Renewed & Ready: Filling Your Soul For The Year Ahead – Week 4

 True Friends

“Friends come and friends go, but a true friend sticks by you like family.”  –Proverbs 18:24  The Message

A few days ago, I sat around a table at lunch with six colleagues of mine. We meet once a month to share life together. We laugh a lot, catch up on each other’s latest stories, and pray for one another. After gathering like this for several years, we’re now far more than colleagues, we’re friends. Unless I’m out of town, I never miss being with them.

We live at a time when experts tell us that one in two American adults report they experience loneliness. At Altar we know that loneliness is prevalent among pastors and non-profit leaders.

Because of these realities, this past year we added a focus on relationships in our retreat curriculum. We invite our guests to reflect on the friendships they have and note that not all relationships are equal in power and influence when it comes to resilience and personal well-being. For example, my relationship with my wife, Dianne, is far more significant than a “friend” I have on Facebook.

What are your most significant friendships? Make a list—it needn’t be a long one.

What are you doing to maintain and deepen these relationships?

Knowing that there is widespread loneliness in our time, is there someone new that you might invest time in as a new year begins?

“In the early stage of your life, you were shaped most by your family. But for the rest of your life you will be shaped largely by your friends. You become like the people with whom you spend the most time. But remember how deliberate friendship must be … It must be carefully, intentionally cultivated through face-to-face time spent together. And in a busy culture like ours, it is one thing that is often squeezed out.” –Tim Keller in God’s Wisdom for Navigating Life

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_{Steve Ebling | January 2025}