While it may go against the norms of modern culture, which often views friendship as a personal decision, parents should be encouraged to take an active role in helping their children form wise, healthy friendships, especially when they are young.

As a pastor, I’ve had many families come to me about conflicts or challenges involving their child’s friendships. These often come with their concerns about a friend who may be a bad influence. Rarely, however, do parents seek guidance on how to proactively lead their children in this area. Parents can take a hands-off approach to their children’s selection of friends and hope everything works out. Few are the parents who engage in the active discipleship and training regarding this important arena.

Most don’t recognize the need until a problem arises. By teaching parents how to guide, oversee, and disciple their children’s friendships, we can better equip them to lead in this area and help prevent some of the difficulties they might otherwise face.

So, what makes for a good friend?

Solomon gave his sons wise advice to guide them in the choosing of their friends. Consider these biblical friendship principles from proverbs:

• “The righteous choose their friends carefully, but the way of the wicked leads them astray.” (Proverbs 12:26 NIV)
• “Make no friendship with a man given to anger, nor go with a wrathful man, lest you learn his ways and entangle yourself in a snare.” (Proverbs 22:24–25)
• “Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm.” (Proverbs 13:20)

Sadly, Solomon’s son, Rehoboam did not embrace his father’s counsel and divided the nation in one generation. It is worth rereading the story to be reminded of his downfall. He chose the foolish counsel of his childhood friends over the elders of Israel.

“Then King Rehoboam took counsel with the old men, who had stood before Solomon his father while he was yet alive, saying, “How do you advise me to answer this people?” And they said to him, “If you will be a servant to this people today and serve them, and speak good words to them when you answer them, then they will be your servants forever.” But he abandoned the counsel that the old men gave him and took counsel with the young men who had grown up with him and stood before him. And he said to them, “What do you advise that we answer this people who have said to me, ‘Lighten the yoke that your father put on us’?” And the young men who had grown up with him said to him, “Thus shall you speak to this people who said to you, ‘Your father made our yoke heavy, but you lighten it for us,’ thus shall you say to them, ‘My little finger is thicker than my father’s thighs. And now, whereas my father laid on you a heavy yoke, I will add to your yoke. My father disciplined you with whips, but I will discipline you with scorpions.’”” (1 Kings 12:6–11)

God gave us these stories, the apostle Paul tells us, to equip us and help us learn from past mistakes (Romans 15:4). Had Rehoboam build friendships with some of the Elders of Israel in addition to his less experienced childhood friends he may have trusted the wiser advice of those with more experience. Here are a few principles to help you guide

your families to a better outcome.

Five principles for biblical friendship

Here are five principles to equip your parents to lead in the area of biblical friendships:

1. Emphasize how influential friendship is

Impress upon parents the shaping influence friendships will have on their children. In the above scriptures from Proverbs, we see that friends play an influencing force upon our lives. The apostle Paul shared, “Do not be deceived: ‘Bad company ruins good morals.’ Wake up from your drunken stupor, as is right, and do not go on sinning. For some have no knowledge of God.” (1 Corinthians 15:33–34). So clearly our children’s choice of friends matters.

Encourage your parents to involve themselves in the selection of their children’s friends and the monitoring of those friendships. Teachers in the classroom become quickly aware of kids who shouldn’t sit together because they are a poor influence on each other. A wise relocation of a few seats can make all the difference. Parents have an important say in the choice of their children’s friends and can monitor the fruit of their sons or daughters friendships.

Once chosen, biblical friendships are not plug and play. They take work. Thankfully, we don’t parent in a vacuum, we parent in community. When parents work together to monitor friendships, speak wisdom into them, and direct those friendships everyone benefits.

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