You will be able to tell when a casual friend is ready to join you in a personal friendship. They will start responding positively to your non-threatening, personal questions. They have gradually started trusting you; they are starting to believe you sincerely care about them. You are becoming someone they feel they can trust with important, personal, sensitive, even embarrassing things.

Once a casual friend starts becoming a personal friend, you will be allowed to increase the intensity of your personal questions. You might start asking them how things are going in their life, how a certain issue turned out, is there anything they would like you to pray for them about, or any other personal question that gives them an OPPORTUNITY to show you how open and honest they are willing to be.

If a casual friend starts sharing more intimate, personal issues and you can see they trust you, it will be a time for you to see if they will allow you to pray for them. If the setting will allow it, you might pray for them right where you are. If not, just let them know you will BE praying for them. Be careful that you don’t go to any private setting where their and your integrity is jeopardized.

Some people are VERY open to advice and may want your opinion on what you think they should do. If you haven’t had a chance to test the friendship by asking more intense personal questions, then you will need to avoid giving that advice. Your story is by far the better way of answering people’s questions. If you give advice, then it is open for debate, it looks like it is just your personal opinion, and, it can be one of many things they are considering. If you tell them what Jesus has done for you, then they can’t argue with you about it.

There are people who spend a lot of time simply collecting advice from all kinds of people. They are just looking for those who will agree with them and support them in decisions they have ALL READY made. Once they find out you don’t agree with them, they will move on to other people who will give them additional support. By just giving them your story, they will have information that has proven to work; that causes them to reconsider their decisions.

If you keep avoiding giving casual friends and personal friends advice and keep asking questions, you will be more qualified to offer personal stories that are more relevant to their situation. Their mind might be made up because they don’t see any other way of getting the happiness or solutions they are seeking. If your questions help you find out what their deeper motives are, your story can show them a better way. That can take them from being a person with their mind made up, to a person who is now considering other options.

During the personal friendship level, you are asking questions JUST TO SEE if Jesus has prepared their heart for sharing and how much and how deep they willing to go in that sharing. Your questions are ALWAYS looking for what Jesus has done in their life up to that point. Jesus is answering Your prayers; He is helping them get to the place where they want His help. If they aren’t willing to go very deep into their issues or you run out of time to talk about them, then let them know you are available to talk to them about these things at a later time.

If they are willing, you can start making appointments to get together so you can listen to more about their concerns and issues. They need time so you can let them feel your non-threatening attitude about what they are going through. If you have more time, you can let them experience your relaxed relationship with them. You will be able to demonstrate the fact that you won’t push them; this is done by backing off of anything they avoid or resist.

There are people that you can make arrangements to spend more time with. They want you to have more time to listen to their problems, ask them questions that lead them into sharing deeper information, and ask questions that help you see if they are ready to move into a sincere friendship. The more a person demonstrates that they are ready to spend more time with you, and the more they are willing to move to the next level, the more time you will need to spend with them.

In order to take a personal friendship, where they are willing to open up and tell you what their problems are, to a sincere friendship, where they show a willingness to let you share your story with them, you would give them a very short version of your story. This is a test to see how receptive they are to helpful information. It is a time where you are watching to see how interested they are in what you have to say.

A quick presentation where you just give them a little taste of what Jesus has done for you, can tell you a lot about their sincerity. As long as it is in the area of their concerns, it can be used as a test to see if they are ready to start listening to you. It is a process where you see if you can gain their interest in hearing more.

If a personal friend is moving into a sincere friend, you can tell them things that create a desire to keep hearing and learning more. It isn’t a story about your life that shows the solution; it is a part of the story that creates interest in finding out more. It would also be an attempt to see if they can gain a certain amount of confidence in your experiences with Jesus. They may be listening; but, they may be listening with reservations. They believe you are trustworthy and sincere; but, they may not see you as one who qualifies to help them. You have to not only be a trustworthy person, your information must be PROVEN to be trustworthy. That is accomplished by show them Scriptures from God’s Word that establishes it as truth.