Endurance for the Journey, Featured, Relationships

Dear Friends, let us love one another,
for love comes from God.
Everyone who loves has been born of God
and knows God.
1 JOHN 4:7 (NIV)

Before I went through my season of suffering, I had friends, but I didn’t understand how important those relationships really were. Sure, I enjoyed my friends. It was nice to have them. But it didn’t seem to me that I needed those relationships. Boy, did that change!

I learned that you cannot get through pain and suffering on your own. You eventually come to the end of yourself, and you need another person there to stand beside you and lift you up. To have a friend who is willing to make the personal sacrifice to be with you so that you are not alone is a powerful thing. When I was struggling, it was really important to know that my close friends were willing to sacrifice for me. Their sacrifice was a demonstration of God’s love for me.

This is how we’ve come to understand and experience love:
Christ sacrificed His love for us.
This is why we ought to live sacrificially for our fellow believers,
and not just be out for ourselves.
If you see some brother or sister in need
and have the means to do something about it
but turn a cold shoulder and do nothing,
what happens to God’s love?
It disappears. And you made it disappear.
My dear children, let’s not just talk about love;
let’s practice real love.
This is the only way we’ll know we’re living truly,
living in God’s reality.
1 JOHN 3:16-18 (THE MESSAGE)

On the journey with you,
Dave Dravecky