Is there a benefit in friendship? What is the benefit? And in which kind of friendship can we find it?

Our iman (faith) never remains on one level, it goes up and down all the time and when wver it decreses we should strive to reinforce it and when ever our iman is up we should strive to keep it up or even increase it more.
When I was a child I was thought that iman is something private, something that is just between you and Allah and that its no ones business what and to which extend you believe in.
When I found Islam I started to make more and more muslim friends who were mostly muslims by birth. I met some converts as well but they just seemed to be too strikt for my liking so that I didn't befriend them.
So, although i had many muslim friends, Islam was almost never our topic of discussion. Maybe apart from questions about my conversion, but that was the only Islam-related topic we talked about, and that also just in the beginning coz if a question is answered once, why ask again?
Since I was raised believing that religion is just between the believer and god alone I never questioned that behaviour or type of friendship, I liked them simply because I found them to be nice and that was reason enough for me to be their friend.
But is friendship really just about enjoying to be together, about passing time, not being alone and sharing some similar intrests and ideas?
More and more I got bored of having muslim friends and got more close with my non-muslim friends, I found that there was really no big difference between being with my muslim friends and being with non-muslim friends, because anyways the topics were the same, there was no different behaviour amongst them and the impact these friendships had on my heart and my iman were the same.
Some years later, actually last year, I met two girls. muslim girls, two russian sisters, both converted to Islam, living together.
At first I though we will never become friends because anyways they are much more strikt in Islam than I am and so we might not fit together anyways.
But how wrong I was! I wouldn't say we became friends, but we became somehow sisters in Islam. And allthough I saw them such a little time, just fridays at the mosque or when we went out for coffee one time their presence had an huge impact on my iman!!!
Only seeing them once a week for an hour made my iman rise, so imagine if we had become close friends? I guess that was the time I tasted the sweetness of brotherhood in Islam!
I started to compare the impact all my friendships had on my iman with the impact of those two sisters. And suddenly the friendships started to seem just shallow! Sure I have two girls that have a huge place in my heart, that are so important and very close to me, but still, our friendship doesnt help me to grow stronger in my faith.

There is a very nice article about friendship in Islam by Amr Khaled
http://amrkhaled.net/articles/articles2779.html


And a lecture by Sheikh Yasir Qadhi, it is a very long lecture, but worth to hear every single minute of it!





So that is what I wish for, true friendship, friendship that goes beyond worldly things, friendships in which we wish for our friend what we wish for our selves, friendships in which we help, encourage, strengthen and support eachother because we wish for the other that he will please Allah just as we wish for our selves to be able to please Allah. I don't want friendship just to make the time pass quicker, just to don't feel alone. I want friendship that enriches me, my heart and my faith and has the same effect on my friend, my friend that will be my sister in Islam, Inshallah.