Oh, how I miss my first best friend. We met at Tabernacle Christian School in Litchfield, N.H., USA. It also doubled as a church. I am not sure of the grade in which we met each other, but I think we were both 9 at the time which would put us in 3rd grade. Remember Mr. Martin? He was our 3rd-grade teacher.
The reason why I have that old picture of a telephone is that early to mid-1980s that is all we had to communicate instantaneously, in which you had to place a landline call to a home or business. In placing that call you would have to wait to see if the family member you wanted was home or the dreaded endless ringing which would generally signify that no one was home. Or the someone you would like to speak to was occupied with another conversation on the phone, this getting the busy signal. However, soon we got answering machines which would make your call seem a little bit more important, so it seemed. Well, that was the time we were living in, and we took full advantage of having each other’s phone numbers. Yet, as good as the phone technology was back then, I don’t want to say that our best friends relationship was based on getting each other’s phone numbers because it wasn’t. It was just a way for us to more easily communicate. We found each other, and that is all that mattered.
During one of the nights I stayed over his house, we said that no matter what happens in our lives we would stay best friends. We both like doing stuff together whether it was staying over each other’s house, roller skating, ten-pin bowling, candlepin bowling, to going to the movies, to walking around the mall together, to sharing our love for Jesus together. At church, we signed up for everything together-at youth group, youth retreats, youth competitions, regionals, summer camps, and becoming church ushers. Looking at us you would say we were extroverts with a love for Jesus Christ. Yup, we were Extroverts for Christ. Until one day our “best friendship” would be put to the most severe test.
The last day I can remember was on June 18th, 1989, right before I was thrust into a coma abruptly on June 28th, 1989. See, that day was special for both of us because it was the day my best friend graduated from high school and the graduation party at his house. Earlier I told you that it was special because my best friend and me were going to the same college which I expected us to rip up Southeastern College Assemblies of God campus (now Southeastern University). But that was not meant to be.
Obviously tired from all the ongoing’s that happened the day before, I decided to stay up over 24 hours and returning from my full-time Security job by a car on the highway on June 28th, 1989, I received a traumatic brain injury from a single car accident that should have killed me. Instead, I was in a one-month coma. That’s when our “best friendship” got severely tested. In fact, my best friend put off going to college for a year, to see if I would keep my promise to be “Extroverts for Christ.” Sadly, I couldn’t even though I tried with all my might. It felt like I was the only introvert for Christ, yet I knew deep within my soul that I was not the only one ( 1 Kings 19:1-18). During that year, my best friend, I felt, began to separate from me.
Even though we both went to Southeastern College of the Assemblies of God, we were separated by a traumatic brain injury in which I take full responsibility for. However, there is no accident, any disease, anything whatever that can separate you from God’s love:
Dear friends, we should love each other, because love comes from God. Everyone who loves has become God’s child and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed His love to us: He sent His One and only Son into the world so we could have life through Him. This is what real love is: It is not our love for God; it is God’s love for us. He has sent His Son to die in our place to take away our sins. Dear friends, if God loved us that much, then we should also love each other. No one has ever seen God, but if we love each other, God lives in us, and His love is made perfect in us. We know that we live in God and He lives in us because He gave us His Spirit. (1 John 4:7-13 NCV)
Or how about this one:
One who has unreliable friends soon comes to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother. (Proverbs 18:24 NIV)
Way back when I knew that it was Jesus Christ that is that friend “who sticks closer than a brother, ” making Him my spiritual best friend. I invite you to do the same.
Wherever you are at, if you are not positive on where you are going to spend your spiritual life when you are physically dead, then I invite you to make Jesus Christ your best friend. I encourage you, to mean this deep inside your soul that God came to rescue you. First, you have to ask for forgiveness of all your sin (sin in the past, present, and future) of your new best friend, Jesus Christ. Second, even though you are a sinner saved by grace, you will still feel the proposed need to fulfill your sinful desires (Romans 7:14-17), so then put to death those sinful desires that plague us (Luke 9:23) until we (True Life Christians) go to heaven to be with God.
It really is that simple but hard to pull off. However, if you choose this, WELCOME TO GOD’S FAMILY!!! 😇
~Update on my best friend-he is now living with his beautiful wife and 2 children in the state of Washington, USA. We have regained some of our old things that we used to do together, but it will never be the same as it once was given that there is such a distance between us. Sorry for that, my best friend.
“Friends Are Friends Forever”-Michael W. Smith
TrueLifeChristianity.com 