A few Bible verses came to mind and I wrote them down on a piece of paper. Then more verses came to mind. I would write down a scripture reference and a short description of what it said or why it was important to the guy's situation. Soon I had both sides of the paper filled and at some point started using a concordance to find other verses that I was familiar with but did not know exactly where to find them. It did not take very long to have two sheets of paper filled with these Bible verses and short explanations about them.
Then I started thinking about friendship. For some reason, at that time I had heard about five or six different definitions of what a friend was. (God had worked out all of the details for this Bible lesson.) I can't think of all of the definitions now. Some of them were, “A friend is someone who knows you better than you know yourself.” “A friend is who you enjoy spending time with.” “A friend is someone you go to talk things out with.”
Then it was like God wanted me to look back at the two pages with all of the Bible verses. I had no idea where He was headed with this. It was like He asked me to compare those Bible verses with my definitions of friends. So one by one I remembered each definition and compared it to that list of Bible verses. A friend is someone that knows you better than you know yourself. I thought of that verse in James that says the Word is like a mirror that shows you who you are. (James 1:22 – 23). Yes, God's word not only knows me, but better than anyone else, and I thought that's a funny twist. Then I looked at the next definition. “A friend is someone that you enjoy spending time with.” I thought that, yes, I did enjoy studying the Bible. But then the thought occurred, “but who would I really want to spend time with?” There were people that I hung out with from time to time, but realized if there were no other criteria like knowing developing relationships was important, that I would prefer to study the Bible over hanging out with any of them.
“A friend is someone you go to talk things out with.” Well, ya, not only did I not have anyone that I really talked things out with, but ultimately it was the Bible I trusted most anyway. I started seeing the pattern about these Bible verses being my friends. “A friend is someone you spend time with.” My roommate's complaint came to mind, “all you do is study the Bible,” and “you know the Bible better than anyone I know.” (Well, he was a fairly new Christian and perhaps didn't know other peoples habits like he did mine.) OK, that definition works too. But by the time I had gone through my list of definitions of what friends are it became clear that the Bible verses on those two pieces of paper were not only my friends, they were my very best friends. OK, so I have a problem of not enough friends God, I already knew that!
Then it was like God directed me back to that problem that had been bothering me. I don't know if I love God because I don't know if I love God's Word. If there is anything that may be better than God telling you that He loves you – it may be God telling you that you love Him. I know that my heart is deceitfully wicked. I know this from experience and I know it because the Bible tells me so. Therefore when I want to tell God that I love him, I tend to say I really want to Lord, but I really don't know if its true. This was one of those times when God clearly told me that I love Him. It was not simply the intellectual exercise of contemplating the definitions of “friend,” but He made it quite clear that He was telling me that I loved Him. Not only that, but stop worrying about it and move on. We loved each other and that was how it was.
I can't claim to be in that same place with God now; situations change; life patterns change; that was a long time ago; but when I think about that experience the same emotions of thankfulness come back and I know that there is nothing I want nearly so bad as to really truly love God.
