The Importance of Friends

Hello everyone.

Apologies for the long silence. I hope you have been well and the Lord is daily glorified in your lives. Today i bring to you write ups by someone who's writings have aided my decision making process especially when it comes to friends.

His name is Allison Hyacintho. 

Please check him out on social media. He speaks a lot on marriage and relationships. Today however is not about marriage but about the importance of friends as they may affect marriage or indeed any other important aspect of our lives.

Like the saying goes, "Show me your friends and I'll tell you who you are" and "Birds of a feather flock together."

Anyway please read and be blessed...

PRE-WEDDING PRAYER RETREATS

Hello funky believer, please can i talk to you for a minute?

Listen, I know that pre-wedding photos and bridal showers are awesome, I know it creates good memories for the couples and helps them bond intimately. I know how exciting it is to dress up in matching outfits with your spouse to-be and just have fun creating lasting memories with amazing photos and night parties with your gang. It is totally cool, but I just hope you also understand that as believers things are always a lot different for us, we don't just rush into a trend because everybody else is doing it, or because it is cool, what comes first is how much that fashion or trend adds to our christian life, i mean, how spiritually relevant is it to our love walk with God? 

Please forgive me if I am sounding like a killjoy, but rather than surround yourself with friends who will dress up in white outfits and take photos with you in a hotel room to post on social media, why don't you keep a small circle of fire-branded friends that can join you in a pre-wedding prayer and fasting retreat, and still stick around to pray for your marriage whenever you need them?

Rather than going out on a bachelor's night party with a gang of friends who will tease you all night about how you'll be getting stuck with one woman for the rest of your life, why don't you have a bachelor's vigil with friends who's prayers and personal walk with God you can trust? 

Hope you don't think I am trying to kill all the fun you have been dreaming to have, all I want you to see is how we can turn these exciting worldly interests into our spiritual advantage. When our friends are doing bridal showers, we can do bridal fasting and still have fun. When others are doing bachelor's night, let's do bachelor's vigil instead, is anybody catching this?

Start building up an army of friends you will need on that marriage journey, not the ones that don't have the spiritual capacity to go with you beyond the I DO. Start choosing your WAR FRIENDS carefully, start gathering spiritual guarantors who can stand in the gap for you in the place of prayer.

I encourage everyone to add this to their wedding plans, schedule a pre-wedding prayer retreat with fasting and tarry if your strength can carry, the pre-wedding photos and bridal showers can come later, but first, plan a retreat with your church, or a personal retreat at home with a few close friends whose prayers you can rely on anytime. 

This is a long term spiritual investment, this is what sustains the marriage long after the swagger of the bridal showers and bachelor parties has expired, I wish a lot of us can learn this. And if you don't have a few good friends whose prayers you can rely on, then I beg you to start building some now.

"The most important pre-wedding exercise is not the beautification of your wedding, BUT the edification of your marriage."

Hope this speaks to somebody, we are the chosen generation God will boast about!

Excuse me, I cannot buy groom's men suit for you when I don't have confidence in your prayers, God forbid that I use my marriage for fashion parade.
After spending money to make 15 bridesmaid dresses for your friends, 1 year later you're trekking from Shiloh to Redemption camp looking for miracle in your marriage while your friends are chilling in their houses, you cannot ask them to pray for you because they don't even look like people who pray for themselves.
Be there planning how to sell 2 yards of your Asoebi for 30k as a big girl that has arrived. Money you will still go and spend on prophets and pastors in prayer houses if you're not careful.
A life covenant as important as marriage and yet there is no single person in your bridal train that is spiritually relevant.
God forbid that you walk down the aisle surrounded by friends on high heels and selfie sticks.

The most important pre-wedding exercise is not the beautification of your wedding, but the edification of your marriage.... 

  God's grace,

Allison.

I hope you all are blessed by this. Until next time remember to pursue Christ always.

Blessings... 

MJA