MCC Podcasts
Love - The Lost Art of Friendship
Hey, we're going to come to God's word. Let's put our hands out and ask that He might speak to us. Our Father in Heaven, we trust that when we come, you will show up. When we come to Your Word, you will speak through it. And so our hands are outstretched as a symbol of us being receptive to You, God. It's just a symbol that if you poured out from Heaven, your encouragement or your challenge or your truth that we need or your comfort, whatever you have for us, God that we want it. And so I'm telling you by this posture, Father, that I don't want to miss what You have to say to me. And so speak for Your servants are listening in the name of Christ. Amen. Hey, we're in this love series and it's really fun to continue on in this love series. And this morning we're talking a little bit about this idea of having loving friendships. It's going to be my topic this morning, is loving friendships. A couple of weeks ago, I don't know, Ben, you were coming back from somewhere. Ben Kearns was speaking or at a conference or whatever. He got into SFO after midnight. His flight was delayed and he got into SFO after midnight, like 12.15. And the last shuttle to Marin stopped at midnight. Have you ever heard that happen? And so I was talking to him a couple of days later and he's like, "Oh man, it was brutal." He goes, you know, so I get out there, it's like 12.10 with my bags and that's it. And being too much of a cheapskate to like take a cab, which is like a hundred bucks in Nevada, you know, he hunkered down on one of those lousy black chairs and thought, "I can do this." And he spent the night at SFO till the shuttle started running the next day. I know. That awful picture. I mean, it was a miserable thing in the world to fly across country and then have to stay there for hours. And I said, "Well, why didn't you call me? Like why didn't you call me? Why don't you be able to phone and call me?" And I would have come and gotten you at one o'clock in the morning and we would, right? And doesn't that lead you to that old proverbial question? Like, who do you have in your life that you can call to take you to the airport, right? Or it's the question of who do you have in your life that will help you move. These are real friendships. And I don't remember what your lame excuse was. You're like, "I was all good. I'm just going to spend like three hours in this black vinyl chair." Like, that's an awesome idea. But it made me question, "Yeah, who would I call?" Because that's the worst thing in the world to be able to wait. You've already been in bed, you get the call, Ben's like, "I'm stuck. Will you come get me?" And I started thinking, "Do I have the kind of relationships in my world, in my life where I have the airport relationships and the moving relationships and the people that I can call on that are present for me, deep, true, significant, strengthening, love friendships?" And do I have enough of that in my life? Do I have any of those in my life? Linda and I one time had swung by Taco Bell on the way home from some early wedding. I'll never forget this deal. And we, this is years ago, we both got food poisoning from Taco Bell. And you know, food poisoning is just the worst. We had one baby at the time. We lived in a little two-bedroom, one-bathroom house, a little just a little hut, basically, this little house. And Linda's like, "I'm not feeling good at Taco Bell." And then, boom, she was out for the count, right? Eighteen minutes later, it hits me. Bathroom was occupied. I'm in the backyard. I will save you the gory details. But you can imagine, it's as bad as it gets. I'm in the backyard, I'm like throwing rocks at the window, throw me in the washcloth. You know, I mean, it was bad. And then we have our baby waking up from a nap in the other room. Hello! And we were down for the count. We couldn't do anything. And I mean, who do we call at that moment to say, "Clean up on aisle eight, please?" Like, who comes to your house at that moment with all of the odors and all of the noises and the environment and to take care of your baby? Who is that that does that? We, you guys, so were built for relationships just like that. And we settle for relationships so much less than that. And in this series on love, we want to talk about what kind of deep and significant and true friendships we can have in this idea of loving, loving those that are around us that are engaged with us in friendship. I titled our sermon This Love American Style, Bowling Alone, because it should be titled, Just Reject the American Style Love, which is Bowling Alone. Bowling Alone is a title of a book by Robert Putnam. He was a Harvard professor. He wrote this book about 11 years ago, but he chronicles the loss of community life, the loss of engagement and significant relationships in America over the last 25 years. He says our social capital has plummeted and it is costing us dearly, even to the place of our physical health, much less our civic and our community health. In other words, we're not connected anymore and he uses the metaphor of bowling alone. The people used to bowl in leagues. They had friendships. They were together once a week and they engaged with one another in relationships. And now Americans are bowling alone. They're spending time in isolation and we know that to be true. He showed how we signed fewer petitions. We belong to fewer organizations that meet regularly. We know our neighbors less. We have our friends over less. We drop by people's house less. We socialize with our family less. This is all going on. And we know this to be true. I know this to be true because you drive down the neighborhood. All the garage doors are closed and dark. When I lived in Sacramento, I worked in South Sacramento