January 13, 2023
Daily Devotion:
"Lean On Me…"
Proverbs 16:24
Pleasant words are like a honeycomb, making people happy and healthy.
Did you know that friendship fights stress? An Author says about women, “We're more inclined to seek out friends and reach out to family. Social support brings down our blood pressure, signals our adrenal glands to stop pumping out corticosteroids, and voila! We feel less anxious, less overwrought, less over-whelmed. We may even live longer as a result of coping this way.
Do you have enough friends in your life to stay healthy? Emotionally? Mentally? Spiritually? One of the most dramatic stories of friendship in the Bible is that of David and Jonathan. David, once King Saul's favorite, has become the target of the king's growing madness and wrath. Jonathan, torn between love for his father and his friend, ultimately obeys God and at great personal risk and cost, protects David on numerous occasions. David reciprocates that love by sparing Saul's life on two occasions-and blessing Jonathan's children and grandchildren. Sometimes friendship expresses more intense love than that we share with our family. But without exception, all of us need the support of someone we trust and whom we can share our joys, sorrows, challenges, and heart with.
A true friend is someone to cry with as a comfort in times of trouble; someone to laugh with in order to rekindle joy; someone to pray with to lift our spirits.; someone to argue with as we challenge each other to grow and be our best; someone to share hearts with us so that we can know them and ourselves better; someone to forgive and be forgiven by as we learn about God's redemptive love for us; someone to grow old with as we become men and women of wisdom and grace together. In other words, friends are good for the soul.
