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friends

Daily Bible Verse and Devotion – 1 Corinthians 15:33

Posted on November 19, 2019

Devotion for Teens on Friends

Do not be misled: “Bad company corrupts good character.” – 1 Corinthians 15:33 (NIV)

Have you noticed who you hang out with makes a big difference? I had a friend that used to swear all the time. Every other word was a bad word. I noticed that after I hung out with this friend for a while, I was starting to swear more.

It’s amazing the influence our friends have on our lives.

Today’s Key – Avoid Friends That Make You Compromise

Who you spend time with is important. Your friends influence the way you think, your decisions, and even sometimes what you do.

If you’ve got some friends that push you to do things that are wrong, consider distancing yourself from those friends. Maybe when you’re around them you’re more likely to make bad choices or bully others. Realize this and choose to limit time with those people.

Read: Why You Shouldn’t Compromise, Even In The Smallest Ways

Your friends make a huge impact on your life. If you want to really live for God and accomplish big things, you will have to avoid friends that make you compromise.

This isn’t to say that you can’t be friendly to those people, but rather your time with them should be limited. If you know they’re going to influence you to do and say things that you don’t want to do, avoid hanging out with them all the time.

Challenge yourself to avoid friends that make you compromise.

Teen Devotion on FriendshipsIf you’d like to follow along with this week’s devotions on friendship, you can download a PDF copy here.

This week’s devotions:

Daily Bible Verse and Devotion – Proverbs 17:17

Posted on November 18, 2019

Teen Devotion on Friendships

I have always been competitive. For as long as I can remember, I have wanted to be the best and strived to do better. Give me a game and I’ll try to win it. Give me a challenge and I’ll try to figure it out. That’s just the way God has wired me. And so when it came to friends, my challenge was always to find a more popular friend.

If a friend liked me and wanted to hang out, I was excited. However, I was always very cautious about not hanging around the people who might make me not look as good. In hindsight, I realized that in my need to be more popular, I missed out on a lot of great friends.

Today’s Truth – Choose Friends That Choose You

Teen Devotion on FriendshipMy whole life, I’ve constantly tried to pursue friends that didn’t really care about me. I wanted to have a more popular friend so I’d try to hang out with people that were more popular than I was. What I didn’t realize I was doing was turning my back on some great friendships in the process.

Often, I’d try to be friends with people that didn’t really care about me. Yeah, they were nice and fun people, but deep down they didn’t really care about me.

I’ve come to realize that instead of pursuing popularity, I should be pursuing relationships with people who care about me.

A friend is always loyal, and a brother is born to help in time of need. – Proverbs 17:17 (NLT)

God wants us to have good relationships with others. But if you’re constantly pursuing relationships that aren’t healthy or with others who don’t really care about you, you’re always going to be disappointed. Instead, decide to pursue relationships with people who like you for you.

You’ll be much happier and you’ll find relationships that fulfill you and truly last!

Teen Devotion on FriendshipsIf you’d like to follow along with this week’s devotions on friendship, you can download a PDF copy here.

Daily Bible Verse and Devotion – 1 Cor 15:33

Posted on May 2, 2018

 Teen Devotion and Bible Verse about friends

Do not be misled: “Bad company corrupts good character.” – 1 Corinthians 15:33 (NIV)

Sometimes, I’ve had some friends who haven’t helped me make good decisions. When I hung out with them, I was always tempted to do some things that weren’t right.

Have you noticed that who you hang out with makes a difference in your life? I’ve found that when I hung out with friends that were excited about Jesus it challenged me to grow in my relationship with Jesus. When I spend a lot of time with friends who didn’t love Jesus, it caused me to be challenged to do and say things that weren’t godly.

So today, take an honest look at your relationships. Do you have some friendships that are pushing you toward bad habits and choices? If so, ask God if you need to step back from those relationships. Choose to spend time pursuing relationships that challenge you to grow in your relationship with God and make good choices.

