“A man that hath friends must shew himself friendly: and there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother”. (Proverbs 18:24)
In order to maintain friendships, we have to put some effort into it. We have to show ourselves friendly. I’ve had people ask, “Why doesn’t anyone love me?” In love, I say, “It’s because you’re unlovely.” There was a man in our Bible college who, on the very first day of school, corrected me on something, and he was right. Then every time I ministered—and typically, when I’m at the college, I’ll minister four hours a day—he always corrected me. After a whole year of this, every time he approached me, I knew he was going to correct me on something.
One time he asked me, “You probably don’t like to see me coming, do you?” And I said, “No, I don’t.” And he was kind of offended. He said, “Well, I’m just telling you when you’re wrong.” I said, “No, you’re offensive. You wonder why nobody in this school likes you. It’s because you’re unlikeable. All you do is correct people.”
It wound up with a good ending, and the Lord showed me that the reason he was like this was because he suffered so much rejection as a child, he decided he would become an intellectual. He was brilliant, and he knew about a lot of things. He really wasn’t criticizing me as much as he was trying to let me know how much he knew so that I would accept him. So, it was the reverse of what it looked like.
But the point is, if we want to have friends, we have be friendly. We have to think of other people and put them first. This is a word from God for many people reading this. You need to put some effort into your relationships. They won’t just work automatically.