Quizzes
Building Spiritual Friendships
We’ve been talking about the three components necessary to self-awareness and self-management: Listening, Willingness, and Community.Â
We’ve talked about willingness, and now we’re going to talk about how to be in spiritual community with others in a way that helps you move further along on this spiritual journey to God-honoring self-awareness and self-management. Â
So what is a Spiritual Friendship?
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Would you consider your closest friends as spiritual friends?
Spiritual Friendships are an essential part of our spiritual growth as we seek to be more self-aware. Finding and building into these friendships is embracing the gift of community that God has gifted to us for our good and the good of others.Â
Soul friends “seek to meet each other as whole people and help each other become whole people.” – David Benner, Sacred Companions
Test yourself:
The relationships within the Trinity
Contemplation and Listening Exercise
Who are people currently in your life or in your past who have been spiritual friends to you? What was the impact on your life because of those friendships?
Prayerfully ask God to bring to mind one or two people with whom you might foster this type of spiritual friendship.
Do your best to connect with these people this week.
Respond to Video:
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1.5 Spiritual Friendships
Respond to the following two questions (without feeling like you have to give too many details):
- Mandy said that loving yourself is a necessary part of being in a spiritual friendship because we don’t come into the relationship projecting our needs on the other person. When you think of your spiritual friendships in your past, do you feel like you were in a place that you loved yourself in a healthy way and were able to come to the relationship without projecting needs onto the other person that were not their needs to meet?
- Whether it was as healthy as it could have been, what was it for you to have this sort of spiritual friendship relationship in your life?
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4 Replies
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I have come to realize, by watching these last few videos that mentoring and developing spiritual friendships are two very different things. As a facilitator for a Christian support group for life controlling issues, transparency and vulnerability are very important for gaining trust. however these are not the people that need to become your spiritual friends, even when you attend the same church. Boundaries are important. Thankfully I do have these friendships and we met last week and I shared this with them. It is this group of women that walk along side of me, love me, pray for me and hold me accountable when im not loving myself. They are my spiritual soul sisters.
In the past I have messed up in this area , i did not have the proper boundaries in place and things have gotten messy. Thank goodness for wise godly friends.
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@martyv Great distinction recognizing the difference between mentoring and spiritual friends. How hard it is when we blur categories and don’t set boundaries. Are you familiar with the book by Henry Cloud called Boundaries?
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Yes, I am familiar with Henry Clouds book on Boundaries. I have it on my bookshelf. I believe its time to revisit it. Its been several years since Iv read it.
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I have been blessed to have a woman that fits the description of a soul friend. She’s always encouraged me and supported me in a gentle loving way but has also been able to give guidance and direction when she has seen me struggle.
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