A Friend of the Soul
Before you begin this newsletter, I invite you to open up the book of Ruth for a quick refresher. Because this is a sermon write-up, I will be referencing back to Bible verses as if you were listening with your Bible opened up in front of you. But if you don’t have yours ready—no worries! You will still be able to follow along. I’ve amended this talk to also be more age-appropriate to you all, so I’ve added and developed a few more ideas along the way.
When it comes to friendships, we will encounter many different ones throughout our lives and I have a short (but not exhaustive list) of those that we’ve all had at one point or another…
There’s the “friend that comes with the package”. By this I mean your siblings, cousins, or other relatives. These are friends that came with the cradle you were born in. You’ve always hung out because your families spent time together, and they will likely be your friends the rest of your life. I heard someone once say, “you can pick your nose but you can’t pick your family,” and there’s a lot of truth to that! One way or another, family will always be the people who will be involved in your life in one way or another, and those of us who are blessed to have good family, also have good friendships as a byproduct.
Then there’s the “friend for a season”. This is the friend that you had a great time with, but it was just a seasonal friendship and as things changed that friendship also drifted apart. When you were younger it was that friend you had that one summer, or that one year in school. As you got older it’s that friend you were in the wedding party for, but post-marriage or post-children, you never got back together with again. That’s not to say that something bad necessarily drove you apart (though this does happen), but only that this was a friendship that didn’t stand the test of time.
Unfortunately we also have the “friends that betray you”. That one’s pretty self explanatory, and unfortunately even Jesus Christ wasn’t immune from betrayal from his close friends. Though that doesn’t mean reconciliation isn’t impossible…just look at how Peter betrayed Jesus but through repentance and the forgiveness of Christ, Peter became the rock upon which Jesus built his church.
We also have “friends that are your disciplers”. These are friendships that actually have a mentorship and discipleship element to them, and usually it’s with someone in a different season than you, usually older. Think of Elijah and Elisha, Jehu and Moses, Moses and Joshua. I would make the distinction here that a mentor is someone who gives advice, but a true discipleship relationship is one where you two can live life out together. I heard someone once say that “discipleship is not taught, it is caught,” and that can only happen in doing life with someone and observing them.
Of course, we also can’t neglect one of the most common friendships for those who are married, and that’s the “friend that is a lover,” and it’s one that I genuinely look forward to experiencing myself when I enter into marriage. Marriage is also the only context in which I think a deep friendship with the opposite sex is permissible.
I say deep friendship because the most special friends we have are…
“Friends of the Soul” (cheesy, I know)
A friend of the soul is a relationship that takes time and trials to discover, because only time will tell if your friendship has longevity and only trials will uncover if you are able to weather the storms together. These are friendships that stay with you the rest of your life, and even when you do have time apart, you are always able to jump back into them with no problem and trust that you can call on them and lean on them in your times of need. These are the friends you do life with.
When we are young, we want to have a lot of friends. We want to be that popular person who has that huge social media following. But the reality of things is that most people will only have maybe a small handful of “friends of the soul” outside of their own spouse. And all those groups of friends that you spent your formative years trying to pursue eventually evaporate away, which is why it’s important to value quality over quantity in friendship.
Jonathan Haidt writes,
“The happiest girls aren’t the ones with the most friendships, but actually the ones who have strong and supportive friendships, even if that means having a single, terrific, friend.” (1)
Proverbs 18:24
“A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.”
When it comes to friends of the soul, we actually encounter a few deep friendships in the Bible. From Jesus and his closest disciples, to David and Jonathan, we actually get quite a few examples we can glean lessons from. But to me one of the most beautiful stories of friendship comes in the book of Ruth, as we see the special relationship that Naomi and Ruth have, and this is what we are going to spend our time focusing on today.
Let’s Dig in to the Word
Now for a bit of background, Naomi is an Israelite woman who moves with her two sons and husband from Israel to Moab because there was a famine in Israel. Her husband dies and leaves her a widow, and her sons grow up and marry two Moabite women. The two sons die as well, and Naomi is left with no one to support her or carry on the family line. The famine in Israel ends, so Naomi decides to go back to her homeland. One daughter-in-law decides to return home, but her daughter-in-law Ruth makes the decision to stay with Naomi and go with her to Israel.
Read: Ruth 1:1-18
1. A true soul friend sticks through it with you. Even through hard times, even when you have nothing to offer them back.
At this point in the narrative, Naomi was a destitute widow. With the death of her husband and the subsequent death of her sons, she was left without the ability to provide for herself and impoverished. Naomi blesses Orpah and Ruth for their kindnesses to her, but in her speech to them, she makes it clear that there is nothing she can give to the girls to support them (Ruth 1:10-13). I don’t throw any shade on Orpah for making the sensible decision to go back to her family, but it throws Ruth’s courageous decision to stay with Naomi into stark relief. Verse 14 says, “but Ruth clung to her”.
