Synopsis
The third album from the British singersongwriter, which explores themes of love and dependency.
Introduction
This track explores what it means to want to be around someone and the way that makes the singer feel. This session explores how our relationship with God can operate at a different level: not simply as a substitute for our friends, but as something far greater. Similar themes can be explored through the album track ‘Army’ – but be warned, that track includes explicit language.
The Session
As you begin the session, invite the group to think about some of the people that matter most to them: friends, partners or family members. What is it about those people that makes us want to spend time with them? How does being around them make us feel? What do we gain from our relationship with them? Invite the group to share some of their stories: celebrating the relationships that matter most to them and looking at how they help to shape or grow your young people. You may want to encourage some of your leaders to share their own experiences, as you begin to explore this theme.
Track 6: Around U
Play the track, distributing copies of the lyrics for your young people. Ask them to consider how they relate to the lyrics when they think about the friendships or relationships that matter most to them. What does it mean to really want to be around that person? What is it that draws them towards them? Say that God created us to live with and among other people, enjoying the relationships we have with others and helping each other grow and develop as we live in community.
Beyond all the human relationships that we form, we were designed to live in relationship with God. Your young people will be at different stages in their faith journeys and will have different expectations of what it means to have a relationship with God.
Ask someone to read Psalm 84. How does this desire to be in the presence of God relate to the lyrics of the song? Ask the group to think about what it would mean for them to so desperately want to be close to God - to spend time with him. Invite the young people, or leaders, to share their own stories: what is it that draws them closer to God? What makes them want to spend time ‘around God’?
Remind your group that the invitation to spend time ‘around God’ is available to us too. Spend some time discussing what that means to us and how, in practical ways, we can spend time with God, developing our relationship with him.
As you draw the session to a close, make some practical suggestions about ways your young people can spend time ‘around God’ in the week ahead.
