“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

Jeremiah 29:11

Friendships are so important to our well-being! Not only for our physical and emotional benefit, but also for our spiritual health.  Yet, so often, we try to muddle through life alone. We may feel like our burdens are insignificant compared to others, or we may not want to bother our friends because of their busy life. We could just be independent, and confident that we can figure things out on our own. We might be shy and just not know how to reach out to others for help. Or unfortunately, we could have succumbed to the cancel culture and walked away from people in our lives because of offense or disagreements.

But God makes it clear that we are not meant to walk through life alone. In Proverbs, God reminds us that friends are the root of encouragement: (paraphrased from different translations)

            17:17 “a friend loves at all times, and families are born through adversity”.

           18:24 “friends are joined in the heart, closer than others”

           27:17 “as iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another”                                                                      

Jeremiah was speaking to the exiles when he relayed God’s message, “For I know the plans I have for you. They are plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future”. Previously in verse 5, he tells them to “build homes, plant gardens, to marry, multiply, and plan to stay”! God had plans to restore them to their homeland and to make them successful again. But it was going to take 70 years! And in the meantime, he wanted them to live together. To work together. To pray together. To worship Him, to seek Him, and to find Him together (vs. 12-14).

I can only imagine the tension and frustration among them. Their lives had been uprooted, their plans disrupted, and now they were building new lives, in a new land, with people they didn’t even know. Many of them probably weren’t even going to live to see their return. But God asked them to make the best of it. He asked them to honor the people He had put them with and to honor Him as they waited for His promise to be fulfilled.

We all know that it takes time to build relationships; time to learn to trust; time to let our guards down; time to just figure each other out. And honestly, building lasting friendships can be really hard work!

But certainly, we are all a part of God’s plan. He valued us before anyone else even knew us and He knew who He would put in our path. He knew our gifts, and their gifts, and how we would complement each other to help the other succeed. And I feel sure that He wants every single one of us to prosper in our spiritual lives, as well as our physical and emotional ones.

Only God can bring us the insight to understand the plans He has for each one of us. But isn’t it a blessing, that we have our friends to walk with us in love, as we wait for his plans to unfold? Isn’t it a blessing that we can help each other find hope, encouragement, and comfort when we struggle? Isn’t it a blessing that when we allow ourselves to intentionally seek God with the people He has surrounded us with, we can look forward to our future because we know that our destiny is not just temporary connections, but are long range and eternal?

We’ve all heard the saying “what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger”, and I believe that we make each other stronger when we commit to be faithful to each other through thick and thin. Just like the exiles in Jeremiah’s time, we are all exiles just passing through this life on our way to the promised land. But who we share this life with can either kill our spirits, or make us stronger. My prayer for you today is that you intentionally build friendships that will last a lifetime. Friendships that will endure the trials of life, the failures and successes, the griefs and the delights. We are better together, and God has plans for you and your friends, to prosper together, to find hope together, and to bring you into a future together that is beyond anything you could ever imagine.

12 words

Healthy relationships with God and others makes life a little better together.

Lord God, help us to seek your help in finding friends and keeping friends. Help us to not only trust those you put in our lives, but to also be trustworthy. God, help us to greet our friends with a holy kiss, always loving and striving to encourage each other, comfort each other, admonish each other, and to live in peace and unity with you at the center of our lives. And most of all God, help us all to keep in fellowship with your Holy Spirit, as we cannot do anything apart from you. Amen.

Scripture Reflection:
2 Corinthians 13:11-14
Jeremiah 29:4-14
Colossians 3:12-17