We Must Let Them Go

My heart broke, when a friendship of almost 30 years ended because my friend thought I had gone overboard with my faith. I considered our friendship unconditional. We always had different views about religion. I didn’t think it was that important. We both believe that Jesus is the way to reach the Father, so as a teenager I didn’t worry about semantics.

As I went through a long journey in the wilderness of rebellion, she was always there for me, although in later years she admitted it was hard to see my self-destructive behavior. She was happy for me when my life changed and I no longer walked those roads of rebellion. She knew I was a Christian. She will readily tell anyone that she is also a Christian. I was so thankful to have her in my life to set a high moral standard.

A couple of years ago, she asked me if something was wrong because I seemed to be talking about God a lot. I didn’t realize I was talking about him any more than I had in the past 15 years. Of course, until she joined facebook, our contact during that time had been a few phone calls each year. Because we live in different states now, we only saw each other a few times in the past decade or so. Our friendship was strong, and no matter how many months between our conversations, they picked up as if no time had passed.

As my facebook friend, she was privy to my life. I share my faith openly, and the things that are most important in my life are things of God.  Sometimes I ask tough spiritual questions to get the viewpoints of my friends. Once in a while I express my opinion about issues, entertainment and current events. That’s what got me into trouble with my friend.

She was already concerned about my level of Biblical study and the references to what God was doing. But when I said that we as Christians should not be entertained by evil, the decline of our friendship began. During the posts on the thread, we came to a point when we agreed to disagree. But I knew that would be difficult. She posted on my wall less, and didn’t always reply when I posted on hers…but I hoped it was because we are both busy.

I still kept up with her and participated in conversations on her wall with mutual friends. I never brought up my faith on her wall, out of respect for her beliefs. Although I pray for her heart to be open to the Lord.

Today, I went to her wall to tell her I hope she has a great day. But I couldn’t. I have been unfriended. Without so much as a word to me, I have been deleted from her life. I’m pretty sure it was the post last week where I said that the Bible says we should live a holy life, no longer slaves to sin… But since she didn’t say anything, I really don’t what caused the complete obliteration of our friendship.

I do know I will always love my friend. I will miss my friend. I will always pray for my friend and I will always be ready for reconciliation with my friend. But now, I have to realize that we were not equally yoked in our friendship. As teenagers it didn’t seem to matter. In our twenties and thirties, as we started our lives and families, our friendship was not as close, so we didn’t notice. But with today’s technology we have the ability to know people like never before. We are not so guarded on social sites like facebook, and while there are people who are completely fraudulent on those pages, I think most of us are more ourselves from the keyboard. We are less cautious about who hears what we have to say. Our friends have more of a chance to know who we really are; sometimes they won’t like it. Sometimes they will choose to end the friendship. But if serving God means that some of my friends will reject me, then I must be following His will for my life. And that trumps any fleshly hurt or worldly disappointment I could experience. It also makes me appreciate the friends He puts in my life that love Jesus and want to serve Him and know Him.

Luke 18: 29 & 30 (ESV) And he said to them, “Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or wife or brothers or parents or children, for the sake of the kingdom of God, who will not receive many times more in this time, and in the age to come - eternal life.”

If that is true about family members, I'm sure it applies to friendships as well.