Embracing Change Through Community and Friendship

Devotional

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And so what we want to do is commit to real change, to real transformation in our lives. We talked about the first week how faith is a foundation for that, and part of the commitment to real change is changing ourselves. Our habits to be more spiritual habits, to have a habit of reading God's Word, whether it's straight through a reading plan or devotion or in a Bible study. [00:30:30] (31 seconds)


We talked about how prayer is important in that, to spend time each day or throughout the day to talk to our Creator, our Redeemer, our Sustainer. We talked about how Pastor Andy, about how we need to watch out. We talked about what we eat and our exercise. [00:31:00] (20 seconds)


If we're going to make commitment to real change, we got to think, we got to reflect regularly about what we're doing, what our day looks like, make time, think about what we're going to eat, think about how active we can be, think about how we're going to spend time with God and grow in our faith. [00:32:18] (20 seconds)


Friends, the gift of friendship is a gift from God. And we are called not only to be friends, but we know in Scripture how important friends are. If we are going to commit to real change, we need people who are going to show up when we fall, when we're going through tough times, when we're going through hard times. We need people who are going to listen. [00:37:37] (27 seconds)


We need people who can encourage us and inspire us, and those who are going to bless us when we fall. We need people who are going to listen. We need people who are going to help us when we need it most. If we're going to commit to real change and be the people God wants us to be, we have to have friends come alongside us. [00:38:04] (22 seconds)


In this journey of life and faith, we are going to fall down. We might fall down because of sin and need to be picked back up and told, hey, it's going to be okay. Hey, you're loved by God. Hey, there's a better way, right? We may fall down because of trials and challenges in our lives, maybe with relationships in our family or in our larger family. [00:39:10] (28 seconds)


And in those moments, we need someone who's there to come alongside us to make sure that we've got someone to listen and someone to encourage and someone to inspire. I love the passage of Scripture from Proverbs 27, 17. It says, as iron sharpens iron, one person sharpens another, right? A man sharpens another. [00:39:44] (30 seconds)

And if you go back to that passage and you look at the context, that passage is about a conflict situation, right? When you experience someone who's going in sin, it talks about what we need to do to go before them and maybe even take someone else to go with them. And so there's two or three gathered there in that context. [00:43:33] (22 seconds)


And when that happens, Jesus says, I show up in power, I'm there. I'm helping work on this situation. When people gather in my name, so important, that when we gather in the name of Jesus, all things are possible. We can work out all things. And so those bands, what they do is they serve as accountability groups. [00:43:54] (24 seconds)


And so you can do that in a small group setting to read the Scripture together, talk about it, talk about how it applies to our daily lives, right? And so, so important. You've got men's alliance, you've got women's alliance, you've got men's ministry, women's ministry. The list goes on. You've got a Sunday school class that meets while we're worshiping here. [00:58:13] (23 seconds)


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