“Not all that dines with you is your friend; choose your friends wisely.”*
A friend is a person other than a family member, spouse or lover, whose company one enjoys and towards whom one feels affection.
A person with whom one is vaguely or indirectly acquainted.
WHO IS MY FRIEND?
According to a philosophical saying; “In prosperity, our friends know us; in adversity, we know our friends.” John Churton Collins
*Someone that stands by you in times of trouble, is true, indeed. A friend remains your friend even when you are nothing.
CATEGORIES OF FRIENDS
VALUABLE FRIENDS: These are friends, with positive mindsets and clarified visions. In them, there are deposited virtues. They are loaded with contents.
*“Valuable friends are scarce and hard to get”.
*Valuable friends influence our lives positively. They are friends that serve as an eye-opener for us, sharpen our ideas for us, clarify our visions, and they also create interest in supporting our dreams.*
Valuable friends correct us right from the moment they discover we are going astray. They are friends that give us good counsels. The world we are now is perverse. Note that; we can also secure the heavenly valuable friend too. We would get the clue in my further explanations.
*“A valuable friend can also be called a premium friend”.
*PARASITIC FRIENDS:*They are friends that choose to be burdens on us.
To this category of friends, to give us is a taboo, but receiving from us is a must.*If we are not wise and smart enough, they will drain us and our resources. They lack support and showing compassion. They are a lazy set of friends, that do not know how to sow, but know how to reap.
_I watched a movie. In that movie, Nancy was from a poor background. She was fortunate to get married to a wealthy man. Nancy was so nice to her parents and siblings that there was nothing they asked her she didn’t give them. The demand for money was becoming too frequent; to the extent that the wife to her husband’s friend told her to be vigilant. For that cause, she suggested that Nancy feign and pretend she had a sickness called amnesia; in which her days to live would be limited if she couldn’t pay a certain amount of money for her treatment. Due to this strategy of the test, her husband left the house. Nancy sought help from her parents and siblings but none helped her._
_The day she called Amaka who was one of her siblings, for help, Amaka said she was not acquiring enough sales, and, because of that, she couldn’t render assistance; although it was Nancy that gave her the business capital._
_The day Amaka went to visit Nancy, Nancy asked and said;__“How can you help me raise the money I told you about?” Amaka said, “I have come here to check if I can get some foodstuff from you.”Nancy said, “Go and take it.” And Amaka was not even reluctant to take it. She called one of her brothers who went out on a shopping spree with his girlfriend; whose hangout budget was not less than #150,000 for that day. Nancy sought him for financial assistance, but he said he was not in Nigeria presently, that he went to hustle for money in Ghana, that he would attend to her after coming back. Nancy’s parents came empty-handed, with no signal of care and sympathy, and apparently with no human feelings. All they showed concern on was how to sell off Nancy’s husband properties, and to do for her (Nancy) a befitting burial. Nancy’s mum said vividly to Nancy’s face, “Since you would soon die, it is better you quickly sell off your husband’s properties.” On the parents’ way back home, they saw Rita who happened to be Nancy’s elder sister, the only one that showed sympathy and gave Nancy all she could give; both financially and spiritually. The parents asked Rita where she was going to, and Rita answered, “I want to go and give Nancy the little money I was able to raise for her.” The woman said, “Don’t do that! You know she is not your sister.” Rita challenged her and said, “Mama, how can you be that heartless! So is it now you know that she is not your real daughter?” So Nancy’s husband decided to bring the scheme to an end. Nancy expressed herself to them that she knew everything already. In Nancy’s conversation with them, she said to Amaka, “I am highly disappointed in you when I was sick, you even still came to pack foodstuff in my house.” Amaka replied and said, Nancy, “I am sorry, it was not intentional, I sincerely thought you were truly sick.”_
*“Many people that seem to be our friends are only after what they would gain from us. All they care about is what they would get from us.”*
*PLATONIC FRIENDS: They are close friends that are not romantically attached to us. They can be called; “casual friends”.
*TOXIC FRIENDS: Their presence in our lives causes confusion, pollution, distraction, and provocation. They stir up the anger in us, by so doing, we might begin to lose the healthiest of our emotion.*
_“I had a guy on my list last four years, each time he calls me, his call alone, causes me an emotional disruption, not to talk about our conversations, that always end with conflict. I was forced to block him off my list to regain my peace of mind then._
*ONLINE FRIENDS:*They are the associates you get through social media especially WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter Telegram e.t.c. Some of the Internet friends we meet add value to our lives while some does not add value.