and I drove through an ethnic neighborhood. It was about three or four different ethnicities, but it was all non-white. Drove through that neighborhood to get to my neighborhood, which was mostly white. And the difference was astounding to me because in Sacramento, warm summer day, I would leave my church. I would drive through the neighborhood and all the garage doors were up. And the barbecues were out and the families were there and music was planned. And sofas were dragged into the garage or out under the driveway. And people were hanging out and enjoying themselves and the closer you got to my typical American suburb, the garage doors were closed and there wasn't a soul around. In fact, you could see people, I'd follow somebody down the street, well, not that way, but I would just be driving. Following, looking for a friend, I would drive, I would be driving down the street and you could see people would put their garage door up and they would pull into their driveway, electric garage doors, right, because they can't get out of their car and be seen by anyone. And they would pull in the driveway and like even before the door was all the way up their car would slip in through the crack and then immediately the garage door would come like, nobody see me, nobody engage with me. We are a product of a culture that is continuing and developing in isolation and bowling alone is this metaphor for it. But you see how this applies to our study on love? You guys, these are deep and real connections and relationships of love that we need to have with friends so that we become all that God has for us to be. We need to do love, not American style and I want to talk about what that might look like. I think we need to talk about the lost art of friendship, how to love in our circle of relationships, how to have deep and significant and true friendships. The text for this morning is really just an example of the way that God loved us. Look at the first John text, we're going to throw it up here on the screen so you can see it. In the beginning, this is how God showed his love, so it's going to be an example text. This is how God showed his love among us. He sent his one and only son into the world that we might live through him. This is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. Seeing God's pattern of love should be the way that we can then see how we're to bring ourselves into these love relationships, these friendships, these circle of community that we have for friendships that matter, that are significant. This is what friendship looks like. I'm going to go through what friendship looks like and then I want to talk about what I think, what needs I think that meets in our lives and what to do about that. This is what love looks like. Love takes the initiative our Scripture says. Love takes the initiative. You look at verse 10, this is love, not that we loved God, but that what? He loved us. I love that. God took the initiative. That was part of this text. He goes, listen, you want to know what love looks like? It's not about us loving God, it's about him having taken the initiative to love us. Love will always take the initiative. Hardly anything feels more like love to us than when someone has taken the initiative and it makes us say they didn't need to do that, right? That's love. That's what it feels like to be loved. It's somebody has stepped into your world, stepped into your situation and said, here I am. Man, if I had known Ben, if somehow I had gotten the sense that you were alone on the vinyl chair, I would have showed up at SFO, right? It would have been the sense of which there was this, man, I know your story and I know your need and here I am, I'm stepping in. Love takes the initiative. Do you have relationships where you take the initiative? Not responding. Not reciprocal. Not out of gratitude. Not out of, what, what, what, do you have relationships where you take the initiative to love someone? That's like God's love, that's why it blows people away. Every couple of years I buy a quart of wood and we have a nice little warm fire sometimes in our family room and a quart of wood is a lot of wood, right? It's a lot of wood. And so, well, I just got a new quart, this was really funny too. I had the guy dump it right where Tommy parks his car. He totally got the hint. It was great. He came home and he's like, really? So then I made him stack it while I was away on vacation and then when I got back he was at baseball practice and I texted him and said, dude, what happened? The pile fell over. The whole quart of wood fell over. We got to re-stack it. I was just joking. He didn't think it was funny at all. But for those of us who don't have a 17-year-old to stack your wood, but anyway, a couple of years ago, last time before that I got wood I had this big quart of wood dumped in the driveway like that and I got out there with my gloves and I'm standing there looking at it and all of a sudden my neighbor and his son come from up there putting on their gloves and they come walking down and I'm like, what are you doing? And they're like, dude, nobody in my neighborhood is going to get a quart of wood and stack it by themselves. And there we go. And it made me go, you don't have to do that. In fact, that's part of our problem, right, is we spend most of our time when somebody even tries to love like God loves going, I don't need that. I don't need that. I'll sleep in the vinyl chair. Like, that's all right. I don't need you. I'll stack it by myself. But love takes the initiative. That's what grace looks like. It's not about reciprocity. It's not about deserving it. It's just loving. That's what friendship looks like. Love takes the initiative too. It takes the initiative to give sacrificially. Verse 9 says, "This is