I perk up when I notice that Jesus put a high price tag on friendship. When his career on Earth was almost over, he turned to his disciples and said: From now on our relationship will be different. You have been my servants, you've been my students, you've been my spokesmen, but from now on I want you to be my friends. Jesus valued friendship above all his other earthly relationships.

I need to tell you that I don't think our society or our churches value friendship as highly as Jesus did. We all know that preachers lament the breakdown of marriages and families in our time, as they should. But have you heard a preacher lately lament the breakdown of friendship? Politicians are running on family values, as well they should. But have you ever heard of anybody running for office on friendship values? And yet the greatest of all philosophers in the history of human thought have told us that no family can ever be a good family, no community can ever be a good community, unless it supports and encourages good friendships. Good friendships, like good families, make for good communities. So I'm glad, I'm really glad that Jesus values a good friendship.

I'm afraid that what our culture values is friendliness. Friendliness isn't the same as friendship. We like friendly flight attendants, friendly salespeople, friendly politicians. And I like them, too. But friendliness is not the same as friendship. If your car salesman is a very friendly guy it does not mean he wants to be your friend after the deal is closed. Please don't get me wrong. I like friendly people. I even like friendly machines. When I shopped for my first computer several years ago - dazed by all that I saw - the salesperson pointed to one of them and said, "Now this one - this one is user friendly." I said, "I'll take it." User friendly. But I have to tell you my computer has never become my friend. The wonderfully friendly flight attendant I had last week on United Airlines has not become my friend. Friendliness is wonderful! I love it! But it's not the same as friendship.

I need a friend who will let me call him up at the craziest hours and tell him my problems. I need a friend who will stick with me in times of trouble even though it costs him something to do it. I need a friend who dares to tell me when I'm off base and about to do something stupid. I need a friend who is my friend when he doesn't feel very friendly. I wouldn't want to live without having a good friend.

This is why I want to share with you five qualities of a very good friendship. And I want to suggest to you that a friendship with God has all five qualities of a very fine friendship.

They all begin with the letter "A". I'm going to tell you what they are first and then I'll talk about them individually. Here they are in a bunch. The marks of a good friendship are these: Affection - good friends like each other; Advantage - good friends are useful to each other; Admiration - good friends admire each other's character; Accountability - a good friend will hold you accountable; and Accessibility - good friends are available to each other. Let's look at them more slowly.

Good friends have affection for each other - they like each other. They enjoy being with each other. They are comfortable with each other, the way you are comfortable with a pair of old slippers - you hardly notice you have them on, but you really miss them when they are gone. An old Chinese proverb says: "When you eat it with a friend, an onion tastes like roast lamb"; maybe a little exaggeration, but you get the point. You enjoy everything you do more when you do it with a friend.

I played eighteen holes of golf the other day with a good friend. I want to tell you that I am a terrible golfer. I don't deserve to walk the same fairways with some of you, and I'm not crazy about playing golf. But I had a marvelous time because I played eighteen holes with my friend, who happens also to be my youngest son. But it has to be mutual. If I like you and you do not like me, we're not going to be friends. I may want to be your friend, I may even be your fan, but we won't be friends unless you like me, too.

This is what makes a friendship with God so wonderful. He likes you. He enjoys you. You are not just a poor chump on whom he takes pity. You are not just a sinner with whom he puts up with in spite of your dirty soul. He really likes you; he enjoys being with you. I believe he has more fun being God when he has you as his friend.

The second quality of a good friend is advantage, mutual advantage.

Good friends are useful to each other. My life is better because my friends are useful to me. It is an advantage to me to have them as friends. But it has to be mutual. If you are useful to me and I never do anything to help you, you are eventually going to feel used. There is a big difference between being used and being useful. We don't have to be useful to each other in the same ways. I have a friend who is very useful because he helps me when I have trouble with my computer. I can't help him in that way at all. He tells me that I help him by sharing my books with him. So it's mutual.

It is a big advantage to you to have God as your friend. Of course, that's what a God is for. But the wonderful thing - the really amazing thing - is that you can be useful to God. He needs you. You are useful to him. There are some things he simply cannot get done without you. Isn't it nice to know that we here on Earth are useful to our friend, God?

The third quality of a good friendship is admiration, mutual admiration.

Good friends admire each other. I mean they admire each other's character. The admire the sorts of persons they are. Really good friends find something in each other to admire so much that they want those qualities to rub off on them. And it always does. Having a good friend makes us better persons for having them.

I have a few friends whom I admire so much that every time it gets into my head to do something that might be wrong, or cheap, or shabby I wonder what my friends would think about me if I did it. Just thinking about what they would think about me - if they knew - helps me do the right thing. Good friends make us better people for having them. This is why it is so important to choose the right friends. Choose friends you admire so much that you would like to be a little more like them. When you have a close friend, some of her qualities are going to rub off on you.

