While many view movie going as a pleasant, leisure time diversion, the laws governing the human mind do not suddenly go on vacation when a person enters the theater. Movies have an influence on the thoughts and feelings and a movie/comedy about friendship is a reality show for many people. Often it is realized too late, not at all or after much loss of precious time that friendship is the basis for enduring relationship. Whether in courtship or marriage or even church fellowship, many may be acquainted with each other but may not in actuality be friends. Another consideration would be the meaning of the word "friends" as understood or used by different people. Like the word love, the word friends is often casually and improperly applied in a variety of ways that do not necessarily make clear what is being talked about. According to God, one of the closest relationships in which true friendship should be demonstrated in human relationships is the marriage relationship. This post will focus on friendship, according to God's view of it, in the context of a union between husband and wife. Several of the principles for friendship discussed here can be universally applied to all friendships although they may clash with the general worldly understanding of relationships. If we have difficulty accepting and living by these principles in this life, it is not likely that we could be happy nor trusted in the future life in heaven in the presence of God where everyone reflecting the image of Jesus Christ will eternally exemplify His traits of character in relationship toward one another.
HOW TO BUILD AND MAINTAIN THE FRIENDSHIP RELATIONSHIP
That which we prize we seek to preserve and make more valuable if we can. In the marriage contract men and women have made a trade, an investment for life, and they should do their utmost to control their words of impatience and fretfulness, even more carefully than they did before their marriage, for now their destinies are united for life as husband and wife, and each is valued in exact proportion to the amount of painstaking effort put forth to retain and keep fresh the love so eagerly sought for and prized before marriage. Love can no more exist without revealing itself in outward acts than fire can be kept alive without fuel. (Matthew 6:21/Proverbs 27:5/Song of Solomon 8:7/Romans 7:2/1 Corinthians 7:39/1 John 4:7,11)
In your married life seek to elevate one another. Do not come down to common, cheap talk and actions. Show the high and elevating principles of your holy faith in your everyday conversations and in the most private walks of life. Be ever careful and tender of the feelings of one another. Do not, either of you, for even the first time, allow a playful, bantering, joking censuring of one another. These things are dangerous. They wound. The wound may be concealed, nevertheless the wound exists and peace is being sacrificed and happiness endangered. (Ephesians 4:32/2 Timothy 2:24/Titus 3:2,3/Hebrews 3:13)
The husband and wife should be all to each other. The wife should have no secrets to keep from her husband and let others know, and the husband should have no secrets to keep from his wife to relate to others. The heart of his wife should be the grave for the faults of the husband, and the heart of the husband the grave for his wife's faults. Never should either party indulge in a joke at the expense of the other's feelings. Every couple who unite their life interest should seek to make the life of each as happy as possible. Live for the glory of God. Be tender, kind, and courteous to each other. (Ephesians 4:2/Proverbs 11:13,17:9,20:19,25:9)
The happiness of your life will consist in making God your trust, and in seeking to make each other happy. Practice self-control. It is so easy to speak thoughtlessly, words that grieve and wound. Do not venture to trifle with each other's feelings. Practice patience, encourage love, discipline yourselves to guard every word and action, and study how you can be a blessing to each other. Never recount the mistakes, or errors, or faults of each other in the presence of a third person, or in company, be the circle ever so select. Live for God and for each other. (Galatians 5:15/John 15:12,17/Leviticus 25:17/Proverbs 10:19,17:27,28)
Affection cannot be lasting, even in the home circle, unless there is a conformity of the will and disposition to the will of God. Bearing the marriage responsibilities in the home, linking their interests with Jesus Christ, leaning upon His arm and His assurance, husband and wife may share a happiness in this union that angels of God commend. The warmth of true friendship and the love that binds the hearts of husband and wife are a foretaste of heaven. (1 Thessalonians 5:11/Psalms 127:1/Romans 12:10/Galatians 6:2/Psalms 91:9-11/Zephaniah 3:9)
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