Going to Israel as widows mean that Ruth would come in not only as an outsider who would be ostracized (Moabite relations with Israel were never great, although they seemed to have been friendlier in the time of the Judges), but also right down to the bottom of the social tier. And that leads us to think…do we sometimes hang around people because of what we can get out of them? Are we looking to this person to validate our social standing? To climb up that social ladder for the recognition and validation we desire from others? Or do we hang out with them so that we can get some other types of “perks” from them? Will we still be friends even if our financial or social tides change?
These are important questions to ask not only people in our lives, but also introspectively as motivations for our own friendships that we pursue.
I have a 2024 example of this for you:
If your friend does something that offends someone else and she gets canceled on social media or by your friend group, are you going to stick up for her and risk the social consequences yourself? When you are in another group and that group begins to gossip about your friend, are you going to stand by your friend’s side when it’s not to your benefit to do so?
In the long run, although it might be painful in the moment, people will respect your integrity in sticking with a friend and they will recognize it too. What’s wonderful in the story of Ruth is that her decision to stay and honor her mother-in-law became known to everyone in Bethlehem, and eventually to generations after. (2:11)
2. A true soul friend is one who loves Jesus just like you do.
Ruth tells Naomi, “For where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God.” 1:16-17
I will be honest, I grew up with friends that weren’t Christian, because I got along much better with them than with anyone at church. But it wasn’t until I got much older that I realized I couldn’t be 100% open with them because they couldn’t understand the most special and dearest thing in my heart – my friendship with Jesus. There were things those friends couldn’t understand about me. How I went to church, how I wasn’t allowed to do a lot of the same things that they could do, why I abstained from certain things that made no sense to abstain from (“So why do you not pierce your ears?” lol).
Somewhere in her relationship with Naomi, Ruth saw in Naomi the truth of the one living God. And she began to believe in Him too. Yahweh became her God, and that was why she stayed with Naomi even though Orpah left. In her beautiful speech to Naomi, Ruth uses the word “Yahweh” when she talks about the Lord, this is the covenant name of the Lord, because she had made her own personal covenant to Him. (2)
Orpah loved her mother-in-law, but she did not share that same love for Yahweh as Ruth did. And in the end this is what brought their friendship to an end, what made it just a friendship for a season.
3. A true soul friend doesn’t compare with others.
I am here to tell you all that COMPARISON IS THE THIEF OF YOUR JOY.
There will always be someone to compare yourself to. Comparison is the thief of your joy because the endzone line always changes, always moves. There comes no point in the game of comparison where you finally feel satisfied and accomplished, like you’ve “achieved it”. You compared yourself to your married friends, so you got married. They had the cute kids so then you had the kids. They got that big house, that expensive item, that Stanley cup, so you did too but then failed to see that this pursuit robbed you of your own personal contentment for what God has for you.
And what’s funny is that when we play the game of comparison, we usually place the blame on who? On God.
Naomi fall into this trap in 1:20, she calls herself “Mara” meaning, “the Lord has dealt bitterly with me”. She blames her situation on God, and she compares herself to how she came in to Moab all those years ago, and likely to those around her.
But what Naomi in her bitterness fails to realize is that God was already at work behind the scenes in constructing her story of redemption! She fails to see that God had not let her go back to Israel empty-handed, he had provided for Naomi a true soul friend that would prove to be better than seven men in the end. We see this story of redemption already at work in even the names of those around Naomi. She moved into Moab with her sons, Mahlon “sickly” and Chilion, “frailty, mortal”, but she leaves back to Israel with Ruth, her “friend, companion.” She even fails to see the welcome home that she received from those in Bethlehem when she returned.
I’m not saying that the ordeal that Naomi went through wasn’t tragic and unfortunate, but sometimes we’re so caught up in our own troubles and so self-centered that we blame God for it, and fail to see what he is already providing for us, right in front of us! We fail to have faith that God is already at work, and then grumble and complain. Ruth is a good foil to Naomi in these verses, as we see that Ruth accepts the situation she’s in, stays faithful without complaining, and puts “her hand to the plow” so to speak until that moment of divine breakthrough finally comes.
4. A true, soul friend gives good advice, and listens to good advice.
Naomi tells Ruth in vs. 2:22-23 to stay in the fields of Boaz for her protection and not to go try other fields, because she knows her physical safety is important, and it would be imperiled in the fields of strangers.
A good friend is one who gives good advice. Beware the counsel of unfaithful friends, and even the bad counsel of youth. Solomon’s son, Rehoboam, lost the Kingdom because he chose to listen to the friends of his youth, rather than the wise counsel of those older than him. A true soul friend should not give you advice contrary to what the LORD says, or advice that would lead you astray.
5. A true, soul friend “helps a sista’ out!”
Ruth 3:1-5
Listen y’all…Naomi helps a sista’ out! She sees a beautiful single woman, and she sees a godly single man and does what any good friend would do. Yes and amen, glory hallelujah.
Naomi could have easily been selfish in her sorrow and kept Ruth all to herself to continue to take care of her and see to her needs, but she realized that her young friend would be better served entering the household of Boaz, and how that could help all of them out in the end. Though let me take a moment here to point out she noticed that Boaz was a worthy man (v. 2:1) who feared the Lord, took care of those around him and was honored by those around him as well.