Tips For Dealing With Mean People

Posted on December 12, 2016

Youth Devotion tips for dealing with mean people

In life, you will run into people that let you down and disappoint you. Sometimes people don’t say the right thing, or do the right thing. Perhaps they have bullied you or treated you unkindly. What do you do in situations like these when people aren’t treating you with the respect and care you feel like you deserve?

God gives us some help in Matthew 5:44.

 “Love your enemies! Pray for those who persecute you!” (NLT)

That kind of sounds like an impossible task. He tells us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. That goes against what most of us want to do. We want to get even when someone treats us wrong. But the Bible says to love our enemies.

How can we do that? It is really hard to love someone who isn’t doing or saying nice things to you. The good news is this: “For we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love” – Romans 5:5 (NLT)

This verse shows us that God fills our hearts with His love. This is good news. That means that we don’t have to love our enemies on our own. God will give us the love to love our enemies with. God doesn’t ask us to do something that he doesn’t give us the power to do. Loving your enemies can be hard, but God gives us the love to do it with.

So no matter what a mean person has done to you, and no matter how bad someone might have hurt you, you still have the responsibility to respond back to them in love. The good news is that God will help you out by giving you the love to do it with. Its just up to you to believe it and tap into that love that is on the inside of you.

Loving mean people can be hard, but with God’s help you can do it!

No One Likes Eating by Themselves

Posted on October 24, 2016

Youth and Teen Devotion

Have you ever gone to meet people at a restaurant and you ended up getting there before anyone else arrived? Or even worse, have you ever had to eat somewhere completely by yourself? It sure isn’t fun.

There’s a story in the Bible where God invited tons of people to have supper with Him in Luke 14. This story shows us that God paid a huge price for us to be with Him and invite others to come too.

You might have been saved for a long time. You might now have christian friends and hang out at places where others share similar values as you. In one sense, that is great. It’s nice to have wholesome places where you can be yourself as a christian and not be nervous to talk about God. But in another sense you can become isolated from others who still need to know God. Its easy to get so comfortable hanging out with others who love God that you forget there are people all around your city who are hungry for Jesus, they just haven’t had a chance to hear about Him.

That’s what this story about the supper is all about. There was an invitation to come to the great supper but many who were invited made excuses to not come. Some of the excuses were buying land, having oxen, and getting married. Today’s excuses might be, I’ve got a new video game to play, or a new girlfriend to hang out with, or that I’m too busy learning lines for the school play. There is nothing wrong with any of those things, except when those things get in the way of doing what God asks.

You might feel like your friends that don’t know God could care less about Him. And while that might be true for some, most of your friends are hungry for God. They’re just hiding it underneath a lot of hurt. Your friends are hungry for God and if you asked them to go to church with you, they’d probably say yes.

To step out and ask a friend to go with you to church is not comfortable. However, it might be their chance to hear about Jesus for the first time. Your flesh (emotions and often how you feel) doesn’t want to step outside of your safety net of christian friends. But, if you are born again and know Jesus as Your Savior, you have another part of you (your Spirit). This new part of you does care about others who do not know God. It wants to be bold and often is nudging you on the inside to step out and do things to help others experience Gods love.

Make the decision to be open to be used by God. Invite people who do not know Jesus into your life. You might not know how God will do it, or you might not know what to say but the first step is simply being willing. Then the second step is to simply pray that God would help you step out. He might put a specific person on your heart. You might not think they are hungry by the way they act but God knows. If He put them on your heart, you know if you step out that something special will happen.

Right now if you are willing and ready to reach out to the unsaved hurting hungry people around you, pray this: “God, I’m thankful for the things You’ve done in my life. I know that You also love others around me that have never heard or experienced You like I have. God, show me who those are around me that are hungry for you and give me the courage to invite them into my life. Give me the courage to invite them to my church. God, I believe that you will use me. Amen.”

Similar Teen Devotions

Help! My Friend is doing bad stuff.

Posted on August 31, 2015

Teen Devotion Youth Devotion

Have you ever had a friend that began making choices you didn’t like? Maybe they started using alcohol or drugs. Perhaps they got into porn or started becoming sexually active. It can be really hard to know what to do when someone you care about starts to make choices that you can see are wrong.