how God showed His love among us. He sent His one and only Son into the world." And the theory of the Atonement and why Jesus had to go to the cross is much, much greater than sort of us, our purposes this morning for me to just talk about it really quickly. But the weight of the cross and what Jesus did there, what God sacrificed to suffer the pain of the sin, of all of humanity, from all of time past and all of time future, to feel that weight of pain and distance and heartbreak and separation God Himself in the Trinity. It's a powerful reality. This theory of Atonement. Go do some reading on it like buck up. Let's do some thoughts thinking, deep thinking on this kind of stuff. But the idea that God sacrificed to love us is huge. We know that someone is loving us when they give us a gift that costs them something of themselves. Do you hear that? It costs something of themselves. When they do that, we know that it's love. We feel loved. We're strengthened by that love when it costs them something. That's what sacrifice is. What does love look like these days in terms of sacrificed friends? What I think it looks like the sacrifice and the cost of time, time. That's what it looks like. Time is our most precious commodity. Time is the thing that most of us don't have enough of. Time is the thing that we're not disciplined enough to spend well and so we don't have it for one another. But love relationships go, "Here's my time. I have this time for you and I'm going to engage in a true and significant friendship relationship of love by spending time with you." Some of us have the love language of quality time and that really feels like love to you when somebody just comes and spends time with you. But for all human beings, we know it's love when it costs them of this great resource and they give it to us. There's a brother in our fellowship right now that I just said to him, "You know what? I think I need you in my life. How do you feel about you and I spending some time together?" He turns back to me and he goes, "Okay, let's spend time every single week." We are. That guy costs, invests himself every week to spend time with me for our friendship. That's a big cost. We used to spend time with people weekly all the time. I don't know what happened in our culture but we don't now. But this guy spends time with me every single week. Love gives sacrificially and says, "I'm with you and part of me is given to you." That's what it looks like. So, love takes the initiative to give sacrificially. Do you give sacrificially to anybody in your life? To whom are you giving costly parts of you to demonstrate your love for them? To strengthen them? To love the way God loves? That's our call. Love takes the initiative to give sacrificially. The last part is to meet the needs of others. See, God's love for us, if you look in those verses 9 and 10, he sent his son, "Why? Know that we might live through him." He sent his son that we would find life. In verse 10 it says, "He sent his son as an atoning sacrifice. He sent his son to forgive us, to atone for our sin." See, God didn't just sort of love out of sentiment or, you know, so that he would feel good about it. He looked at our need. He knew that we were broken. He knew that we needed forgiveness. He knew that we needed salvation. And his love was pointed at our needs. And love takes the initiative to give sacrificially to meet the needs of others. Love is directed at real needs. Our self-centeredness and man, our self-focus, our lives are so full of our stuff. Isn't that just the truth? My needs, my schedule, my fears, my problems with intimacy, my focus, my energy, it's just a full-time job. I'm a full-time stinking job. But love powerful, God-like love friendships is about saying, taking the initiative to give sacrificially to not be about me but to look up and see somebody else's needs and meet them. That's what God did for us. Ben just got back from his sabbatical. I'm going on sabbatical this fall, and I've already put together my sabbatical committee so that we can have a plan and the leadership team can approve that and all that stuff. And so I pulled the sabbatical committee together. You guys, it was really fun because I just thought we were going to a committee meeting. But the end of that committee meeting, I picked guys to be on my sabbatical committee who are guys that I want to be in relationship with. And I picked really well because at the end of that meeting, I couldn't believe how moved I was. When we reflected later on how that meeting go for you, my big take home of it was I feel like brothers showed up with their swords and fought for me. That's what it felt like. And I couldn't get over how powerful it felt that all of these guys with their lives and their needs and their schedules and their work and their ministries and their stuff added something else to their life showed up in this room and fought for me. They said, what are Jeff's needs? What is his marriage going to need? What is his heart going to need? What is his walk with God going to need? What is his role as a parent going to need on the sabbatical? What is he going to need for the next season of ministry so that he can kick some tail for Jesus? Like, what does he need? You guys, I want to have more meetings where it's about me like that. That was awesome. But they stopped what they were doing and met my need and it had unbelievable power. It may be that first committee meeting was maybe the most powerful meeting I've been in in years. And I said to them, it felt like you were swinging your swords in my battle. Love takes the initiative to give sacrificially to meet the needs of others. That's what love looks like. That's what God taught us and we need relationships like that. But before we're done this