Last week, we talked about the idea of true friends and why God wants us to have true friendships. The Bible has many verses about friendship and many of these highlight the importance of love. And we know that Jesus said love is the most important thing (Matthew 22:37-40), so we know how important love is in developing true friends.
But what exactly is “love” or what does it mean to be “loving”? For example, what is the difference between loving ice cream and loving another person? They are clearly not the same, but we use the same word (love) in both cases, so it’s important to define the type of love that is so important to God. We are fortunate that He provided us with lots of explanations about love in the Bible and one of my favorites is 1 Corinthians 13:4-7, which says
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud, it is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
What if we substitute “true friend” for “love” in the passage above? Let’s re-read it that way together now and see if it works.
Let’s tie a couple of thoughts together from last week with this new idea of love being at the heart of true friendship. Last week we discussed the idea that if you want to have a friend, you need to be a friend. And if we now combine that with the description of love above from Corinthians, we can say that if we want to have a friend, we need to be loving. More specifically, we need to practice patience, kindness, and all the other characteristics of love.
We know that God has great things in store for us and wants to shower us with many blessings, including the blessing of true friendships. And since we know that love is the most important thing, as we continue to love God and others, true friendships (or deepening of existing relationships) will follow.
Questions
- How did you feel about substituting “true friends” for “love” in today’s verse? Did that open your eyes to anything new?
- We know that we can only control our actions (not the actions of other), so if we want to build more true friendships, what are some things we should do? (Hint: reread today’s scripture)
- If building true friendships is based on things like being more patient and more kind, how can we work on these things? Can you build patience like you can build muscle? If so, how?
- Today’s lesson says, “as we continue to love God and others, God will honor these actions and bring special friendships into our life”. Do you agree with this statement? Why or why not?
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