Needy people on this edition of Truth and Love.

I'm Heath Lambert, and you're listening to Truth and Love, a podcast of the Association

of Certified Biblical Counselors, where we seek to provide biblical solutions for the problems that people face.

All of us are in relationships with people who require a little extra energy. I remember

earlier in my Christian life, I heard these people called EGRs or extra grace required. Regardless

of what label you put on these people, we are all in relationships with

people that require more energy, that require more time, that require more of us than someone

than someone else for whom we might find it easier to be with. And we are talking about how to

respond to those people on the podcast. The Bible actually gives

us so much instruction about how to be in relationships with these kinds of people who are a little

more needy than the other folks we might spend time with. There is actually a category in scripture,

a group of Bible passages that some people call the one another passages.

They are passages that teach us how to live in community together, how to be in relationship with one another.

One of those passages of the very many passages in the Bible would be a passage like 1st Peter

chapter 4 verse 10 where we're commanded to serve one another.

These passages, the one another passages in general, in a passage like 1st Peter 410,

where we're commanded to serve one another in particular, teach us a number of things about being

in relationship with people. First of all, they teach us humility. It's easy to talk about being

in relationship with people who are needy and come at it from an exalted, prideful, arrogant standpoint. A passage like 1st Peter 410, where we're

commanded to serve one another teaches us that neediness is common property of every member of the

body of Christ. That is, we are all needy people. I am needy and so are you. When the Bible commands us to

serve one another, it means that sometimes I am serving you and sometimes you are serving me.

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