Sunday---Proverbs On Friendship, 4, with Dr. Tim Keller

As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another. (Proverbs 27:17)

COUNSEL. The fourth mark of a true friend is counsel. Friends give 'heartfelt advice' (27:9). Friends sharpen and challenge one another, being vulnerable and sensitive to one another but also making proposals for how the other should change. Friends regularly have constructive clashes that sharpen each party's understanding of the world and of themselves.

Therapists give you advice, but you don't do it back.  A supervisor may offer criticism, but it would not be appropriate to give equal criticism back.  The mutuality of the deep counsel that friends can give is rare (!) yet something everybody needs.  Sometimes it is sweet and pleasant and sometimes sharp and perhaps painful.  True friendship is both reassuring and bracing.  If you can have this kind of exchange and growth in a romantic relationship or in a family relationship, it is because you have incorporated this aspect of friendship into those connections.  But you're never going to become the person you need to be, or that you can be, without it. It sharpens you the way nothing else can.

With how many people do you share a relationship in which there is mutual counsel and critique?

PRAYER:  Lord, today to 'friend' someone is to 'like' rather than dislike.  I have not been conditioned to have friends who dislike things about me and tell me so!  But my heart knows---and your Word says----that I need them.  Lead them to me and give me the willingness to be open to them.  Amen

Dr.  Tim Keller,  A Year of Daily Devotions In the Book of Psalms