Discover God's Dream For You By Jennie AllenSample

Threads of People (Part 1)

Here’s the thing about Joseph. He couldn’t control his circumstances, but he intentionally leveraged every relationship in his path for the glory of God. Despite the chaos of his circumstances and the incredible evil brought against him by people he trusted, he never quit choosing to trust and love people. He never wasted opportunity to serve-even those who wronged him.

If we are honest, we’ll admit that it is hard to love people-especially like Joseph did. So you know what we tend to do instead of doing the difficult work of loving them? We piddle.

To piddle is to waste time, or spend one’s time idly or inefficiently. It’s easier to survive this life on the surface, bumping up against people gently than do the mess of intentionally loving them. Love takes risk. Love takes forgiveness and grace. Love takes effort, time, and a commitment to not bolting when it gets hard (because it will get hard).

If this is the cost of deep relationships, we can’t possibly have capacity and space to go deep with everyone. So we have to become intentional, because we need people. We need the right people. And sometimes finding the right people takes discipline and effort. When we find those right people, we have to fight for them. We have to prioritize time and issue grace over and over, because every human on this earth will disappoint us. And when that happens, we love and fight for them even harder.

We all fell in love with shows like Friends, because we deeply want to have “our people.” Close friends and mentors don’t fall into our laps. You search and invest, and then you allow them to be imperfect versions of what you were hoping for in your head. Most of us are waiting to be invited, waiting to be pursued, waiting for friends to come to us.

Love is such an active process, and we are fairly lazy. So initiate. Then when you come together, initiate depth. Great conversations come from great questions and honest answers. Become someone who does both well.

Respond:

Who are the people that you need in your life right now?

Are you intentionally pursuing people in your life? If not, what gets in the way?

Adapted from Restless Bible Study Guide by Jennie Allen