Friends Forever

Children have a song they sing about friends:

Make new friends, but keep the old,
One is silver but the other’s gold.

As you look over the friends in your life - do you have any regrets? Do you wish you had kept in touch with some old friends that you now no longer talk to?

How do you decide what friends to keep when you make life changes?

All of them, most of them, a few of them, one of them?

How do you best stay in contact with old friends?

Writing letters? Email? Phone calls? Faxes? Christmas cards?

Have you ever had the kind of friend that even though you only talk with them once every five or ten years - they seem just like the friend you used to know so well? Tell about that friend.

Are members of your family some of your closest friends? Why or why not?

Are your best friends similar to you, or quite different? How are they similar or different?

Are you a better listener or a talker?

Do you find that it’s easier to be friends with someone who is different or the same as you? Give an example.

What is the best plan to make and keep a good friend?

Jesus talks about friends - John 15:12-17

“This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you.. Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends. You are My friends, if you do what I command you.

“No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you.

“You did not choose Me, but I chose you, and appointed you, that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain, that whatever you ask of the Father in My name, He may give to you.

“This I command you, that you love one another.”

****How does Jesus describe a good friend?