort him.

Of course, if you remember this story, over time, Job’s friends—drawing on their own misunderstanding of the work God was doing in Job’s life—gave him inappropriate counsel and their failure to understand God’s purpose caused their efforts to go awry.

Here’s Job 42:7:

After the Lord had said these things to Job, he said to Eliphaz the Temanite, “I am angry with you and your two friends, because you have not spoken the truth about me, as my servant Job has.”

Friends can greatly bless our lives. But, we do well to choose our friends wisely. Then, we must always compare what they tell us with the standard of truth put forth in God’s Word.

 

_{Copyright © 2014 by Dean K. Wilson. All Rights Reserved.}

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