With those thoughts in mind, we’ve gotten a list together of some suggestions to help you when your friend starts doing bad stuff.

  1. Speak into their life – If you have the ability to talk to this friend, do it. See if you can find out why they are making these choices. Don’t yell at them or give them a hard time because of what they’re doing, but be there to listen. Believe that when you talk to them, God will show you something to say that will encourage them to make the right choices. Finally, be careful when you talk to them to not come across as mean or seem like you know it all. Be genuinely interested in what they’re going through and believe that God will use you to encourage them and remind them of the truth.
  2. Pray for them – This can be such a hard thing to do. Many times you want to see instant results. You want your friend to stop what they’re doing and start living right. However, sometimes the best thing you can do for a friend is to pray for them. A great place to start is to pray the prayer that Paul prayed in
    Ephesians 1:17-18 (Message) – “Ask the God of our Master, Jesus Christ, the God of glory – to make you intelligent and discerning in knowing him personally, your eyes focused and clear, so that you can see exactly what it is he is calling you to do…”
    Pray that they will be able to see clearly what they are doing and the plan God has for their life.
  3. Always love them – Sometimes when friends make bad choices they don’t act very kindly to you. They might lash out at you or stop hanging out with you. It doesn’t matter how badly they treat you, you should love them.
    1 Cor 13:7 – “Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance” NLT
    Never give up on friends when they’re making bad choices, instead choose to love them and be there for them no matter how they treat you.

Dealing with a friend who is making bad choices is hard. But with God’s help, you can be a support and help for your friends that are in need. You can love them, pray for them, and even talk to them to encourage them. Regardless if you see results or not, Its important that you choose to love your friend no matter how they treat you in return.

Pray: God, I come to you in the name of Jesus and I pray for my friend. I ask you to open the eyes of their hearts that they might see who you are and how much you love them more clearly. I ask you to help me with wisdom so I know what I should do in this situation and how to help my friend. I believe that you are showing me the right thing to do right now in the name of Jesus, Amen.

Similar Devotions For Teens

 

How To Be A Good Friend

Posted on June 17, 2015

Teen Devotion and Bible Study Lesson on Friendship

Being a good friend doesn’t always come easily. It can be easy to get wrapped up in life that we forget to touch base with a friend, or leave a friend out because we want to hang out with a new friend we made. Friendships aren’t always easy, and not all of them will last forever, but let’s look at the friendship of David and Jonathan in the Bible and see what the two of them can teach us about real friendship.

As soon as he had finished speaking to Saul, the soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul. – 1 Samuel 18:1

We can see from this verse that true friendship is loving the other person like ourselves. Jonathan loved David and would do anything for him. He was loyal and would help David whenever he needed it. Jonathan paints a picture of what true friendship looks like, its simply loving your friend like you would love yourself.

Another thing we can learn about friendship from Jonathan is that friendship isn’t jealous. Jonathan should have been in line to be king. His father was the king, and Jonathan was royalty. However, God had anointed David to be king instead. Jonathan could have been jealous of David. Instead, Jonathan did everything he could to help David succeed.

Then Jonathan told David, “I promise by the LORD, the God of Israel, that by this time tomorrow, or the next day at the latest, I will talk to my father and let you know at once how he feels about you. If he speaks favorably about you, I will let you know.
 – 1 Samuel 20:12

Here we see that Jonathan goes and finds out how his father feels about David. Jonathan protected David. He warned David that his father wanted to kill him. Jonathan showed true friendship by protecting David from harm.

How I weep for you, my brother Jonathan! Oh, how much I loved you! And your love for me was deep, deeper than the love of women! – 2 Samuel 1:26

When Jonathan died, David was very sad. David’s words about Jonathan show how much his friendship meant to David. He said that he loved his friend.

The story of Jonathan and David can show us a lot about being a good friend. Many times our relationships are based on what we can get out of the relationship. You might be friends with someone because they have a car and can drive you places. Or perhaps they have a lot of money and so you hang out with them for what they can give you. The story of David and Jonathan shows us that there is a deeper type of friendship. A friendship that is not based on what you can get from a person but out of love for that person.

