Friend With Benefits? Uh…Yes, Please!

A friend WITH benefits. Kind of a no-brainer, right?  No strings attached. Just a solid good time and you can walk away. 

Negative. 

I’m watching a show right now and the female character has decided she wants a friends with benefits relationship and the male has agreed. Guess what? It’s caused all sorts of issues. 

Because emotions get tangled up when intimacy is involved.  I turned the show off and thought about this whole “friends with benefits” thing. A movie was made about it for crying out loud. Many movies actually, and it never stays that way “no strings attached.” Oh, in a perfect movie world, they end up falling in love and then commit (which is backwards) but not before wave after wave of disasters happen. And sometimes it ends terribly. 

But there is one no-brainer friend-with-benefits I’m all over, and no it doesn’t involve anyone on the silver screen or TV. 

It begins with wooing…then a commitment on my part (because He’s already been committed) then intimacy comes. 

I’m talking about Jesus. Yeah. We can be friends with benefits. 

“A person who has friends may be harmed by them,
but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.” Proverbs 18:24 NET

I’m all for a friend who won’t harm me, betray me, leave me or treat me without dignity. Now, I know we’re human and we’re going to make mistakes even in friendship, but there is Someone we can be vulnerable around, Someone we can be fully “naked” or transparent, if you will, with. Someone who won’t mishandle our hearts. A Friend who will stick closer than a brother. I’m all for that friend. 

And we reap all the benefits which He is totally okay with!

“My soul, praise the Lord,and do not forget all His benefits. He forgives all your sin; He heals all your diseases.” Psalm 103:2-3 HCSB

Two are right there in the verse. Here’s just a few more:

Compassion that never fails
Faithfulness even when we aren’t faithful
Hope 
Grace
Provision
Strength
Unending and unconditional love
True intimacy
Commitment 
Loyalty
Kindess
Discipline (yes, it’s a benefit)
Purpose/Destiny
An advocate
Intercession on our behalf
Guidance
Wisdom
Joy
Peace
Comfort
Freedom

You can fool yourself all you want for temporary pleasure, but you can’t be friends with benefits and truly be free to come and go. You can’t have true intimacy without commitment and commitment comes first. It should anyway. 

We can never create a list, a truthful list, of benefits, by the world’s standard, for the whole Friends with Benefits idea. Maybe a few good times. Temporary pleasure. Sooner or later it will and does fall apart.

I’m all for something that’s eternal. Truth is, I think we’re all looking for an unconditional, eternal love. We’d be stupid not to want that! 🙂 

So, Friend with Benefits? Yes, please! Give me Jesus. 

If Jesus said, “I’m going to come down from heaven just for the day, and we can go wherever you want”…where would you go, and how would you spend your day with Him?” 


I’ll be back to regularly posting in the fall. Have you signed up for my newsletter? More Than Words will be hitting inboxes in just another week, FREE to subscribers only. So what are you waiting for?

photocredit: freedigitalphotos/stuartmiles 

Gone without a Trace Giveaway!

Welcome back Patricia
Bradley to the blog today. She and her characters are playing Would You Rather
and she’s giving away a copy of her newest Logan Point series book: Gone without
a Trace! Yay! You can enter to win below.
Would You Rather…  
…be shot or stabbed? (Hey it’s suspense so…)
Alex: Uh, neither? But
if I have to choose…I guess be stabbed.
Livy: I’m with Alex for
once—neither. But I’d rather be shot.
Patricia: I can’t stand
the thought of a knife slicing me, so to be shot.
…be happy because you’ve been lied to or feel emotional pain
knowing the truth?
Alex: Since I don’t like
to be lied to, I’d rather feel emotional pain knowing the truth.
Livy: Hmmm. I can’t
believe I’m going to agree with him again.
Patricia: Lie to me.
…fall in love but lose it or never fall in love?
Alex: Where do you get
these questions? I want to fall in love and keep it.
Livy: Why does he always
get to go first? He stole my answer.
Patricia: For once, I
agree with both of them.
Thanks for playing! Tell
us what you’re working on right now.
I’m working on a
Christmas anthology with several Harlequin Heartwarming authors and at the same
time I’m laying out the plot of my next series, Cold Cases set in Memphis. The
first book is due October 1.
Here is Gone
without a Trace back cover blurb:

The past is
repeating itself—and time is running out
It’s been more than two years since
homicide detective Livy Reynolds’s cousin disappeared from Logan Point. Unlike
most people in her hometown, Livy has never believed that Robyn left
voluntarily. When Dallas private investigator Alex Jennings contacts her
concerning a senator’s missing granddaughter who was last seen in Logan Point,
Livy notices eerie similarities between the two disappearances. With self-doubt
plaguing her after killing a teenager in the line of duty and an almost instant
dislike of the self-assured PI, she’s finding this investigation an uphill
battle. But with the prospect of finding her cousin on the horizon, she’ll have
to find a way to work with Alex—before it’s too late.
Patricia Bradley lives in North
Mississippi and is a former abstinence educator and co-author of RISE To
Your Dreams,
an abstinence curriculum. But her heart is tuned to suspense.
Patricia’s romantic suspense books include the Logan Point series—Shadows of
the Past,
A Promise to Protect, and Gone Without a Trace. Her
workshops on writing include an online course with American Christian Fiction
Writers and workshops at the Mid-South Christian Writer’s Conference in
Collierville, TN. When she’s not writing, she likes to throw mud on a wheel and
see what happens.
Connect
with Patricia:
More books by Patricia Bradley:
Shadows of the Past: CBD; Amazon; B&N; Books A
Million
A Promise to Protect: B&N; CBD; Amazon; Books A Million
Gone Without a Trace: Amazon;
CBD; B&N; Books A Million
Matthew’s Choice:  to buy a paperback—Harlequin: http://www.harlequin.com/storeitem.html?iid=53665
For an e-book: B&N, Kobo Amazon
Shadows of the Past, A Promise to Protect
and Matthew’s Choice can be found at my Author Page on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B00FFR8T1U

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