Yesterday’s part 1 article launched a two-part refresher course on friendship by a) presenting the loneliness epidemic, b) distinguishing between close, good, and casual friendships, and c) considering the connection between friendship and season of life. Today’s part 2 article will a) encourage you to elevate your vision for friendship and face some possible hard truths about yourself as a friend, b) teach you skillful behaviors to apply, and c) provide you with some practical exercises to implement. There are plentiful tips in both articles, so again you may want to bookmark or print so that you can work through one section at a time in order to make lasting changes.

Strengthen Your Friendships

Elevate Your Vision for Friendship

• You need godly friends, and your friends need a godly you. (Psalm1:1)
• Know that all of your friends will fall short. Respond by modeling gospel friendships that provide grace, love, and encouragement. (Revelation 21:3-4)
• God designed you for a certain community and a certain community for you. Praise His eternal perspective when He decides who He’s putting you with for His Kingdom work.
• Consider replacing a current time wasting activity with specific, devoted daily prayers for the needs of your friends. This is also a great thing to try when you’re having trouble falling asleep at night.
• If you have missional friendships (friends with people who don’t share your values and faith), make sure you maintain some Christian friendships who will encourage you in your faith.
• Learn to find the blessing in having a friend who has an important role of helping you see your blind spots. (Proverbs 27:9, 17)
• A family member or spouse may also be working to overcome loneliness and struggling with friendships. Walk gently, patiently, and supportively alongside.
• Don’t put yourself in the place of God in any of your friendships; point them to Him. Encourage your friends to pour out their heart before Him and He will meet all their needs. Keep in mind, He won’t meet all of their needs through you. (Psalm 62:8)

Face Any Poor Friendship Behaviors

• If you’ve been negligent in any of your friendships, it’s not too late to apologize and recommit. Communicate clearly, kindly, and humbly (without defending yourself) and give your friends the opportunity to forgive you and offer you grace to move forward.
• Be honest with yourself about your expectations. It burdens your friendships to place unfair, inappropriate demands on them. Jesus is the only Friend who can be perfect for you. You are capable of loving friends well because of how Jesus loves you first. (1 John 4:19)
• Create a grace-filled atmosphere where others don’t have to perform when they’re around you. Let them see you being real so they know they can be real. This could be as simple as putting your feet on the coffee table to help them relax, or sharing your weaknesses and how you’re asking God to help you change.
• Be active rather than passively waiting for your parents, friends, spouse, job, classroom, etc. to make your friends for you. Don’t be a lazy friend.
• Admit if you’ve been exclusive in your groups of friends in the past. Then examine whether any of your casual friends find it hard to transition to good friends with you and if you need to be more are approachable and invitational.
• You might have to unlearn what social media has taught you about bragging. Just one generation ago, children were taught not to brag. Bragging has become so normal you might have to practice abstaining from it. Bragging doesn’t bring closeness or joy. (Proverbs 27:2)
• Make sure to heal from past friendship hurts so you don’t carry a lens of rejection, bitterness, and lack of forgiveness with you into new friendships. Carrying such baggage will impede your new friendships and possibly prevent them from lasting. (You can read this article to help you get started).
• Work on becoming confident in Christ so that insecurities won’t make you a self-absorbed friend. (Read this story here to understand more of what that looks like).
• Lay each friendship on the altar (surrender it to God) and see how He will do more with it than you can do alone.

Take Some Risks, Change Some Habits

• Push through feeling uncomfortable or awkward in order to take advantage of friendship opportunities.
• Don’t make complicated plans with friends; do whatever is simple enough to get together.
• Take the risk of being invitational. A casual friendship can’t become closer until you include one another in your lives or activities. Get creative. You could even hand out hand-made invitations to everyone like you’re in the second grade all over again! Or maybe start a mens’ camp-out club.
• Physical, shared experiences form tighter bonds and create powerful memories to share with one another. Think of simple, sensory ways to connect with your friends.

A Few Practical Exercises

• Turn this article into a checklist and outline for making some new goals.
• Evaluate your situation as follows: Is your challenge that you don’t have friends and actually need to make new friends?  Or, is your challenge that you aren’t actually being friends with the friends you do have?
• Make a list of people who are casual friends that you might like to pursue becoming good friends with, and then begin applying new friendship behaviors. 
• Ask a family member to hold you accountable for your goals, such as taking one social risk per week or following through on their suggestions.
• Journal about or make a timeline of God’s history of providing friendships for you, and trust/partner with Him for what He will provide next.

Prayer & Blessing

In everything, treat people the same way you want people to treat you. (Matthew 7:12)