Challenge yourself to not be a taker in relationships, but to love others for who they are and be a good friend!

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4 Culprits That Are Killing Your Relationships

Posted on February 25, 2015

Have you ever thought about the fact that there are things in your life that could be killing your relationships? You might sit back and look at your life and think, why don’t I have more friends? Why aren’t my relationships better? What you might not realize is that you may be subject to one of these four culprits that kill relationships.

  1. Selfishness. This is a dangerous relationship killer. You know you’re trapped in selfishness when you are always worried about yourself. When you have a conversation, are you so concerned with being heard that you forget to listen?
    Are you so focused on self-promotion that you have little time to look out for others? Are you always putting your needs first at the expense of others? This is a dangerous relationship trap to fall into. The Bible tells us how we should be treating others in 1 Corinthians 13.
    “Love cares more for others than for self.” – 1 Corinthians 13:4 (Message)
  2. Laziness. Its easy to get lazy in relationships. You might feel like watching TV instead of texting a friend that is in need. You might rather sit in bed and read a book than going to your best friend’s football game. However, laziness can be a relationship killer. If you keep putting comfort ahead of your friends, eventually they will start to resent that. Being a good friend involves doing what’s right for your friend, even if it puts some of your comfort on hold. Choose to not be lazy and put relationships first in your life.
  3. Shyness. Shyness is a huge relationship killer. If you’re a person that tends to be naturally shy, you’ve got to challenge yourself to push past any shyness you might feel to get noticed and make friends. You have to step out of your comfort zone and begin to talk to people. You’ve got to not allow your shyness to hold you back, but rather choose to step out of what’s comfortable and easy and learn to talk to others.
    It might not be easy at first, but the more you try talking to people the easier it will get.
  4. Emotional Baggage. This can be a big relationship killer. Its easy to let the hurts of your past influence your future relationships. If you’ve been hurt by someone it can be really hard to start trusting people again. You tend to be weary of getting to close to others if you’ve been hurt. However, holding people at a distance and not trusting them is a way to kill relationships. Even though you may have been hurt, you can go to God for healing. He’s able to heal your heart and help show you ways to begin trusting others again.
    He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. – Psalm 147:3 (HSCB)

Relationships take work. They involve setting aside at times what seems easy and putting another’s needs or interests ahead of your own. However, its worth it to do what the Bible outlines in regards to relationships. Its what should set us as Christians apart from other people. We as Christians should be the ones that are treating others with the love and respect that God has shown us. This week remember that how you treat others speaks just as loud as the things you say. Choose to shut off the things in your life that are relationship killers and let the love of God flow through you!

By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” – John 13:35 (NIV)

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Tips for Successful Relationships

Posted on February 11, 2015

Relationships are tricky. Whether its a friendship, parent, boss, teacher, boyfriend, or girlfriend, it can be hard to know how to handle difficult relationships. How do you handle the parent that you don’t agree with? Or the teacher that rubs you the wrong way? Or the boyfriend that broke up with you for no apparent reason?

The book of Ruth offers some awesome suggestions for handing difficult relationships. Ruth found herself in a bad spot. Her husband died. She had to decide what she was going to do next. She chose to follow her mother-in-law to a new country. Ruth didn’t have to go, but she chose to. Then when they arrive in the new country, her mother-in-law wasn’t all that nice to be with. She was sad and depressed. Not the kind of person you’d respect and work hard for. Ruth did something amazing though, she stayed with her mother-in-law and stayed true to God.

But Ruth replied, “Don’t ask me to leave you and turn back. Wherever you go, I will go; wherever you live, I will live. Your people will be my people, and your God will be my God. – Ruth 1:16 (NLT)

There is an important lesson in here when it comes to relationships. Its this, respecting God and authority will help you out in the long run. That is exactly what Ruth did. She respected her authority, her mother-in-law. Regardless of Naomi’s attitude and outlook on life, she chose to respect her and stick with her. Ruth also chose to stick with God. She chose to serve God and follow after Him.

