You were not created to do life alone! As we mentioned on Day 2, one of the most beautiful ways we bear the image of God is through our capacity for relationships. We were created for relationship; for belonging, for knowing and being known, to bear witness to each other, and where our authentic true self is needed and invited.
As you move along your healing journey, becoming more and more your true self–who you were created to be–there will be opposition and struggle–familiar voices you’ve heard your whole life. Do you see that in your life? Particularly as you move with Jesus in friendship and sisterhood?
Have you ever stopped to consider the ingredients of deep friendship? Each is important to the fullness of friendship and redemptive community. Just like you can bake a cake forgetting to add the eggs—the result will be cake-like, but perhaps not the cake you intended. The ingredients of deep friendship, Redemptive Sisterhood, matter, and we invite you to explore them here: https://www.zoweh.org/the-deepening-journey#tenents. Cultivating redemptive sisterhood takes time, intentionality, and commitment.
Cultivating Redemptive Sisterhood takes time. Perhaps you’ve experienced making a friend quickly, experiencing the delight of camaraderie with a woman you’ve met. And yet it is the intentional getting together and sharing life and the deeper matters of the heart over weeks and months that deepens friendship, moving it from ‘Hey, we could be friends,’ to someone you call when you’re experiencing the dark night of the soul.
Cultivating Redemptive Sisterhood takes intentionality. Deep friendships are forged in the face of loss, grief, repair, as well as in the joy and celebration, as we care for each other, remaining fully present, intentionally exploring our own stories and each other’s stories. It is far too easy to listen and quickly respond with pearls of wisdom or scripture. It takes more energy, time, curiosity, and wisdom to allow yourself to stay present to the pain, to ask good questions, experience empathy, to weep with those who weep, joining with each other in the moments that present themselves.
Cultivating Redemptive Sisterhood takes commitment. In these days of social media, sound bytes, short attention spans, and demands on time, it is not unusual to have many casual acquaintances. May we even dare say that sometimes the semester Bible study culture perpetuates this? When you commit to investing your time and your heart with friends, experiencing the messy and hard times as well as celebrating the good with and for each other, over time you will have endured and experienced much together. Making this a priority—a commitment—means seizing these opportunities to be together, to get to know each other, to care for one another, and to build a redemptive sisterhood that could last a lifetime!
Think about how Jesus has come for you over these seven days; he also longs for flourishing for your friends, your sisters, your daughters. Will you make space and a place for the women in your life? In the Larger Story, friendship—SISTERHOOD—is deeply opposed. Will you pursue it?
As you ponder all this with God today, ask Him:
- Father, where have I held back in friendships, not allowing my true self to be known and seen?
- Jesus, I long to experience belonging, for friends who love me for me. Will you show me how this has been opposed in my life? Where have I experienced wounding in friendships?
- Holy Spirit, in my deepest heart, I yearn for a redemptive sisterhood. Who might I invite into exploring more together? Where do I start?
Want to experience the fullness of The Deepening Journey? Learn more and watch session 1 for free here.
Scripture
So now wrap your heart tightly around the hope that lives within us, knowing that God always keeps his promises! Discover creative ways to encourage others and to motivate them toward acts of compassion, doing beautiful works as expressions of love.This is not the time to pull away and neglect meeting together, as some have formed the habit of doing. In fact, we should come together even more frequently, eager to encourage and urge each other onward as we anticipate that day dawning. - Hebrews 10:23-25
Jesus replied: "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'” - Matthew 22:37-40 (NIV)
Delightfully loved ones, if he loved us with such tremendous love, then “loving one another” should be our way of life! - 1 John 4:11 TPT
…I came that they may have and enjoy life, and have it in abundance (to the full, till it overflows). - John 10:10b
