friend

Wisdom-being a good friend

~ hebidsthemcome ~ Leave a comment

Hello again! Today we are continuing in Proverbs and learning about wisdom. (Knowing what God wants us to know so we can make good choices).

friendship

One of the things Proverbs teaches us, is how to be a good friend and how to choose good friends.

First of all, being wise means choosing good friends.

“The righteous choose their friends carefully” Proverbs 12:26. 18:24 says, “There are “friends” who pretend to be friends, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.” Real friends will be like your family…always with you, loving you and supporting you…they don’t leave when there’s trouble.

Proverbs 27:17 says, “As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.” A long time ago, when people had swords, they would sharpen them on other pieces of iron and that would make them even stronger. The Bible says good friends are like that too–they work together to make each other better and stronger. 

So how do we BE a good friend?

Proverbs 27:5-6 says one way is to be honest with our friends.

“Open rebuke is better than hidden love! Wounds from a friend are better than kisses from an enemy!” This Bible verse says it is better for a friend to say something you don’t like than for someone who doesn’t care about you to give you kisses. If someone REALLY cares about you they will want you to make good choices. And if you really care about your friends, you will tell them the truth and help them make good choices too…not just tell them “Sure! you can lie! Or Sure! you can say that bad thing!”

Another way to be a good friend is to be there when your friends are sad. Proverbs 17:17 says, “A true friend is always loyal, and a brother is born to help in time of need.” It can be hard sometimes when our friends are sad and we just want them to be happy again! But a real friend will stay with you when you are sad and will be there when you need them.

The last way to be a good friend is to practice forgiveness. Do you know what forgiveness is? It’s when you don’t stay angry at someone, but you love them and move on instead. “Love forgets mistakes; nagging about them parts the best of friends.” Proverbs 17:9. When we mess up, a good friend will forgive us and still be our friend. And when our friends say something that hurts our feelings or hurts us, we can forgive them..not stay angry at them. Just like Jesus forgives us for our bad choices, we can be a good friend and forgive others.

Thanks again for joining us. Love to you all.

Best friends: David and Jonathan

~ hebidsthemcome ~ Leave a comment

Welcome again! Today’s story is from 1 Samuel 18-21. Last year’s lesson can be found HERE.

David was now traveling around with King Saul, defeating all their enemies. Saul had a son named Jonathan and Jonathan and David fought together against the other armies and they became best friends. Every time David won a battle, the people liked him more and more. Eventually they liked him MORE than King Saul. This made the king very VERY angry.

Besides being a good fighter and a good shepherd, David was also good at music. Sometimes when the king was feeling sad, he would have David play some music for him. One time, while David was playing music for him, the king started thinking about how everyone liked David more than him…he got so mad he threw his spear (like a really big, really pointy stick) at David to try to kill him! But he missed.

So then he decided to just keep sending David to fight (hoping he would die while fighting). But every time David listened to God, he won (and the people liked him EVEN MORE!)

So again, King Saul tried to kill David by throwing his spear at him…but David got away again.

That night, he ran away. Jonathan found him and they promised to always be friends, no matter what, and they promised to always help each other.

David said, “The king has asked me to join him at a party tomorrow. But I won’t be there. I will be hiding in this field. When he asks where I am, you can tell him I had to go somewhere else. If he’s ok with it, then everything is ok. If he is angry, then I’ll know he’s really trying to kill me and you can warn me or let me know it’s all ok.”

Jonathan went to the feast and king Saul asked where David was. When Jonathan told him David was gone he was very very angry!

So Jonathan ran to the field with a small servant boy. He shot three arrows into the field and told the boy to go! go! go! GO! far into the field to go get the arrows. (He was telling the boy to go get the arrows, but he was REALLY yelling to David to “GO! Run away! because my father Saul wants to kill you!”)

Then Jonathan ran out into the field to David and they said goodbye. They were both very sad that David had to go for now, but they promised again to always be friends and take care of each other.

In this story Jonathan was a good friend to David and later David will be a good friend to Jonathan’s family. Today we talked about how WE can be a good friend.

Some of our ideas were: help reach things, take turns, help clean up, help them laugh if they’re sad, invite EVERYONE to play, give a hug, share toys, and pray for our friends.

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Thanks for joining us! Love to you all!