talk about sovereignty

"In Revelation 13:8, John writes about 'everyone whose name has not been written before the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb who was slain.' So there was a book before the foundation of the world called "the book of life of the Lamb who was slain." Before the world was created, God had already planned that his Son would be slain like a lamb to save all those who are written in the book.

 Or consider 2 Timothy 1:9: '[God] saved us and called  us to a holy calling, not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began.' Saving grace was given to us before the ages began. That is, it was given to us before there was any human sin to save us from. Therefore, grace was planned before human sin was there to need it. This means that God's plan to save us through grace was not a response to human decisions to sin. Saving grace was the plan that made sin necessary. God did not find sin in the world and then make a plan to remedy it. He had the plan before the ages, and that plan was for the glory of sin-conquering grace through the death of Jesus Christ.

This is even more plain in Ephesians 1:4-6: '[God] chose us in [Christ] before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.' To what end did God predestine us sinners for adoption? To the praise of the glory of his grace. That is why the plan was made. The ultimate aim of the eternal plan was that praise might be as intense as possible for the glory of God's grace. And the apex of that glory is in the death of Jesus. So much so that the gospel of the death of Christ for sinners is called 'the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God' (2 Cor 4:4)

John Piper, Spectacular Sins (58-59)

If this is Who God is, then I'm sure He's sovereign over all things all the time.

Friendship

This is a concept that occurs throughout our whole lives, even longer than marriage, yet discussed infrequently. One thing about this type of relationship is that it occurs with many people and one can have multiple friends of different race, gender, age, whereas marriage occurs with just one person with a friendship relationship still intertwined in there. Who has taught us what friendships should be like? No one really taught me; they kind of just happened. (updated: actually people do talk about relationships on how we are to love one another, serve, etc. but somehow we disconnect that from nitty gritty of our actual friends and how we view friends) Yet scripture does talk much about it. Sometimes using the word “friends” and sometimes just “one another” and sometimes “others” where this love may not be reciprocated.

Jesus says: “This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends. You are My friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you. You did not choose Me but I chose you, and appointed you that you would go and bear fruit, and that your fruit would remain, so that whatever you ask of the Father in My name He may give to you. This I command you, that you love one another.” (John 15:12-17)

Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends? Who has shown me such a love? Christ has. He is the greatest friend one can have. He has chosen us, not the other way around. He does not choose us because we are useful to Him, because we like Him, because we are perfect. He loves us despite of us. Knowing this as an example of what a friend is, how do I love others? Love those who are useful, likeable, beneficial? Do we see others as having an eternal soul? Friend or no friend, what is their greatest need? What is the best we can give to people? Not ourselves because we are not the best things in life, but guide their eyes toward God.

I have known these things already, these truths that God being first in my life, that I am to love others, and that I am to encourage others to God. But I never connected that fully and purely in my relationships with others. The more I think about how often we compare with one another, the sadder I get. Who taught us to compare to others? If relationships are supposed to be as stated above, what is with all this comparing? (I speak for myself if this applies to anyone at all.) GirltalkHome has a whole series on the “Snare of Compare”. One thing they talk about and I remember a friend defined jealousy as wishing for something another has but envy as wishing another to not have it. Oh how cruel, but we do it so often. What kind of love is this?? We see a picture of food and we crave it. We see pictures of couples dating or married, and we are jealous and sometimes envious. We see someone get into a graduate school and we compare our intelligence. We see someone being well-liked and we look at our own unpopularity. We get jealous of those closest to us. What? How can you call them your friends and you look at them like that? Do I not desire their best? Their love for God? Their growth in God? When they look at me, do they see past me and see God? Do I pray for them?

There are so many principles to relationships. But wrestling with these thoughts on what friendship really is and entails has been frustrating yet also freeing. Frustrating in that true friends are rare, being a friend is difficult, sometimes loving feels foolish and pathetic. Tim Keller lists four traits to a friend: constancy, candor, "care"fulness, and counsel. I find candor and constancy rare traits... our culture is a busy, mobile, independent, selfish one; tolerance is seen as not telling someone the truth because of hurt feelings. But knowing God as my truest and greatest friend frees me to love despite if others may fail or hurt me (2 Corinthians 5:14). I have never been betrayed and cannot imagine it, but even if one of my close friends betrays me, it would not be the end of me. My most important relationship and sustainer in life will never do so. Rather He was forsaken on my behalf despite my constant betrayal of Him every time I sin.
Sometimes we can idolize relationships, putting others above God or wanting to be first in others’ lives. But it isn't that God being first in our lives means our relationships with others are mediocre. That goes with anything else in life that just because God comes before other things, doesn't mean we do things with mediocre. But the greater He is in our lives, the richer and more excellent these other things should be as well. I can have richer relationships because of the foundation in our great infinite God.
Jesus also says: By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another. (John 13:35)

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Further Resources:
“Friendship” sermon by Tim Keller
The Four Loves by C.S. Lewis
"He Stood by Me and Strengthened Me for the Sake of the Gospel" sermon by John Piper

"The Cross also exposes me before the eyes of other people, informing them of the depth of my depravity. If I wanted others to think highly of me, I would conceal the fact that a shameful slaughter of the perfect Son of God was required that I might be saved. But when I stand at the foot of the Cross and am seen by others under the light of that Cross, I am left uncomfortably exposed before their eyes. Indeed, the most humiliating gossip that could ever be whispered about me is blared from Golgotha's hill; and my self-righteous reputation is left in ruins in the wake of its revelations. With the worst facts about me thus exposed to the view of others, I find myself feeling that I truly have nothing left to hide.
"Thankfully, the more exposed I see that I am by the Cross, the more I find myself opening up to others about ongoing issues of sin in my life. (Why would anyone be shocked to hear of my struggles with past and present sin when the Cross already told them I am a desperately sinful person?) And the more open I am in confessing my sins to fellow-Christians, the more I enjoy the healing of the Lord in response to their grace-filled counsel and prayers. Experiencing richer levels of Christ's love in companionship with such saints, I give thanks for the gospel's role in forcing my hand toward self-disclosure and freedom that follows."
Milton Vincent, A Gospel Primer

"The weight of glory, does not mean we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously."
C.S. Lewis, "The Weight of Glory"

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves