Being A Good Friend

I love going to church. I love the worship, the sermon, the fellowship before and after. LOVE IT! That being said there are some days where it just doesn't click. You can ask me 30 seconds after the sermon ends what it was about... I couldn't tell you to save my life! It's not that I don't pay attention, I guess it just doesn't hit me.

This Sunday wasn't one of those sermons!

I was visiting a local church. The pastor was speaking on 1 Samuel. Talking about the friendship between Jonathan and David. 

It's changed the way I see them.

I always saw them as being good friends, but I never considered what that looked like.

In 1 Samuel 23:17 we seen a distressed David. Saul is trying to kill him. Jonathan (Saul's son) is there, trying to bring him some comfort.

What does he do? He reminds David of God's promise. David will be king. He could've given a generic "it'll all work out." He didn't though. Instead he talked to David where he was at.

That was the first thing that hit me.

The second was how Jonathan really is the hero of the story. He's there for David while his father is trying to kill him. Not only that, he's stepping aside so that David can be king. Jonathan is basically giving up his birth right. He's following God's plan even though it is going to cost him everything.

I wonder if I would do that. Would I be willing to lay my reputation, financial security or even life on the line for a friend if God asked me to? I'd like to think so. But thinking and doing are two very different things!

That's what I'm thinking about today. I'll likely be thinking about it for a while. It's inspired me to rethink how I treat friendships. How we as the body of Christ should look. Hopefully it does the same for you!

Smell The Roses

I've probably read the Bible 3(ish) times in my life. It may be 4, but I don't want to overestimate.
In that time I've gotten a pretty good idea of what all the books are about (except the minor prophets...) and where each story is going.

Recently I've found myself getting bored in devotions. I still think the content is great, don't get me wrong, but nothing was popping out. No attention grabbing verses. Nothing. Just "oh ya, this story" or "I like this part" or "oh no... this part is really hard to get through (*cough*Songs of Solomon*cough*).

So what do you do? Stop reading? I did for a day, that was enough for me! Missed it too much and realized it was only going to cause problems in the long run, not improvements.
Change translations? Maybe. The words are different, but the content will be the same.

So what do I do? I stop to smell the roses.

Part of my problem was putting so much emphasis on how much I was reading. I tend to power read to begin with, doing that with the same book over and over and over is a recipe for boredom.

Now, I'm taking my time. Sure devotions are taking longer. Sure I'm reading less in that time. But whole books that I thought I knew backwards and forwards are different! I'm seeing stuff I've never saw, understanding things that have puzzled me and even getting confused on things I thought I had figured out.

It's awesome!

tl;dr - If your devotions are getting stale, try taking your time to smell the roses. It worked for me!