Youth Sermon #1: Friendship

What is a friend

Friendship is a bond. A bond is something that is common between people. Everything people do together creates this bond. School, games, hobbies, interests, and beliefs. Friendship is all over the world, and in some cases, spiritual.

Friendship can come in the form of emotional experiences shared as well. Two strangers can have built a bond of friendship from an argument they had. People who experienced something scary, or dangerous may form a bond that helps them relate to one another. In some cases, the experience of being charitable, or having the same hope or faith, becomes a bond of friendship. Friendship helps us to understand and learn from what is happening around us.

Friendship is a form of love. Each one of us has a soul. It is made of the same unseen quality that God is. Because God is love, our soul has the same love. God wants us to love one another. So having friends is good. And if you believe it is God who gave creates your soul, it is easy to say, God loved you first.

We love God above all things. We know are souls are a part of God. And if we can love God, we can love that part of God in each of us. Loving God first makes loving others easy. People who love others more than they love God, get hurt when the people they love disappoint them. But if we put God first in our hearts and minds, we see our friends as souls who are just learning to be.

Each of us is made up of two parts. We are of visible qualities, and invisible qualities. The invisible qualities are a part of God, and that is where love comes from. The visible qualities are not loving, they instead supply us the means to survive. Both are important, but the unseen qualities carry on when we die. Everyone around you desires to survive and live another day. But the love in you, is not concerned for tomorrow. Love is in the present moment. Moment to moment love is there for us to have for one another.

So friendship comes from many visible ways, but the love shared is in each moment. The more we concern ourselves with our desires, the less time we spend serving each with love. So what Jesus reminds us to do is to deny ourselves, and to keep our friends close. To protect our friendships like the pupil of our eye. We do this by seeing one another as important as ourselves. We treat one another as we would have ourselves be treated. Our visible selves cannot do this. So we must rely on our invisible selves, and the love we can share with others in the moment.

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