Did you know the book of Proverbs has LOTS to say about relationships?
Today in the BE[cause] ABF at New Covenant, we started a new "topical" series out of the book of Proverbs. I got to start the series off by looking at Relationships. We looked at five types of relationships I could find in the book: 1) God2) Others (strangers and acquaintances)
3) Family
4) Marital/Romantic/Sexual
5) Friends I made a mistake in my prep. I thought we'd skim through the first four relationships and spend the majority of our time on the fifth - Friendship. But they had much more to say about these first four types of relationships than I expected (and they had some GREAT thoughts!). We saw in Proverbs 1:7 (and again in Proverbs 3:5-6) that the foundation to living life (including relationships) is to be completely surrendered to God. So in order to live out the last four relationships, we had to have this first relationship, a relationship with God through Christ. On the topic of "others" we looked at Proverbs 3:27-30 which encourages us to not withhold good from those who need it when it is in our power to give it to them. The "Family" topic was the area that received the most discussion - this was a bigger issue than I had expected. We looked at Proverbs 4:1-2, Proverbs 6:20-22, and Proverbs 13:1 and then discussed why a twentysomething should listen to parents, and when a twentysomething single might need to NOT listen to parents. What a great discussion! We actually did skim through the Romantic/Marital/Sexual section, because we were just coming off a 3-week series on the first 3 chapters of Song of Solomon. Basically - don't fall for the seductress (i.e. don't have an affair) and stay faithful to your spouse. (See Proverbs 5:3-5 and Proverbs 5:15-18). Because 80%+ of the group is single, I encouraged them to be faithful now to the spouse they will have one day. Then the area I expected us to spend the most time got cut short. We had time to discuss what makes a good friend (but not time to get to the verses) and a fruitful-but-cut-short discussion on why God says the righteous are cautious in friendship (from Proverbs 12:26). I wish we had had more time to make it to Proverbs 17:17 about a friend loving at all times, Proverbs 17:22 about how a cheerful heart brings healing, Proverbs 18:1 which warns against isolating yourself from people, and Proverbs 22:11 which says that people with a pure heart and gracious speech are friends of the king. And if a king wants to be your friend, everyone wants to be your friend! :o)
No comments:
Post a Comment