Working at Friendship

As God builds my connections in this new place, I am struck by the thought processes that hinder me in this, both my connection with people and also my connection with God.  If I am brutally honest, friendship has felt like a waste of time.  Before you stop reading, allow me to explain!  

I grew up in a culture, in my family, in my country, actually in the West, where work and productivity are celebrated over and above friendship and family in so many ways.  I wonder how many of us have felt let down and disappointed because the pull of work has been stronger than the pull of connection, because work has been prioritised over relationship?  “Work” can take many forms in this context – paid work, voluntary work, ministry, housework, or general busyness.

I know that I have often prioritised other people, “ministry” or “serving” over family and friends.  Some of this has come out of the fact I did not know who I am in God and so I have been defined by what I do.  That’s a dangerous place to be.  It meant that years ago when I had a back problem and was on the floor of my living room unable to move for months on end, I really struggled to receive help and support.  I hated being in that place of vulnerability and weakness.  I felt totally useless.

It has also meant that I regularly took on too much in terms of serving my community or ministry opportunities and that I idolised being busy.  Every time I walked into a room, I brought with me an atmosphere of busyness.  The busier I was, the more valuable and important I felt.  It has meant that my idea of success has been built around doing not being.  The word “useful” has categorised my concept of success. 

I am reminded of a character in the novel “Animal Farm”, written by George Orwell, which I studied at school.  The carthorse Boxer’s response to every situation, every problem, was “I will work harder.”  He modelled the driven-ness that characterises those with this work ethic.  He genuinely believed a slower day was coming when he would reach his dream of retirement but actually worked himself to death.  In our culture, there are many who have pushed themselves to the limits, sacrificing themselves physically, mentally, emotionally, and relationally on the altar of work. 

This work ethic can cause us to feel guilty when we take time off.  For those of us wired this way, holidays are sacrificed and there is a sense of pride or superiority in the lie that says we don’t need as much sleep, holiday, or down-time as the next person.  Rest can be a tricky concept.  Even our holidays can be characterised by busyness and doing.  There are some people that it feels exhausting to be around!  I know that in the past I have definitely been one of those.  It is a far cry from the concept of having a weekly sabbath.

This week, as I spent time with God one morning, I felt frustrated because it seemed like we weren’t doing anything.  I heard him say to me, “Time spent with me is never wasted.”  It caused me to think about my concept of friendships and how often meeting someone for coffee feels like a “waste of time” unless I can reframe it in my head as “ministry” or “helping”.

In this season God is deepening our connection across the body of Christ so that we can really be that picture of supernatural love described in John 13:34-35:

A new command I give you: Love one another.  As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples if you love one another.

I need to allow God to transform my thinking, to remove the wrong cultural mindsets.  I need to allow him to replace thoughts like “I should be doing something useful.”  Our culture is so product-driven, so based on the mindset that says if you are not working, not producing, you have no value.  It causes us to make judgments about each other, to evaluate each other based on what we do.  We are told in 2 Corinthians 5:16 not to judge people based on external criteria. 

So often when making new connections, one of our first questions is “What do you do?” and by the answer to that question we pigeon-hole people, categorising them and placing them on a scale of importance.  We judge ourselves too according to this mindset, and it can result in us feeling rubbish about ourselves.  We compare ourselves to those who seem “successful” in terms of what they do, either in the world of work or their ministry and we can feel like a failure.  When we retire, we can feel like our value is drastically diminished. 

We were created first and foremost to be God’s family, to be connected.  If I worship God and never really get to know him but spend my whole time “doing” for him to try and validate myself in some way, I have totally missed the point.  If I worship alongside my brothers and sisters in Christ but never really get to know them; if I make it all about what we are doing for God, together or separately, but never allow people into my heart, I have missed the point. 

Being part of God’s family is not just about being functional.  It is not just about ministering together; it is also about joining hearts.  In that joining of hearts, God does something supernatural that is beyond the sum of the parts.  Like the multiplication of loaves and fishes, he creates something miraculous.  He creates something beautiful, something so attractive that it makes people sit up and take notice. 

Friendship, with God and with people, takes time.  It requires me to invest something of myself.  It calls me to prioritise differently, to think differently.  It asks me to linger in that place of connection and allow it to deepen and not to withdraw and get busy.  In truth, we have a limited number of hours in our day.  We cannot build deep relationships with everyone, but God is definitely inviting me to go on a journey of allowing some relationships to go much deeper, starting with my friendship with him.  He is inviting me above all to linger in his presence, to spend the time it takes to move past the superficial, to not be satisfied with surface level.  This goes for my bible reading, my prayer, my worship.  He is stirring in me, in all of us, a hunger for more.

This has meant I have sat in his presence recently and allowed him to teach me to enjoy ‘being’, and I’ve not written anything in my journal.  I did not realise how significant that was.  I did not realise that I had a need to have “evidence” of my time spent with God, something written for every day.  As long as I had written something in my journal, I felt like my connection with God had “produced something”, and I was happy to move on.  Tick, mission accomplished, on to the next task.  What a weird, warped way to have a friendship! 

It could be that it is only me in the world who has made my friendships, with God and with people, into tasks in my diary to be ticked off, trying to juggle and prioritise the ones that feel important, and fulfil my need for evidence of productivity and having been “useful”.  An empty diary is a challenge. 

It could be just me that God is dealing with about the idols of work and busyness, about continuing to prioritise connection and being willing to linger in his presence; and to linger in that place of building friendship with those he has placed in my life at this time, but actually I suspect there are a few of us! 

God, forgive us for where we have allowed our cultural mindsets to become idols, to shape and mould us in ungodly ways.  God, forgive us for our wrong priorities.  God, forgive us where our mindsets have led us into behaviour that has damaged our God-given relationships, and even damaged or hindered our friendship with you.  Help us to allow Holy Spirit to transform and lead us, as Paul exhorts us in Romans 12:1-2:

Beloved friends, what should be our proper response to God’s marvellous mercies?  To surrender yourselves to God to be his sacred, living sacrifices.  And live in holiness, experiencing all that delights his heart.  For this becomes your genuine expression of worship.  Stop imitating the ideals and opinions of the culture around you but be inwardly transformed by the Holy Spirit through a total reformation of how you think.  This will empower you to discern God’s will as you live a beautiful life, satisfying and perfect in his eyes.

God, help us to become aware of the things that hinder us and to demolish them, just as Gideon tore down the family and cultural idols of his time. (see Judges 6)