morning, I want to look more at kind of what this part about needs. What other, I mean, how do I say this? What needs really are being met? Coordinates are being met for those of us who are going to enter into these kinds of true and deep and significant friendships. I want to talk about what needs are met by real friendship. For sure, there's physical needs. People get stacked and cars get fixed and cupboards get filled. For sure. And babies get taken care of and they even tear you get a break sometimes. Like all that. Those are real. But beyond the physical, there's a spiritual need that gets met in these kinds of friendships, these kind of love friendships. And I think guys, true God type loving friendship meets our need for encouragement. That word encouragement. I think that's what this is about. A loss out of friendship is about encouragement. And I say this because this is what the scriptures seem to emphasize when talking about our relationships with one another. When you look and say, well, what does the scriptures say about how we live in relationship with one another? This word comes up as much as the word love. So I think that's the same deal. It's about giving courage to one another. And I love saying it that way. I love thinking of it that way. Do we give courage to each other and are we receiving courage from the others? Look at a couple of scriptures, Hebrews 313. But encourage one another daily as long as it is called today. Get give each other courage every day. That's what this focus is about. So that none of you may be hardened by sin's deceitfulness. In other words, we get all twisted around in our sin and our brokenness and we believe all kinds of lies about life and God and me and gifts and what's true. We get all crazy. And he says, you go give courage to one another every day. You go give them courage about what is true. So you don't get messed up by what's not true. Look at another one, Acts chapter 11. News of this growing church in Antioch had reached the church in Jerusalem so they sent Barnabas to Antioch. Now this is cool. Anybody know? A little bonus point. Anybody know what Barnabas means? Son of encouragement. That's his nickname. It probably wasn't his name. It was probably such a strong conviction and such a strong set of gifts that he had that everybody around is like, dude, every time I'm with you, I feel so encouraged. I feel so strong. You give me courage to be around you. You set me straight. I believe the truth. When you're near me, I feel like your sword is out and you're fighting my battles, man. So they gave the guy the name son of encouragement. Come on. I want that nickname. That is awesome. Is that not great? So, of course, this church is growing and they're like, what do we do? Let's send son of encouragement to them. So Barnabas shows up there, verse 23, when he arrived, he saw what the grace of God had done and he was glad and he gave them courage. He encouraged them. What to what? He encouraged them all to remain true to the Lord with all their hearts. We get to give courage to each other to remain true to who we really are in Christ and we get courage to do it all out. Isn't that awesome? Do we have those relationships in our life? Our real needs that are being met by God kind of love in friendships is this one of encouragement. Three things about that to close. True friendships then, that courage. True friendships give you courage by being an example. True friendships give you courage by being an example, being an example to follow a pattern to follow a standard to reach up to. This is good old-fashioned peer pressure where you become like the people you hang out with. You know that? Do you know that? Okay. Junior hires? Do you know that? Because the risk of congregation doesn't know that. You become like who you hang out with. You hang out with people who drag you down. You hang out with people who tell you untruth about God and life and who you are and what you can accomplish. It will drag you down. But you hang out with people who will give you courage by dragging you up, you're going to be like them. And so I want to hang out with people that I want to be like someday. Do you still say that phrase? I want to be like Ben when I grow up. Do you say that? Because this is the kind of person I want to hang around because I want to be like him and true friendships give us courage because we see what it looks like to live that way and we go, that's what I want. I think being the family that we are and the dad that I am and the husband that I am is because I looked around at people that were the next generation up from me and I saw their families and I saw their fatherhood and I saw them being husbands and I said, I want to be like that someday and I hung out with those people. And it gave me courage to go, you know what, maybe it doesn't, not everybody lives that way, maybe not everybody knows. But this guy does and it gives me courage to believe that I can be like that. Hey, this is one of the greatest benefits for me in working with Art Greco, just between us because he's serving on a committee today, he's gone. So just between us and the whole internet. This is a secret. That guy's discernment and humility and teachability is a gift to our church. And it is a gift to me personally to be his colleague, isn't it Ben? Because we watch him, because we come in there, man. We come in there, woo hoo, Yahoo, me and Ben and Ben way more yoying than me. And we come into these staff meetings and I'm like, this is how it is, you know? And he's like, or what if God, right? And I think, oh, that's why you got white hair. That's why you got gifts of wisdom. That's why you're the sage in this deal. That's smart. I want to be, I want to think like that. I want to be like that someday. He