About four weeks ago I reconnected with a good friend when I was down in Southern California.  There are certain relationships for whatever reason where even though you rarely see that person, when you do, everything reconnects.  It could be another six months or a year before we are together in his kitchen or at a coffee shop but as soon as we relax into a conversation everything fires back up.  All our inside jokes and shared experiences are either implied or spoken.  All of the highs and lows, victories and losses that happened during our young twenties swim just beneath the surface as we talk and was we compare our life now in our forties. 

Christian friendship is the rare jewel of life.  As a matter of fact, I do not know anything more valuable to me in life than Christians friendship.  I enjoy my family on these levels and even with my extended.  Like you, I regularly sacrifice for my family to set the stage for intimate relationships but apart from my wife this sacrifice is not solely based in friendship.  My goals for my family’s success are higher than personal connection. 

Giving to my family is more by God’s design than anything else.  He gave me my wife and children to provide for, protect, pray for, love unconditionally, to train physically, emotionally, and spiritually.  In terms of my kids, my main priority is successfully launching them out into the world.  I am not saying that any one of these family members cannot sync up with my life and heart as a Christian friend.  I am just saying that my Christian friendships are a different category than simply being a family member.  God’s Word hits on this:

A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother. (Proverbs 18:24)

The specialness of this kind of relationship is immediately tied to the kind of relationship believers experience with Christ as our brother.  His nearness is felt (or should be) in a way that is higher than all other friendships.

For he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one source. That is why he is not ashamed to call them brothers (Hebrews 2:11)

Back to my southern Californian friend and conversation.  We were talking about who the most influential people have been in his spiritual life and he described them as those etched on his spiritual mount Rushmore.  They are as follows: John MacArthur, John Piper, David Powelison, and Francis Schaeffer.  Schaeffer being named caught my attention because I do not usually hear about Schaeffer much anymore in my circles.  I probed a bit and he referenced Schaeffer’s classic books like How shall we then live and The God who is there, but then followed with the way he applied Scripture to shape young people.  I’ll expand on this more but before I do, here’s a brief bio on Shaeffer from the web:   

Schaeffer was born on January 30, 1912, in Germantown, Pennsylvania, to Franz A. Schaeffer III and Bessie Williamson. He was of German and English ancestry.

In 1935, Schaeffer graduated magna cum laude from Hampden–Sydney College. The same year he married Edith Seville, the daughter of missionary parents who had been with the China Inland Mission founded by Hudson Taylor.

Schaeffer then enrolled at Westminster Theological Seminary in the fall and studied under Cornelius Van Til (presuppositional apologetics) and J. Gresham Machen (doctrine of inerrancy).

In 1948, the Schaeffer family moved to Switzerland and in 1955 established the community called L’Abri (French for “the shelter”).

Serving as both a philosophy seminar and a spiritual community, L’Abri attracted thousands of young people, and was later expanded into Sweden, France, the Netherlands, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Schaeffer was a trained theologian and pastor but as this record shows, his passion as an apologist (defender of the faith) lead him down the path to set up L’Abri in Switzerland.  Hungry young students came to consider the claims of Christ and ponder what bearing these claims had on the world. 

They came and willingly isolated themselves away from their normal circumstances retreating into daily work routines, studying, and most of all, thinking about God in light of their world. 

What grabbed my friend’s attention was Schaeffer’s evening routine where he opened his living room for students to gather to ask any question they had concerning life and the world. These sessions would go on for hours.  What Schaeffer did was work to answer every question, no matter how erudite or earthy by brining it into subjection to the Bible. 

His passion was to prove the sufficiency and authority of Scripture by answering anything anyone would ever possibly bring up.  The point is to say, either God’s Word is able to answer everything or it is unable to answer anything.  God’s Word is either all true or not true at all.  God is either all relevant or irrelevant.  Schaeffer staked everything on this and thousands of students over the years were the beneficiaries.  

When a friendship centers on the reality that Jesus is sufficient and relevant to everything the payoff is boundless.  Jesus is this friend, and he makes the way for you to have these kinds of friendships.