I can think of a thousand things God created that are not good - to name a few mosquitoes, spiders, snakes, brussel sprouts. If we turn back to the beginning of the Old Testament in the book of Genesis, God said that everything He created was good. When He created the heavens and the earth they were good. When He created the birds, fish, horses, giraffes, duck billed platypus all of them are deemed good. The first time we see that something in God’s creation that is not good is in the second chapter of Genesis. “Then the Lord God said, ‘It is not good that man should be alone.” (Genesis 2:18). It is not good because the man did not have a human companion created for him yet. God created man to be in relationship with each other. He created us to have friends.
FRIENDS is the 2nd ‘F’ word in our series. God created us to be in community with each other. We built upon that idea as we discussed the challenges of having deep, healthy, long lasting friendships. If God created us that way, why is it so stinking hard to have healthy friendships? Here are the 4 challenges that we came up with:
- Your friends are Sinners (If you are looking for a perfect friend you will never find one).
- Your friends are Different (We have church friends, boy friends, girl friends, social media friends, school friends)
- Your friends are Influences (More than any other people in our life, our friends have a greater impact in shaping who we are. Proverbs 12:16)
- Your friends take Energy (Jesus sets the example in JOHN 15:12-13 of what a friendship really looks like)
Remember these by the acronym SIDE - sinners, influences, different, and energy.
Our small groups helped facilitate the conversation about friends. The hope for small groups is to be an avenue of creating healthy, deep, long-lasting friendships that God designed us for.
Questions for Digging Deeper:
- If a person has over 1000 friends on Facebook or over 250 followers on twitter, or collects a ton of likes on Instagram what does that say about that person? Can a person have that many followers online and still feel lonely? Revisit this video we watched a couple months ago as a group.
- How has social media redefined friendships?
- Define the word friend? What is a friend? How do friends function? Ecclesiastes 4:9-10
- What examples do we have in the Bible of friendship?
- What are the biggest challenges to friendships? Think of a personal example.
- Who are the friends you have that you need to let go of or pull closer towards?
- READ John 15:12-15. What does Jesus’ example of friendship look like? How does His example of friendship have bearing on your life?
No comments:
Post a Comment