That's why I think it is so fantastic that God wants to be my friend and wants to be your friend because he admires us. You may not think there is all that much in you to admire, but he sees something about you that he thinks is simply wonderful. To him, you are a terrific human being. He sees something in you that he thinks is simply fantastic. He sees in you the potential for being a really superb person. This is why he is a good friend and not just a nag. Some of us get so down on ourselves that we have a hunch that if people really knew us, they would not admire us at all. So we put up a front. God really knows you and he really knows me, and he still wants to be your friend and mine because he sees something in us that he admires a lot.

The fourth mark of a good friendship is accountability.

Good friends hold each other accountable. Good friends don't let us get away with anything. They tell us when they think we are doing something stupid or something sinful. I know some prima donnas, prominent people who could have kept themselves out of a lot of trouble if they had only had a good friend to hold them accountable.

The closest friend I ever had died some years ago, and I had the privilege of spending the last week of his life with him - though we lived almost two thousand miles apart. When it came time for me to leave him and we said good bye to each other, he said: "Wait a minute, Lew, there are a couple of things about you that I am worried about and I hope that you'll change them." He told me what they were, and I tried to change them. My friend, to the very end, was holding me accountable the way a good friend does. I hope you have a friend who has the courage to hold you accountable.

If God is your friend, he is going to hold you accountable, no doubt about that. But the marvelous thing is that if he's your friend, he lets you hold him accountable. If you think things around you are a mess and not the way they're supposed to be - he is not doing what a God is supposed to do - call him to account. Go directly to him, eyeball to eyeball, and tell him you expect him to keep his promise. Good friends are accountable to you, and God is a good friend. He lets you hold him accountable. Isn't that fantastic?

And now the last quality of a good friendship: accessibility or availability.

Good friends are available to each other. Good friends may call and ask us to do them a favor when we would much rather do something else, or they may call at crazy hours of the day just because they need somebody to listen to them and let them tell them their troubles. Good friends can be a pain in the neck sometimes. But sharing pain is what really good friends are about, when pain is there to be shared. Good friends have time for each other. If they don't make time they lose out on one of the best parts of friendship. I hope you have a friend who sees to it that she has time to be accessible to you - accessible to you when you need her.

God is such a good friend, but to develop a friendship with God takes time. We have to make ourselves accessible to him, create some time in our lives for him. I know people who are too busy that they don't give God the time of day. To develop a good friendship with God we need to make ourselves accessible to him, the way he makes himself accessible to us. Did you know that this is the whole idea behind the Lord's Day or the Sabbath Day? It is a time in the week created by God to help make ourselves accessible to our good friend.

I have been sharing with you the five marks of a good friendship, and I want you to listen as I go over them again:

Affection: Good friends like each other. That's easy.

Advantage: Good friends are useful to each other.

Admiration: Good friends admire each other's character and want some of it to rub off on them.

Accountability: Good friends dare to hold each other accountable.

Accessibility: Good friends are available for each other.

I believe that a good friend is one of the best things you will ever have in your life. I hope you have at least one very good friend. I believe that God is just about the best friend you or I can ever have. I hope that he is your friend.

Floyd Brown: Thank you for a wonderful message. Lewis, we have a tendency to prejudge people in life. We look at people and make snap judgments. Got a message for us there?

Lewis Smedes:  Yes, and it works two ways. Some people are arrogant and proud, and they don't see potential for a good friendship in somebody beneath them. And it works the other way: It's hard for a humble person to think of being a good friend with somebody who's high and mighty or rich and famous. I have a few friends who are very successful, very powerful. I never dreamed of being a friend with them. I thought, "They're too rich; they're too this or that for me," And I discovered they're just human beings, like me! And they need a friend. And they need me as a friend.

And the same with the other way.

The amazing thing, religiously, about God is I don't think we appreciate this amazing fact that God will be our friend. Religion often presents God as being something like me when I'm driving by in my car, and roll down my window, give a homeless person a buck, and drive off. Why do you do that? Well, I have compassion." But I've never invited a homeless person to my home and said, "Let's be my friend." Friendship is on another level. That's amazing to me about God. Here you've got the Holy One - the maker of the universe! - liking Floyd Brown enough to say, "I really like what I see in Floyd Brown. I want to be your friend." And that's a lot. I feel good about that. Better than if I thought God holds his nose when I walk by, and says, "I love you, anyway."

Brown: You've got to touch on this: What about people who are so in need of a friend they allow people to take advantage of them? What do you say to that person?

Smedes: Oh, that person has got to understand that in order to have a friend whom you respect, you have to respect yourself first. People who respect themselves have the power to become good friends of people whom they respect.