Is there someone in your life that can let you know you’re making a mistake?

Pastor Eric Kregel

Most people, I think, live their lives in a quiet maze of pleasantries and civil exchanges, without ever getting to the heart or root of life’s questions and answers. We are nice, talk about the weather, mention something about a vacation, and make several more turns in the quiet maze of isolating exchanges. Yet we need the kind of exchanges that arrest our current direction, stopping us from our mistakes because, frankly, we’re not 100% correct all of the time about life. We need friends around us to speak up, say something, get in our face, and bring up a rebuke. When I was a young, I used to loved mountain biking. A friend of mine would take up a specific set of trails and fire roads that overlooked the Pacific Ocean. One day, we were shooting down the trail with the trees whizzing past us on one side and a steep cliff on the other. Cocky and seemingly bulletproof, I charged down the hill going amazing speeds. My buddy, on a particularly tight turn, suddenly stopped. He stood in my way, yelling at me to brake. A rush of anger shot to the top of my head. Why, I shouted within my skull, is he telling me to stop? I was mad, being slowed down in my speed downhill. “Get off your bike,” he said. He pointed to my front tire. Before our descent, I had removed my front tire to re-align it with the bike. I believed I had placed it back on properly. However, a quick wobbled and the tire came free from the bike. If I had gone over a bump or turned too quickly, the wheel might have come free…and my ride would have ended in disaster. I thanked him for stopping me and for correcting my bike’s flaw. “An open rebuke is better than hidden love! Wounds from a friend are better than many kisses from an enemy,” Proverbs 27:5-6 says. Wounds from a friend? How can a friend hurt you? Only a bad friend would do such a thing, wouldn’t they? Or maybe a good friend is willing to hurt our pride, stand up to us, and let us know we might be getting into trouble. Sometimes, being corrected wounds us. Getting wounded hurts, which is one of the reasons why we try avoid being corrected. Chatting with many people in the community, I’ve learned that one of the reasons why people don’t like going to church is that they might be wounded (or they have been wounded). And who wants to be wounded? But is there ever a good wounding? This past summer, we asked a church specialist to investigate whether or not it was feasible for us to add onto to our building. Right now, we’re at maximum capacity in our service and turning down a lot of ministry opportunities due to lack of space. The specialist interviewed several of our people, did some extra research, and then made the recommendation that we could build…but there were some problems holding us back. We, according to him and those interviewed, were careless in a few areas: we didn’t start church on time, piles of “stuff” were collecting in the corners of our church, the sign wasn’t clear on one of the sides of the building, we struggled with communication, etc.. Although these were small things, if you added them together they could really drag the moral of our people and cause strife in our future building campaign. The report wounded many of us, but they were wounds from a friend. This summer, we’ve been working to clean up these little details in order to maximize our effectiveness in serving people’s needs. In the end, we were thankful for the news given. Are you willing to be wounded by a friend? Or are your walls up so high that no one can confront you, bring up problems, and or an insight that might have to stop what you’re doing? Explore your friendships. Don’t hide from friendship opportunities (or church even) as a means of protecting yourself. Look to see if you can use your friendships as a means of getting better and for growth.