NOW, does that mean you need to go around telling your friends to go visit men in the middle of the night, absolutely not. Not allowed! Let’s keep in mind that this was wisdom that was pertinent to that specific moment at that specific point in time. It worked for Boaz and Ruth, I am not saying this will work for you. One of the interesting things of this story is how the Holy Spirit will give divine wisdom for that appropriate time and place, and often times we can’t replicate it or try to apply it elsewhere because he works uniquely and creatively with all of us.
God bless Ruth as well, who although she possibly didn’t understand why Naomi gave her instructions as she did, was wise enough to obey as well! There will come times in our lives when God will bless our obedience even if we don’t quite understand why in the moment, but we see the fruits of it later.
6. To be a true soul friend, you have to be a worthy person who seeks out other worthy people.
Notice how Ruth loves the Lord. She sacrifices her own freedom for others, she is humble when she talks to Boaz, she honors and respects her mother in law. Both Ruth and Boaz are notable in that even the people of Bethlehem recognize their worthiness and show honor to them.
In your friendships do you love your friends and see the interests of others, and not just your own? Or can we be hypocritical friends who expect others to sacrifice and give to use but we never sacrifice and give back to them?
A 2024 Application:
Who’s uses voice memos? I’ve noticed that us girls love to voice memo long stories about ourselves, but then don’t take the time and care to listen to the other person and to respond! Voice memos are wonderful in that they can be like a phone conversation set at your own pace…but detrimental in that they can end up as long, self-centered monologues. Being a good listener is part of friendship, but also recognize that if you are the only one ever listening and this other girl never responds, mention it to her!
I will also take some time here to note that a worthy woman doesn’t gossip.
When young boys have issues with one another they fight it out physically, but if a young girl has an issue with another girl, she’s going to go and tear her down in her other friendships and relationships. She spreads gossip to turn that person’s friends against her, and lower her value in front other people, usually over social media. Unfortunately we women can carry those same fleshly instincts into our adulthood, and we need to be on our guard against gossip in all of its forms.
Now last but not least…
7. A true, soul friend is worth more than 7 men!!!
Ruth 4:13-15
Listen y’all. Boys come and go. Especially when you’re young. There’ve been too many friendship ended because of jealousy over a mop-haired kid with braces. A true soul friend is worth foregoing a relationship with a boy, who is just going to break your heart anyway because you shouldn’t be dating until you get out of high school! (This was my advice to the high school girls lol)
At the end of the book of Ruth, she and Boaz bear a young little boy who becomes the grandfather of David. As Naomi takes the boy and cradles him, the people of Bethlehem give praise and in it they mention that Ruth is “worth more than 7 sons”, which in Israel at that time symbolized the “perfect family”. Ruth was called better than the picture-perfect family of seven men who could pass down the family line! Now that is some honor indeed.
Concluding Thoughts
But you might ask me, “okay but where do I find a true soul friend?” And the best answer is for you to ask the Lord for one…he is the source of every good and perfect gift from above, why would he be loathe to answer this prayer for you? He is not!
But I also have some practical advice, having grown up a shy girl that I had to put into practice:
Stand up straight, smile. Look confident, even if you’re not feeling it.
Go up and talk to someone. And talk to a lot of people, the more people you talk to, the more your chances of making a friend increase.
I want you to remember, people are more self-focused than you think. You might be scared to talk to them because you’re scared what they’re thinking about you. Trust me, most people are so self-focused that they can’t get outside of their own heads, they don’t really notice others.
Ask a lot of questions and be a good listener. People love to talk about themselves. Keep asking questions until you find something you have in common, and then you guys can start having a back and forth conversation.
Hang out more in person, and when you do PUT YOUR phones down
Hanging out where you are both on your phones in the same room is not quality time.
A friend that you only talk to over DM’s or you just send reels to is not going to be a soul friend
Be the good friend to someone else that you wish you had.
Say no to gossip
How do you build these friendships?
Time, patience, and your relationship with God. As I grew in my relationship with God, he sent people along my way that were also running that same path to Jesus that I was running. As I prayed for good friends, I also strove to become a good friend, and God entrusted more to me. I eagerly desired to be someone who would love on others generously and freely, with no expectation of anything in return. And although that may have stung me once or twice, God has showered the friendship of others on me who do the same thing back.
But we gotta bring it back to Jesus.
You’ve spent some time reading about what it means to find a true friend of the soul. But I’m here to tell you…you don’t need to look very far. Jesus is standing in front of you, and he has already proven his worth to you a thousand times over.
As we studied the book of Ruth, we saw what a true soul friend looks like. But we also know that the Bible is written to reveal to us more of who God is, what his character is like.
Jesus is that true soul friend who chose you first, who calls you friend. (John 15:14). This is an honor that we will never know the depths of.
Jesus is that true soul friend who will never leave you, nor forsake you. He will never betray you, he will never abandon you. The characteristics of a true soul friend that we found in Ruth and Naomi are the same ones that he already embodies for us.
So friends, choose his friendship today. <3
