Day 2381 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.
Proverbs 27:17 NIV
Learning, growth, improvement, and maturity. Those are all things that we should be seeking in our lives and in the lives of those that God has placed around us along this journey. We're not here to just coast through life until we run out of heartbeats. We're not just taking up air and waiting for the clock to run out. Each of us have a purpose and God put us here to fulfill it. All of us have a story to share, an opportunity to help others, the chance to tell this place about Christ and to live lives that reflect His light into a darkening world. It's a calling, a duty, a battle that we can't afford to ignore or take lightly.
We've been talking a bit about friendship and how important it is to get it right. Surrounding ourselves with the kind of people who want the best for us and won't let us stop half way there. Finding people that we can rely on to be open and honest because the truth is the only thing that can ever help us improve. Avoiding those who are only out for themselves and are walking a dangerous path of sin and wickedness. And then being the best kind of friend that we can be in return. Helping those around us grow and mature in their faith and in God's calling for them. Encouraging them when life inevitably starts weighing heavy. Listening, caring, loving, supporting, correcting, and inspiring. That's what friendship is.
It's something that we simply can't afford to take lightly. Good friends are incredibly hard to find in this world. Too many are only worried about themselves and what others can offer them. People have completely fallen in love with this opportunity to be selfish and set their sights only on what suits them or benefits them in some way. But that's not at all what we're here for or what our lives should be about. It's about what this verse is teaching us. Making one another better. Mutual edification and shared improvement. Coming together and helping each other keep getting better, keep moving closer to Christ, and live lives that help more than just ourselves.
If we grow and improve, that's great! That's something that we should be working for every single day that we're given. But if that's our only goal then we're the only ones that gain anything from it. But if we turn our focus outside of just ourselves and help one another then everyone involved benefits. We all grow. We all learn. We have the opportunity to hear things from different perspectives. We have different eyes and different minds that can help us see things in different ways. And that's where we get stronger. That's where we find this endless capacity to keep on getting better.
All of us have different skills and abilities. We all have unique perspectives and see things in different ways. All of us have lived lives that are completely distinctive to us, lives unlike anyone else has lived. And we can use all of those differences and the lessons we've learned along the way to help each other. Again, keeping it all to ourselves only helps us. It causes us to completely miss the opportunities that God gives us to share our stories, our skills, and our faith with others. We can't settle for that because too much is on the line. We need to set our sights on making one another better and refusing to settle for anything less than the assurance that we're all headed toward an eternity of peace!
These lives are hard. It's hard to find our way through all of the fallout and chaos caused by sin and countless hearts bent toward wickedness. And it's even harder when we try to do it by ourselves. Thankfully, we don't have to. God has placed people around us so that we can all help one another along this journey through the warzone we call life. We really do have the chance to help others and make one another better. Why not take that opportunity? Why just make ourselves better when we can also help someone else do the same? We're all in this together, and it's time that we start acting like it!
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