FOR ONE ANOTHER

(Post by: Lilly Hobbs)

On June 7^th, 2018 God started something in a little youth café with just a couple teen girls that would very soon after that be known to others as The Few. This past weekend, Madie and I celebrated three years of The Few with a couple of our Bible Study girls (we missed celebrating with all of them because of distance and other activities).

I think we can all confidently say that its only gotten better with time.

We started the weekend with an amazing outreach at an event called “Healthy Kids Day” that a YMCA about an hour away from us was putting on, where we got to pray with many families (especially kids), as well as give them opportunities to interact with us! So, if you’re checking out the blog for the first time, hi! Thanks for connecting with us! 🙂

One year ago, on our two-year anniversary, I wrote the blog post titled, “I Call This To Mind” https://thefew.blog/2020/06/11/i-call-this-to-mind/. I was struggling at that time with ministry, and just life in general. It was a discouraging time, as we were trying to lead well in the midst of the world’s craziness, and walk alongside one of our Bible Study girls who was in the middle of one of the most trying and heartbreaking times of her life.

Over the past three years, The Few has had its fair share of highs and lows, yet God has been greater than them all. He has held us together when Madie and I thought we’d fall apart, and made the victories more than worth the late-night conversations, recordings, and everything else in between.

We’ve seen some people walk away, and we’ve had some come and surrender their everything to Christ and decide to get serious about Him. Not everything has been perfect, and as I told the girls in our study last week, we’re called to be beautifully sacrificial, not perfectly artificial (not sure where I got that).

However, the only quote I think suitable for this memorable milestone post is a quote by C.S. Lewis about friendship…

He once said, “In friendship… we think we have chosen our peers. In reality, a few years’ difference in the dates of our births, a few more miles between certain houses, the choice of one university instead of another, posting to different regiments, the accident of a topic being raised or not raised at a first meeting—any of these chances might have kept us apart. But, for a Christian, there are, strictly speaking, no chances. A secret Master of the Ceremonies has been at work. Christ, who said to the disciples “Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you,” can truly say to every group of Christian friends “You have not chosen one another but I have chosen you for one another.” The Friendship is not a reward for our discrimination and good taste in finding one another out. It is the instrument by which God reveals to each the beauties of all the others. They are no greater than the beauties of a thousand other men; by Friendship God opens our eyes to them. They are, like all beauties, derived from Him, and then, in a good Friendship, increased by Him through the Friendship itself, so that it is His instrument for creating as well as for revealing.”  

There is so much that I love about The Few and what God has done with/through it, but there is one thing I never want to lose: The friendships. The ones where you can text at any time and tell them to pray, the ones that make it a priority to spend two hours every single week worshipping, praying, and studying. The ones that don’t try to compete and can work as a team no matter what’s happening around them, and the ones that want to love Jesus more than anything else with you.

That’s something I don’t want to lose. I thank God for those friends very often.

One of our favorite verses within Bible Study has been Proverbs 27:17 which says, “As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.”

I believe with all of my heart that God has chosen us for one another, and those are the friends that don’t let you settle for who you are, but instead push you to be who you were created to be. We are living our adventure, and I couldn’t be more in love with it! Thank you, Jesus.

“How good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity!”  (Psalm 133:1)

SO WHAT IS YOUR RESPONSE?

= Do you have a friend(s)/community that doesn’t let you settle for who you are right now?