{"id":370,"date":"2010-12-21T10:27:45","date_gmt":"2010-12-21T15:27:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.bottlerockettheology.com\/?p=370"},"modified":"2010-12-21T10:27:45","modified_gmt":"2010-12-21T15:27:45","slug":"friends-then-enemies-sometimes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dave.dlscott.info\/?p=370","title":{"rendered":"Friends then enemies &#8230; Sometimes"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>Galatians 4:16 (The Message)<br \/>\nAnd now have I suddenly become your enemy simply by telling you the truth? I can\u2019t believe it.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>True friendship means venturing into territory that may turn your friend, or more likely your friendly acquaintance, into your enemy.<\/p>\n<p>True friendship is risky, indeed even dangerous.<\/p>\n<p>Think about it. We share things about ourselves with another person which often we are not even comfortable &#8220;sharing&#8221; with ourselves.<\/p>\n<p>Truly becoming friends we confront our vulnerabilities and the vulnerabilities of our potential friend.<\/p>\n<p>Seeing each other for who we really are is both good and bad. We face disappointment in who we are and in who they are.<\/p>\n<p>And now we begin to see if our journey was all about us or about being a friend as pleases our God.<\/p>\n<p>So we need to know &#8220;what we are in it for.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Know that when we move from nice, courteous and superficial, that our &#8220;friend&#8221; may become our enemy as true friendship can sometimes obliterate the rules of niceness.<\/p>\n<p>And, yes, in Jesus&#8217; name.<\/p>\n<p>A man I was discipling once became very frustrated as I stretched him toward growth as a man and as a Christian.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;What&#8217;s the big deal,&#8221; he said. He wanted us to be &#8230; &#8220;cordial&#8221; was his word. He didn&#8217;t realize that &#8220;cordial&#8221; was only a starting point.<\/p>\n<p>Our hope of building a friendship through the discipleship process never got past the &#8220;cordial&#8221; stage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Galatians 4:16 (The Message) And now have I suddenly become your enemy simply by telling you the truth? I can\u2019t believe it. True friendship means venturing into territory that may turn your friend, or more likely your friendly acquaintance, into &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/dave.dlscott.info\/?p=370\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-370","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3dxA8-5Y","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dave.dlscott.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dave.dlscott.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dave.dlscott.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dave.dlscott.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dave.dlscott.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=370"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dave.dlscott.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dave.dlscott.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dave.dlscott.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dave.dlscott.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}