Continuing on from yesterdays devotion “How to gain a friend – 2024.06.08”  https://missioncommunities.network/2024/06/08/how-to-gain-a-friend-2024-06-08/. From yesterdays devotion we see that being friendly is important and to keep a friend one has to continue to be friendly and all that it entails. Now let us look at one particular way to keep friends as it is written in Proverbs 17:9 (KJV) “He that covereth a transgression seeketh love; but he that repeateth a matter separateth very friends.”
Here read about one way of how to loose a friend and also how to keep or even gain a friend. 
If we keep bringing up someone’s mistakes, sin, shortcomings we keep opening a wound and we will loose a friend and the wound will not heal.
But if we do the opposite we demonstrate love for our friend and are putting a bandaid on the wound so it can heal “1 Peter 4:8 (KJV) And above all things have fervent charity among yourselves: for charity shall cover the multitude of sins.”. What it does not say is to accept the sin and not help a brother or sister who is sinning “1 John 5:16 (KJV) If any man see his brother sin a sin which is not unto death, he shall ask, and he shall give him life for them that sin not unto death. There is a sin unto death: I do not say that he shall pray for it.” In Proverbs 19:11 (KJV) it is written “The discretion of a man deferreth his anger; and it is his glory to pass over a transgression.“
Love covers a multitude of sins as we saw before. We should have self control and defer our anger with our friend who sinned against us. We should not always point out other people faults to them but there is a time wen it is needed to help the person instead of letting them go on the way of destruction. When our friend has repented we do not bring up the matter again and again but help them to move on. “Philippians 3:12-14 (KJV) Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus. 13 Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, 14 I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”
Let us seek to love one another, maintain and build on our friendships and encourage each other to move onward and forward to the high calling of GOD in Jesus Christ.