I was counseling someone recently and asked them the very specific question about friendship in the context of her normal, day-to-day life. When I use the word “friendship” I’m talking about people who get into your mess. And to be more specific I’m talking about people who will get into your mess who are in your local church.

More times than not when I ask this question I get an answer that runs along these lines:

• Yes, I have a friend who lives in another state that I talk to from time to time and they have been such a help to me.
• Yes, I have a friend here in town that I talk to once or twice per week.
• Or, I really don’t want anyone in my church to know what I’m going through.

Now there is an obvious implication regarding the breakdown of our friendships. The obvious breakdown is that most of our problems that require a counselor would go away if we had adequate friendships. Let me state it another way: I rarely counsel someone who is embedded in a local church where there is the freedom for sin-sharing, with appropriate reciprocation. Additionally, the sin-sharing is at an appropriate theological depth coupled with practical application.

Let me take another crack at it: in many cases biblical counseling is a “Rent-a-Friend Paradigm” because there is a friendship breakdown in the local church.

Nearly always I inquire as to the level of the awareness of their friends regarding what they are going through. This is when I’m usually told that their friends do not know because they do not want them to know or they will say their church doesn’t get that deep with folks or they don’t have friends or know friends that can help them.

In other situations my client feels the stinging shame of sin and they don’t want their friends to know what they are going through and the counselor is a safe, temporary, Rent-a-Friend option. I understand this. I don’t want folks to know the trouble I struggle with, but the problem is that the cure will almost always be found in public awareness and public help. This is God’s way!

One of the great ways to help our friends who feel the stinging shame of sin is to take the offensive. That is, let them know that you not only sin, but be specific about how you sin. Roll your sin out to the timid. Let the shamed see your sin. Let them know they are not alone in the practice of sin. Show them the log in your eye and make it real.

I think a local church or a small group would be amazed by what God could do if we humbled ourselves and stated the obvious: I sin!