R. Kent Hughes, author of Disciplines of a Godly Man, and Senior Pastor of College Church in Wheaton, Illinois, challenges men to value friendship:

Alan Loy McGinnis, author of the best-selling The Friendship Factor, says that America’s leading psychologists and therapists estimate that only ten percent of all men ever have any real friends…Why is this? we wonder.

We all know that men, by nature, are not as relational as women. Men’s friendships typically center around activities, while women’s revolve around sharing. Men do not reveal their feelings or weaknesses as readily as women. They gear themselves for the marketplace, and typically understand friendships as acquaintances made along the way, rather than as relationships. Also, men fear being suspected of deviant behavior if they have an obviously close friendship with another man. And, of course, there are some who suffer from the John Wayne delusion that ‘real men do not need other people.’

Tragically, those who think this way rob themselves, their wives, their children, and the Church because they will never be all God wants them to be. Such thinking ignores the wisdom of both Scripture and life.

To my friends: I appreciate you. Please continue to do your best to keep me engaged. Challenge me to share my heart and weaknesses with you. I need you more than I know.

“A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.” – Proverbs 18:24

“Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called today, that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.” – Hebrews 3:12-13