*FIGURATIVE FRIENDS: They are just there to fill the vacuum of friendship.*
*They are neither adding value to our lives nor subtracting value from our lives.*
They are too dormant. Hardly would they check on us. We would notice that we are the ones that always check on them. We can also have traitors among these categories of friends too.
BENEFICIAL FRIENDS: The hallmark in this category of friendship should be mutually beneficial.
This is a situation whereby two people choose to be friends because of what they would gain or benefit from each other.
There are diverse ways friends can benefit from one another; financially, academically, sexually etc. *
Beneficial friends do not roll outside the box of benefit.*
_For instance; “Kolade’s urge for sex is too high and uncontrollable. As to that, most of his relationships doesn’t last long due to the excessive demand for sex from his girlfriends. He sought advice from his closest friend, Tomiwa. Tomiwa advised him to look for a friend with benefit (Sexual benefit precisely)._
*“Give and take policy is applicable in beneficial friendship”.*It could be official or unofficial.
*CEREMONIAL FRIENDS: They are the friends we party together or club together. They can also be called OUTING FRIENDS.*
*GIST FRIENDS: They are the friends that feed us with both relevant and irrelevant information, Including gossip.*
Some acclaimed friends would prefer to buy us hard drinks than to borrow us our business capital. Some also prefer to use their money for merriments than to save a dying soul.
*A friend’s genuineness cannot be known not until there’s a pass of friendship test.
So also we have people that would never show love and care to their loved ones until they lose them. Eagerly, they condole the dead by posting their RIP pictures. Despite their existence, or when they were alive, all they could have done to contribute to those people’s success, they never did. May God disconnect us from those friends in Jesus name.
*WHO SHOULD BE MY BEST FRIEND? However, “Good things attract good things, and bad things attract bad things”.*
The Holy Spirit is the spirit of truth and holiness. He is a genderless divine friend who is without blemish. He is the best person to keep our company, the best to lead us right. He is the most reliable friend one can obtain. He is the revealer of secret and hidden things.
Our friends can deceive us, put us on ‘motion’, together with assuring us that they will stand by us and give us full support whenever we fall, they can promise us heaven and earth, and they might not fulfil the least of it, because they are not God. They can genuinely love you, they can feel they are capable of helping you, unknowingly, but they are not capable of supporting you, let alone of helping you. Your friends get tired of helping you, they get exhausted in feeding you, but the Holy Spirit cannot lie to you, cannot deceive you, cannot fail you, cannot disappoint you, cannot mislead you, cannot get tired of you, His source cannot be exhausted, instead, it keeps flowing like a flowing river. That is why He is called; “The Living Spring”. God made me understand that the mystery behind the “Living spring” is that, it’s a source that can never get dry. The name of this friend is Holy-Spirit.
*HOW TO ACCESS OUR HEAVENLY FRIEND*
No one can access him without accepting him and communing with him. That is why the Bible says, “If anyone must access me the father, he must come through the son”. And the son would hand you over to the Holy Spirit which is the Comforter, Redeemer, Teacher, and Tutor. And the Holy Spirit has to have a throne in our heart. We cannot see God, not until we give him accommodation in our heart, we cannot see God. Not until we encounter him, we cannot hear from God. That was why God made Paul see the light first, the light, and the light is Jesus. And after Jesus illuminated the darkness in his heart, he began to hear the voice of the Holy Spirit.
Valuable friends care about you and keep the relationship intact. You both work together, and not apart. They show concern about your well-being. They add value to your life in various ways; academically, financially, spiritually, socially, morally, intellectually, etc.
The same applies to friends, we find around us. Good friends beget good friends vice versa.
*FOOD FOR THOUGHT: Identify your friend and let your reason for choosing a friend to be well defined and spelt. Set a friendship boundary for yourself, and let it be maintained.*
An adage says; “Evil communication corrupts good manner”. The company you keep the most might have the greatest influence on you.
*Associate yourself with destiny makers (positive influencers), dissociate yourself from destiny destroyers (negative influencers). Negative influencers are viruses and they mislead you in life.*
*Valuable friends are the best to choose. They are boosters. Destiny makers will fix you on the right track to success, but destiny destroyers will pull you off the track of success.