To who have you given the permission to hurt you with words & challenges you need to hear. To who have you given that right, and to who have you given that trust?
The more I have thought that over, the more I am drawn to re-examine the passage of scripture in which Jesus entrusts deeper parts of Himself with three friends.
Remember, It was about Jesus that I quoted the other day, "he did not entrust Himself to men, for He knew their hearts".
So the question is, did He ever entrust more of Himself to some people than He did to others.
The answer: Yes.
The story of this is found in the book of Matthew in chapter 17. You may want to stop for a minute and read Matthew 16:1-17:13 so that some of what I say next will have context.
Now, this is a serious moment of, "our relationship just went to the next level". Jesus, who has invited a small group of men into His life (12), has chosen to invite an even smaller group (3) into His glory. I think this is hugely important because I think we all have a glory about us.
One author named John Eldredge calls the sum of your life a story. Our stories are the combination of the experiences and the people that have hurt us, the experiences and the people that have blessed us, and the way God is working it all together to form us more into Christ.
Your story is the narrative of God's personal & redemptive work in you that is both realized and even that which is yet to come...
...and because of that, I believe that your story is your glory.
Jesus shows the 3 disciples a deeper part of who He is by showing them a fuller picture of His glory. He showed them deeper & fuller parts of His true identity; His glory.
When we entrust deeper and fuller parts of who we are with people, we are doing a very similar thing. Maybe the first thing worth noting is that Jesus had 12 disciples -- 12 -- but it was only with three of them that He shared this deeper layer of His glory.
One thing I see from Jesus is that even among His good friends (remember we're only talking 12 people here) He was careful to not give the deepest parts of Himself to them all, but only to three. Was He creating a clique, was he being exclusive, was He being fake with the other 9 disciples, were they just back up friends that really didn't matter to Him? I don't think so. I think Jesus had a close group of Friends (12) but even among His close friends, He chose to reveal deeper parts of who He was and is with only some of them.
The Hebrew language (which is a large part of the language that the bible was originally written in) has different words for different expressions of love in human relationships. One of these words is the word Raya & another is the word Ahava.
Raya means things like good friend & even best friend, a person that is deeply important to you. These are the type of people in life that we count on & count on us, people that matter to us. I think Jesus definitely had a Raya love with His 12 disciples (friends). We all have raya friends.
I am going to marry a couple later today and the groom and the bride will each have 5 people standing beside them as they pledge their "I Dos" to each other. I would suspect that the groom feels raya with the guys that will stand at his side, as does the bride with the girls that will stand at her side.
But I would also expect that the groom may not have the same level of relationship with every single person at his side. Maybe because of different shared experiences or different shared values or whatever, I bet there's a good chance that with some of these guys this groom has entrusted more of his glory than he has to others.
Now this other word, ahava, goes a bit deeper. Ahava is still a layer of love, but it's a layer of love that is more reflective of what this groom and bride will commit to each other. Ahava is more about a CHOICE to trust and a COMMITMENT to endure. What makes an enduring marriage endure is not about feelings (raya) but promise, commitment, and a determination to trust and stick it out through thick and thin. The thing about ahava is that it's an equally shared commitment and an equally shared choice, to trust.
So what's the point: What makes an enduring friendship endure is not about feelings (raya) but promise, commitment, and a determination to trust and stick it out through thick and thin. The thing about ahava is that it's an equally shared commitment and an equally shared choice, to trust.
Maybe some of the hurt we have had with people that have seemed to take advantage of or even exploit the parts of our glory that we have entrusted with them, is because we were trying to have an ahava friendship with a person that was only interested in or only capable of a raya friendship.
Ahava is a choice, a promise and a commitment. There comes a point in any friendship that to go deeper, to places where you entrust yourself to other people in ways that you even allow them the right to be a proverbs friend (a friend that can wound you to grow you) where you must together be entrusting ahava to each other.
Who are your raya friends and who could be an ahava friend? Have you honored the ahava that people have entrusted to you? Giving ahava is always risky, but without this risk in friendship you will only ever hide the deepest parts of you you are.
In part 3 of this post I want to explore more the idea of what to look for in a friendship in which you can entrust ahava.
