Two important qualities that can help deepen a friendship are honesty and loyalty. The Bible says, ‘You can trust a friend who corrects you, but kisses from an enemy are nothing but lies.’ Sometimes we need our friends to tell us where we’re going wrong. While that can be hard to take, we know we’ve found a great friend when they’re prepared to take that risk and tell us the truth. It may not be what we want to hear, it may hurt, but in the long run it will help us. Honesty is necessary for a friendship to survive, so if we want to be good friends to others, we need to be prepared to tell them the truth too. But we need to make sure that we’re speaking the truth in a loving and constructive way (see Ephesians 4:15). We need to be asking whether we trust our friends to be completely honest with us, and whether we trust them enough to open up to them. If we can, we know we’ve got a great foundation for a strong and lasting friendship. Our friendships also need loyalty. ‘There is a friend who sticks closer than a brother’ (Proverbs 18:24 NKJV). The word stick refers to how skin sticks to the bone. It suggests just how close one friend should be to another. We need to be building friendships which are open, honest and full of understanding. When we’re that close with each other, we know we’ll have friends to turn to when we’re in the tough seasons, not just the great ones. We know we’ll have lasting friendships.
