My Friends

Tonight our life group will start back up after about a two month summer break. If you want to come, drop me an email. Everybody’s welcome! Right Tonya?
Tonya hosts our life group at her home with her hubby James and daughter Grace.
We get together the second and fourth Wednesdays of the month to talk about whatever Pastor J has taught the previous week or just to pray and fellowship. We ask questions and look for answers together. We live our lives alongside one another.
Sometimes Margie drops by. That’s where we first met. See, life groups bring some cool blessings into your life.
There’s nothing like Christian friends to share your journey. I didn’t even know James, Tonya and Margie a year ago. Today, I can’t imagine my life without them.
They know about my struggles and my bad days. And I know about their’s.
They know I’m imperfect (boy do they!). They take me at face value. They love my husband and my kids.
They pray for me. Oh, how they pray for me. And how quickly I’ve come to lean on and depend on them.
I have lots of Christians friends who aren’t in my life group too. My blog buddies top the list. My Metro Fam holds me up in more ways than they know.
I have friends for the long haul like T-Fab who knew me when. I’m pretty sure we’re destined to be next door neighbors in heaven. T~ is nine years younger than me and she is my teacher when it comes to friendship. . She is someone who loved me despite knowing I was short-tempered and incompetent and sarcastic and faithless and scared.
T~, without knowing it, convinced me to take off my mask.
The mask of “I never worry, I just give it to the Lord. Praise-God-Hallelujah. Glory to the Lamb.”
Over our almost sixteen year friendship she has proven that I can’t be ugly enough to lose her loyalty. That kind of love only comes from Christ.
At the first official life group I ever led I met another soul sister, aka Java Sista aka Becky. She was so brave, asking the questions that needed asking and challenging herself to find the answers. She had never met me and yet that first night she committed her life to me as my friend. She has also taught me the sweetness of friends in Jesus.
The friend who loves enough to pray with you and over you until the bad times ease on by.
The friend who holds your shame to her heart and protects you with her life.
The friend who won’t pretend you’re perfect, so you can admit you’re not and then just keep on laughing and crying and singing together until years have gone by and you’re joined at the spirit.
Now I’m surrounded by these kind of relationships. I know now why we are called brothers and sisters in Christ. It’s a step beyond friends.
I don’t just enjoy my Christian family. I need them. I need to tell them what’s going on because I want their prayer and I know I can lean on them.
I want to pray for them too, and I want to be leaned on.
So tonight our life group will start back up and we’ll fire up the coffee pot and be amazed together at grace.
We’ll take off the masks and pretense that we hide behind “out there” and learn together to be honest and sincere so God can use us.
We’ll probably giggle. We’ll definitely be opening our Bibles and digging through our concordances. We always pray and sometimes we end up crying.
Brother and Sisters in Christ.
How sweet it is.

Ecclesiastes 4:10
If one falls down, his friend can help him up. But pity the man who falls and has no one to help him up!

Thailand Prayer Request: Team unity.