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Helping Your Friends Find Strength in God Part I

For my next several entries I'm going to share some thoughts on helping your friends find strength in God when they are going through tough times. This is Part 1.

I Samuel 23: 14-18
15 While David was at Horesh in the Desert of Ziph, he learned that Saul had come out to take his life. 16 And Saul's son Jonathan went to David at Horesh and helped him find strength in God. 17 "Don't be afraid," he said. "My father Saul will not lay a hand on you. You will be king over Israel, and I will be second to you. Even my father Saul knows this." 18 The two of them made a covenant before the LORD . Then Jonathan went home, but David remained at Horesh. These three verses give a very powerful lesson about friendship and its power to help one make it through difficult places in life. Here are some of the lessons we can learn from Jonathan and David.

Jonathan encouraged David by just being there. Just show up.
David was in a precarious situation. He was in a desert trying to get away from Saul. Saul had spies everywhere. Jonathan didn’t say “David knows where I live if he needs me he can send me a messenger." Jonathan just showed up for a very brief visit. Jonathan couldn’t just ride up to David with the king’s heralds going before him, but he didn’t let thoughts for his own discomfort or personal safety stop him from being there for his friend.

Many times people go through trouble and their friends just stay away from them. Look at Job’s brothers, sisters and other friends. Job 42:11 When his fortunes turned prosperous again then they came back around. It implies that they abandoned him too. When you don’t support your friends or relatives in trouble you allow the negative naysayers to have their way as happened to Job.

The most comforting thing I found that helped me through the shocking, unexpected death of my husband was just the presence of people with me. Within literal minutes of finding out my husband was dead people began to show up at my house. How the news got around so fast I’ll never know. In fact before his body was even removed from our house, where he died peacefully in his sleep, people were here. I felt enveloped in love by the initial show of love and support. Just show up!
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