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What Is Spiritual Friendship? by Stephanie Ford
Adding the modifier spiritual need not create a pious hedge around friendship. Rather, the word spiritual emphasizes the calling and depth of a faithful friendship grounded in relationship with God. Such a friendship is more than a relationship based on similar likes, overlapping interests and values, or even years in the same community. C. S. Lewis described it as a friendship of "kindred souls"—two persons who see and care about the same truth. In Celtic Christian thinking, your soul friend—anam cara—is your companion who carries the truest mirror reflecting the light of your soul.
In my experience of soul kinship, I find I can speak my heart to a spiritual friend and trust that the other receives my words with care and prayerful regard. I can be myself and risk talking about feelings or ideas I may not have expressed anywhere else for fear of judgment. I can trust that she or he will carefully consider words of challenge or concern to me. Over time, through a mutual bond born of faithful attention to the other, each of us may call the other to his or her own unique highest good.
Another characteristic of spiritual friendship is its nature of calling, even vocation. You sense the Spirit's leading to pursue a particular relationship.
A soul friendship is not only a gift from God but also a vocation of love to be tended with loyalty and care.
From Kindred Souls: Connecting Through Spiritual Friendship (Nashville, Tennessee: Upper Room Books, 2006), 15-17.
Prayer for a Friend
Wondrous Lord,
I pray for my friend, (name).
Lord, strengthen that which needs strengthening.
Heal that which needs healing.
Renew that which needs renewing.
Motivate that which needs motivating.
Bring peace to that which needs peace.
And Lord, I ask that you would
Draw my friend into a new depth of joy and intimacy with you. Amen.
Copyright © 2015 Beth McLendon of Inspirational-Prayers.com
The Ministry of Listening by Deitrich Bonhoeffer
There is a kind of listening with half an ear that presumes already to know what the other person has to say. It is an impatient, inattentive listening, that despises the speaker and is only waiting for a chance to speak and thus get rid of the other person. This is no fulfillment of our obligation, and it is certain that here too our attitude toward our brother or sister only reflects our relationship to God. It is little wonder that we are no longer capable of the greatest service of listening that God has committed to us, that of hearing a person's confession, if we refuse to give ear on lesser subjects.
Secular education today is aware that often a person can be helped merely by having someone who will listen to him seriously, and upon this insight it has constructed its own soul therapy, which has attracted great numbers of people, including Christians. But Christians have forgotten that the ministry of listening has been committed to them by Him who is Himself the great listener and whose work they should share. We should listen with the ears of God that we may speak the Word of God.
From Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Christian Community.
Spiritual Friendship
August 2015
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A faithful friend is a sure shelter, whoever finds one has a rare treasure. [Ecclesiastcus 6:14 JB]
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