Putting Others First

Putting Others First

Don’t be selfish; don’t try to impress others. Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves.

“We really feel called to leave the church,” our friends told us somberly. “We aren’t sure what’s next; we’ve just felt God tugging at us to do something else and have been praying about our next steps.”

In the stillness of the evening, while our collective children slumbered in the hotel rooms adjoining ours on our joint family trip, the quiet statement fell like a box of rocks on the floor, discordant and unexpected.

“What?!” my husband exclaimed, nearly jumping out of his seat. “That’s terrible! Who in the world could ever replace you guys?”

Seated next to him, I shot him a not-so-subtle death glare, hinting he should stop talking. Realizing his mistake, he backtracked a bit. “I mean, of course we support you guys no matter what. This is just unexpected.”

In friendship as in life, it can be hard for us to consider someone else’s needs first. Our natural impulse is to wonder what the ramifications of someone else’s choice will be for us, not them. We may feel disappointed, worried, or hurt, wondering how things will change or what something will mean for our own life. Selfishly, we may even wish that our friends would make a different choice, one that wouldn’t challenge us or change the status quo.

And yet, we are called to consider the needs of others—not just alongside them, but before our own. That tension is a challenge that, if I’m honest, I have yet to master. Thankfully, true friends will offer us grace when we realize that we’ve overstepped our boundaries and give us the benefit of the doubt when we find ourselves backtracking. In the case of our friends, they graciously accepted the apology we sheepishly offered for our knee-jerk reaction. Together, the four of us instead resolved to pray over the weighty decisions our friends faced.

— Kristin

— Today’s Act of Friendship —

If there’s a situation in which you’ve felt tension with a friend, consider whether the tension is due to how the situation affects you rather than how it will affect them. Pray about how you might resolve those tensions, and then follow through.