There is no objection to having old friends if you can attract them to repentance with you. If you cannot, then let your relationship with them be superficial. If they are dangerous to you, then you should prefer your relationship to God over your relationship to them. Even if you encounter difficulty, bear it for the sake of the Lord. Remember what Abram the father of fathers did when the Lord called him. He left his family, kindred, and country to walk behind God (Genesis 12.1). Likewise, in order to preserve your repentance for the sake of God, you leave all who hinder you.
—H.H. Pope Shenouda III, The Life of Repentance and Purity
Category: FRIENDSHIP
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If a stumbling block comes to you from the person dearest to you, the one as dear to you as your eyes, or even if it comes from the person who helps you the most, who is like your right hand, stay away from him.
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The stumbling might come from your dearest relatives and loved ones. The majority of youth who become corrupt do so through the corruption of their very dear friends, who influence them.
—H.H. Pope Shenouda III, The Life of Repentance and Purity -
In sorrow the Comforter is near.—”Very present in time of trouble.” He sits by the crucible as a Refiner of silver, regulating the heat, marking every change, waiting patiently for the scum to float away, and His own face to be mirrored in clear, translucent metal. No earthly friend may tread the winepress with you, but the Savior is there, His garments stained with the blood of the grapes of your sorrow. Dare to repeat it often, though you do not feel it, and though Satan insists that God has left you, “Thou are with me.”
When friends come to console you they talk of time’s healing touch, as though the best balm for sorrow were to forget, or in their well-meant kindness they suggest travel, diversion, amusement, and show their inability to you to appreciate the black night that hangs over your soul; so you turn from them, sick at heart, and prepared to say, as Job of his, “Miserable comforters are ye all.” But all the while Jesus is nearer than they are, understanding how they wear you, knowing each throb of pain, touched by fellow-feeling, silent in a love too full to speak, waiting to comfort from hour to hour as a mother soothes her weary, suffering babe.
Be sure to study the art of this Divine comfort, that you may be able to comfort them that are in any affliction with the comfort with which you yourself have been comforted of God (2 Cor. I.4). There can be no doubt that some trials are permitted to come to us, as to our Lord, for no other reason than that by means of them we should become able to give sympathy and succour to others. And we should watch with all care each symptom of the pain, and each prescription of the Great Physician, since, in all probability, at some future time, we shall be called to minister to those passing through similar experiences. Thus we learn by the things we suffer, and, being made perfect, become authors of priceless and eternal help to souls in agony.The Gift of Suffering
by F.B. Meyer -
Perhaps you spend too little time in communion with God through His Word.—It is not necessary to make long prayers, but it is essential to be much alone with God; waiting at His door; hearkening for His voice; lingering in the garden of Scripture for the coming of the Lord God in the dawn or cool of the day. No number of meetings, no fellowship with Christian friends, no amount of Christian activity can compensate for the neglect of the still hour.
When you feel the least inclined for it, there is most need to make for your closet with the shut door. Do for duty’s sake what you cannot do as a pleasure, and you will find it become delightful. You can better thrive without nourishment than become happy or strong in Christian life without fellowship with God.The Gift of Suffering
by F.B. Meyer -
If you are constantly canceling plans with your friends, not following through, neglecting to answer messages for days and weeks on end, ignoring invitations, and not showing up for people at very important moments in their lives — that’s not introversion, that’s isolation.
The Difference Between Being an Introvert and Isolating Yourself
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The woman should not cause offense with her beauty and femininity, nor the man with his temptations, emotions, and promises, or through extending friendship and familiarity. These usually start innocent, in fact or in appearance, then end the opposite way.
—H.H. Pope Shenouda III, Fruits of the Spirit
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Even in the case of best friends, one should be sensitive regarding continuously visiting and intruding. It is an easy thing to wear out one’s welcome. If one does not respect their neighbors in space, the neighbor may become weary and eventually come to hate them.
Frequently people who wear the best of friends become the bitterest enemies because of neglect of so simple a scripture as this.
—H.E. Metropolitan Youssef -
Why, we have known ascetics of this class who have persisted in their fasting even unto death, as if with such sacrifices God were well pleased Hebrews 13:16; and, again, others who rush off into the extreme diametrically opposite, practising celibacy in name only and leading a life in no way different from the secular; for they not only indulge in the pleasures of the table, but are openly known to have a woman in their houses; and they call such a friendship a brotherly affection, as if, forsooth, they could veil their own thought, which is inclined to evil, under a sacred term. It is owing to them that this pure and holy profession of virginity is blasphemed among the Gentiles.
—St. Gregory of Nyssa, On Virginity, Chap. 23
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Such persons are so caught up in God’s love that everything else can only receive its meaning and purpose in the context of that love. They ask only one question: “What is pleasing to the Spirit of God?” And as soon as they have heard the sound of the Spirit in the silence and solitude of their hearts, they follow its promptings even if it upsets their friends, disrupts their environment, and confuses their admirers.
—Henri Nouwen, Discernment: Reading the Signs of Daily Life
SO GOOD QUOTES 