Cultivating Meaningful Friendships

Show Highlights

Show me your friends, and I’ll show you your future.

Our friends determine the direction and quality of our lives.
- Why I should intentionally equip myself and my family on how to have the most healthy friendships
- How negative behaviors and bad habits become normal to us when we surround ourselves with bad company
- Why not to make close friends with gaping character defects
Am I establishing healthy friendships and avoiding unhealthy ones? Are my children?
- How do we help our children recognize and identify healthy friendships, and how do we cultivate them?
  - Help your kids be intentional in identifying the good qualities in others
  - Analyze your own friendships. Model healthy friendships. It’s hard for my kids to do what they don’t see.
  - Who are you becoming?
  - What direction are your closest friends taking you?
    - You need givers AND takers in your life, people you pour into and people who pour into you.
    - You become a composite of the 5-7 people you spend the most time with. Do you like what’s happening?
    - He who walks with the wise becomes wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm.
Go to Scripture and point your kids to it. Discuss scripture with your kids (i.e. What does Proverbs 13:20 mean?)
Ask questions. Discussions around your dinner table could include:
- Asking questions to your kids to help THEM discover. The more they realize on their own, the more growth is possible.
  - You become like the 5-7 people you spend the most time with. If we look at your friends, what’s your future going to be? What direction are you heading in, and do you like that?
  - Who are 1-2 peers that you need to intentionally spend more time with?
  - Who are 1-2 older people that you really benefit by spending more time with?