I am writing today from my beautiful hometown of Tulsa, Oklahoma.

This week’s SS lesson reminds me of an article I wrote several years ago before I moved from Fort Worth, Texas to Tampa Florida. How cool is that? Writing in Tulsa about an article I wrote in Fort Worth about moving to Tampa Florida. After living over seven years in Tampa now, it is interesting to look back at my perspective before I made that move. I also hope this gives us some perspective as we look at this week’s SS lesson. Here is the article:

God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.  John 4:24

With the possibility now, of me moving to Florida where I will be hundreds of miles from any of my friends, it has me thinking a lot lately about my friends and what their friendships mean to me. In light of this, I found something in the above verse that is very comforting to me. I am sure that you have friends that no matter how long you are apart from them, once you get together, your friendship resumes right where it left off as though you had never been apart. This may sound weird, but maybe in one dimension you never were apart! We have physical dimensions such as time and space, but have you ever thought that there is another dimension we can be in that is not bound by time or space? To me, that dimension is the Holy Spirit. I believe why many of our Christian friendships take up right where they left off even after long periods of no physical contact is because we have actually been together the whole time “in the Spirit!”  Why do those friendships take up right where they left off as though no time has passed by? Because we are in the great “ I AM”. With God there is no time. He is in one eternal now. He is not the “I WAS” or “ I WILL BE”, He is the I AM.  Same with space, The Holy Spirit is everywhere. The Holy Spirit is with our Christian friends, so if we are in the Spirit and our friends are in the Spirit then we are together.

As a matter of fact, all the love we receive from our friends actually comes from the Holy Spirit. Therefore, if I leave my friends in Texas and go to Florida and make new friends there, I am still receiving the exact same love I had in Texas. Love does not come from human beings. We can not generate love; all we can do is let the Holy Spirit’s love flow through us. Therefore, the love I receive from people half way across the world is the same exact love I receive from the people I live with right here. It all comes from God. So as long as you have God’s love you can’t miss a friends love, because the only love they gave you came from God and He is still with you!

I am so thankful for all my friends whom I can share God’s love with! Thank you for being a part of my life. I hope God has been able to love you through me as we worship Him in Spirit.