When you read a passage and want to understand it, you reread it, you read the commentaries, you meditate on it, you pray about it, you hear it preached on and expounded over and over again, you think you got it figured out. You think you’re an expert on it. You go around sharing what you learned because it moved you. You think you somehow mastered it. But not until you hear it as a loving rebuke from a friend does the truth and application of the text come alive. This isn’t always the case, of course, but for someone who thought he had it figured it out, it was quite possibly the most glorious way for it to happen.

Better is open rebuke
than hidden love.
Faithful are the wounds of a friend;
profuse are the kisses of an enemy.
Proverbs 27:5-6

I am so grateful for friends who would have the courage and the love to confront me on my sins. I pray every Christian would have a friend that could challenge them at a level so profound that we would otherwise be completely ignorant, even when we think we have it figured out.

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