True, Biblical Friendship

What comes to mind when you hear the word, “friendship“? We all have images that come to mind, based on our life experiences. What about Biblical friendship, what does that look like? I want to answer that in this article. I am teaching this lesson tonight at Southern Calvert Baptist Church during our AWANA program. I get to work with the high school students tonight. We are going to dig in to this subject and I wanted to think through it with you here before teaching tonight. According to the etymology of this word, “friendship” means the quality of being attached to another for the good of that person. We tend to think of friendship as being a relationship with another person who makes me happy. The original intent of the word is a relationship for the benefit of the other person. Isn’t it interesting how words and concept change over time? The original intent of friendship is closely related to the Biblical description of friendship. Let’s dive in and see what we can discover.

Covenant, Lesson 2: Exchanging the Old-self for the New-self

Well, it’s Monday once again and I am EXCITED because I have a small group Bible study that meets on Monday evenings. We are walking through the Precept Upon Precept course entitled “Covenant”. If I could only teach one study for the rest of my life, I would choose this one. It is so eye opening and the explanation of Christianity becomes so clear. The Old and New Testaments tie together beautifully. I get excited just thinking about it.

Last week we covered Lesson 1, learning that the idea of covenant originated with God. We also learned that there are two types of covenant, ones between God and man and ones between man and man. The covenants between man and man are always extremely conditional. The weaker comes to the stronger and sets the conditions. The benefactor is the one who sets the conditions, the weaker. The covenants between God and man are much different. In these covenants, the stronger comes to the weaker. The stronger sets the conditions for the benefit of the weaker. It only makes sense to enter into covenant with God. There are few conditions and many benefits. Yet, we tend to want to make agreements with people instead, even though there are many conditions and very few actual benefits. Many people do not want to enter into covenant with God because they do not know the Truth about who God is and what He wants.