18 Jan 2018 God’s plan for life
by Laurie Green
God never intended us to do life alone. If you’ve attended any New Life Church campus before, you’ve heard that saying more than once. In fact, I personally heard that saying for years before I ever truly understood what that meant.
It’s easy to do life alone and not realize that’s what’s happening. For the most part, all of us are involved with friends and acquaintances on a daily basis. With school, work, sports and even weekend church events, one could argue that we are never really alone. However, I’ve realized that until you experience these godly appointed friendships, you don’t know you’re doing life alone.
When my husband, Will, and I decided last year to lead a life group at church. We felt like we were pretty much doing OK in this journey called life. We had lots of friends by our worldly definition of friends, but let me tell you that God’s definition of friends is totally different than the world’s view.
Suddenly, we found ourselves surrounded by all these new people that we had never met before. We recognized a few names on our signup sheet at Life Group launch, but for the most part, it was folks we’d never met. They weren’t in my daily circle of peers, and I was a little nervous that we may not have anything other than attending church together in common, but God was creating something amazing! Like I mentioned before, you don’t know you’re missing something until you know you’re missing it.
The moment these people opened their mouths to share, it was like I was hearing my own life repeated. All the hurts and pains that I felt belonged only to me were suddenly a common theme in this group of God-appointed friends. The instant I realized I had this circle of people who knew my deepest, darkest secrets and not only accepted and understood me, but prayed for me, my life and definition of friends were changed. Until the moment God set up this divine appointment of friendships, I didn’t know I’d been doing life alone.
Let me try and save you some trouble. If you don’t have a small group of people who are covering you in prayer on a daily basis, you are doing life alone! Ask God to cultivate and create godly friendships in your life. Don’t sit on the outside looking in at other friendship groups and try to be something different to fit in.
Trust that God knows just the exact friendships that you need even before you do. People who will sharpen you as iron sharpens iron. People who will catch your blind spots and not cause you to change to fit in, but cause you to change to be better. Ecclesiastes 4:9-10 says, “Two people are better off than one, for they can help each other succeed. If one person falls, the other can reach out and help. But someone who falls alone is in real trouble.”
We were never intended to do life alone. My prayer is that we don’t have to. May Jesus bless you richly with a group of folks to do this thing called life with, and if you’ve already been blessed with these people in your life, never take it for granted.
A Greenbrier native, Laurie is the wife of Will Green. The two share seven children, five grandchildren and a golden retriever named Marlo. They own and operate a lawn care business and are members of New Life Church in Greenbrier. Laurie can be reached at [email protected].