The awesome thing about these two decisions is how they brought Ruth success. Ruth ended up marrying a very rich and successful guy. She got an awesome outcome to her life’s story. And it all started with her simply respecting authority and God in her life.

Authority relationships in your life can be tough. It can be hard to respect those in charge of you. But its important to do. It can bring you into success in ways you’ve never imagined, just like Ruth.

The other thing Ruth did was to follow God. Her decision to follow after God wasn’t easy for her. But it led her into good things.

Look at your own life? Have you made the same decision Ruth did? Have you decided to follow God? No matter where that might lead you? Have you put your trust in Him? And have you been respectful of the authority that is in your life? Doing these two things will set you on a path to success that you’ve never dreamed of! Choose to follow God and respect authority.

4 Things to Learn From Sarah

Posted on November 19, 2014

Teen Devotion on the Faith and Life of SarahDo you remember hearing about Sarah in Sunday school? Or maybe you’ve read the story about her in the Bible. She might seem kind of lame because she lived so long ago and you might feel that its hard to relate to her life and story. However, Sarah’s life can teach us four important lessons.

1. Sometimes you have to give things up. Sarah had to give some things up. She was living in the land of Ur. She probably had a nice house. She had friends, family and probably a few awesome places she liked to shop. She was probably very comfortable where she was. But then something crazy happened. God lead her husband Abraham to leave the country they lived in and told Him to go to the land He promised Abraham. What that meant for Sarah was saying goodbye to all her friends and family. Can you imagine how hard would that be? She had to leave everyone she knew and travel to this land that God provided.
The great thing is that Sarah did it. She gave up what was comfortable around her to seek God’s plan for her and her husband’s life. She chose to follow after God and not after stuff. And she is an awesome example we can look up to in regards to trusting God.

2. Its okay to doubt. God told Sarah that she would have a child. Not that big of deal, except for the fact that Sarah was 90 at the time. She was way past the age to have kids. Sarah went to far as laughing out loud when she heard the news that she would have a baby.
This is encouraging because it shows us its okay to have doubts. Its how you channel those doubts that is important. For example, sometimes when God leads us or directs us, we can have a moment where we doubt what God says. We might think that its impossible. But we shouldn’t stay in the place of doubt.
The good news is that Sarah didn’t continue doubting. She might have doubted at first, but then she chose to believe what God said. Because she believed God, she had the baby just like God had said.
By faith, barren Sarah was able to become pregnant, old woman as she was at the time, because she believed the One who made a promise would do what he said.  – Hebrews 11:11 (Message)

3. Following God isn’t always easy, but its always worth it.
Most likely, Sarah would have enjoyed taking the easy route. She could have avoided living in tents for lots of years. She could have enjoyed getting to live in an awesome house, but she decided instead to trust God and go for an eternal reward for serving Him.
Hebrews 11:9 – By an act of faith he lived in the country promised him, lived as a stranger camping in tents. (Message)
Sarah knew that by trusting God, she would get awesome rewards. She put aside comfort and trusted in God. God rewarded her with a son and become an ancestor of Jesus. Many times following after God isn’t the easiest option. The good news is that following after God always brings great rewards.

4. Never leave your wingman.
Sarah proved that she was faithful. She had the opportunity to be a queen. Pharoah liked her and wanted her to be his wife. However, Sarah stayed with Abraham. She stayed faithful when it might have been easier to say yes to a home, riches and being a queen. Despite all that, Sarah stayed by Abraham’s side.
It might be easier at times to not stay with the people or church that God has put into your life. It might seem like it would be easier to just ditch those people. However, there are benefits to being faithful. Sarah’s life proves that. Stick with the people that God has placed in your life.

These are just four things that can be learned from the life of Sarah. She was an awesome woman that trusted God and paved the way for Jesus to be born. She trusted God when it might not have always been what was comfortable or felt easy. So the next time you happen to read the story of Sarah, don’t just skim over it, but realize that she was an amazing woman who did great things for God!