If Church members truly want to be tools in the hands of their Heavenly Father in bringing to pass His eternal purposes, they need only to be a friend, said Elder Marlin K. Jensen Sunday morning.
Elder Jensen of the Presidency of the Seventy called friendship "one of the fundamental needs of our world."
"I think in all of us there is a profound longing for friendship, a deep yearning for the satisfaction and security that close and lasting friendships can give," he said. "Perhaps one reason the scriptures make little specific mention of the principle of friendship is because it should be manifest quite naturally as we live the gospel."
Like so much of what is worthwhile in life, Elder Jensen continued, the needs for friendship are often best met in the home. "If our children feel friendship within the family, with each other, and with parents, they will not be desperate for acceptance outside the family."
Friendship, he explained, is also a vital and wonderful part of courtship and marriage. "A relationship between a man and a woman that begins with friendship and then ripens into romance and eventually marriage will usually become an enduring, eternal friendship."
The inspired organization of the Church also fosters friendship, Elder Jensen said. "From our youngest to our oldest years we are in settings where friendship and sociality can flourish. In interviews, meetings, classes, quorums, councils, activities and a variety of other opportunities for association, we can make friends and find understanding."
Interactions in the Church are made more enjoyable and productive when they are accompanied by genuine feelings of friendship, he added. A teacher, for instance, who doesn't befriend his or her students will seldom teach with lasting influence and effect.
However, Elder Jensen explained, there is a particular challenge Church members face as they establish and maintain friendships.
"Because our commitment to marriage, family and the Church is so strong we often feel challenged by constraints of time and energy in reaching out in friendship to others beyond that core group. . . . How selfish we can be. How unwilling to be inconvenienced, to give, to bless and to be blessed. What kind of parents, or neighbors, or servants of the Lord Jesus Christ can we be without being a friend?"
Elder Jensen asked his listeners to consider the power of each one of them "reaching out to those not yet of our faith in unconditional friendship. We would no longer be accused of offering them warm bread and a cold shoulder."
Imagine, he continued, the consequences for good if each active family offered consistent concern and friendship for a less-active or new member family.
"The power is in each one of us to be a friend. Old and young, rich and poor, educated and humble, in every language and country, we all have the capacity to be a friend," Elder Jensen said.
He concluded by speaking of Christ, who shortly before His crucifixion said to His disciples, "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." (John 15:13.)
"Having been so richly blessed by Christ's friendship, I pray that we will now be to others what He is to us — a true friend. At no time will we be more Christlike than when we are a friend."