says, maybe I look at it this way and then I say, maybe you ought to just shut up, but to watch him, he's not naturally that way, friends. He's somebody who's learned by walking with the Lord that humility and discernment and patience, quiet spirit honors the Lord. I want to be like that. I'm going to hang around him. He's going to give me courage to be that person. You become who we hang around with. True friendship gives you courage by being an example too. True friendship gives you courage to live into your real identity. True friendship gives you courage to live into your real identity. It gives you courage to live what you know to be true about who you are. I mean, the big things that God loves you and that God is with you and that God has gifted you and that you have purpose and meaning that true friendship gives you courage to live into that. By ourselves in isolation, we forget that those things are true and we live these quiet lives of desperation, unattached to the Spirit of God, unattached to having any impact in the world or in our community. We just sort of flounder and all we see is our weaknesses and our inabilities and our eye cans. Isn't that true? But man, we get around people who are true friends. They speak this courage into us about what I really am and what's really true. They build up what is true about us. I've shared this before. Mike Benel is one of those guys in our body that every time I see him. He says to me, man, I'm my brother, man, I love you so much. You know what? God is so pleased with who you are, does not need a brother saying that to you. God is so pleased with who you are. God loves you, man. God's tickled with you. God is so fired up about who you are. I need that message every day of my life. It's true. That's what the Scriptures say. That's God's infinite love for us. And man, it's not weird for a brother to say to me, you've got to know how much God just delights in you. I want those kind of friendships to build up what's true about us. Mary Schimman, Mary Schimman says he's with you. Mary Schimman's message is he's with you to me and to Linda and to my family. I'm praying for you and God is assuring me no matter what you go through, no matter what spiritual attack comes on your family pastor, no matter what you're feeling right now, no matter how physically somebody might sick or be sick or you might be facing these challenges, he's with you. God is with you. He is over your house and he is in your rooms and he is in your relationship and God is carrying you. Isn't that a great message to be reminded of? It's true. And Dobkins, man, my friend Jeff Dobkins, run with him a couple of times a month. Jeff Dobkins, this is what we do. We go for a four, five or six or seven mile run and the whole time on this run, my brother here in the front row tells me, you know what, dude, you're kicking, you kicktail for Jesus. Your gifts strengthen me. Your gifts build up our church. You're a gift to our church and our church is a gift to the county because of that. This brother just speaks into me. Can we hang out some more, you know, power there is and that kind of a friendship? Because what's true is that God has called me and gifted me and is using me and I just see the hard stuff, I forget. True friendships give us courage to live into our true identity and last true friendships give us courage to live out our purpose faithfully. True friendships give us courage to live out our purpose faithfully. This is where a friend says to us, I've walked with you, I've seen God move, I've seen you hear God, I've heard your heart, I know what you value, that you take courage and you stand up and you man up and you live it out because God will honor that and God will come through and use you. You live what God has put in your heart to do, friends, who do we have friends that live that way with us, that say this is what I've heard you say, now you don't give up. You have a heart for this, now you go pursue that heart to do that. God's going to use you. We'll have victory, this brother or sister says. God wants to do his thing, don't give up. Do you have a friend who encourages you to live out your mission and your purpose when you get tired and when you don't see results and when you wonder if God ever spoke to you in the first place? You know what Dave and Terry are going to need? Multiple multiple times. It's a very sweet and cute story with all dressed up and Bella's just killer, she just kills my heart, doesn't she? Up here, kiss my boo-boos, she's a sweetest little thing. You read between the lines, for adopted kids is not an easy life, right? They're going to forget that they heard God, they were going to forget that this was a good idea, they were going to forget that the Holy Spirit said, this is going to wreck you but I want you to do it and I will be with you. They're going to forget that friends, do you see the illustration? They need people to come along and remind them, give them courage that they can live out their mission faithfully. They're going to need that or they're going to crash and burn. Are you that kind of person for somebody? Do you have that kind of person in your life? Mike Schimmens, that guy from me, Mike Schimmens, one of those friends from me, Mike Schimmens knows what I want to be as a dad and he leans into that in every conversation we have. He knows what I want to be with my wife and he leans into that conversation. And then he has the guts to say to me, and how does this attitude or this action jive with what it is you say you want to be and what God's put on your heart, how does that add up, my friend? Do friendships give us courage? True love, God type love friendships give us courage. So the simple questions I leave you with are, are you that kind of friend? Are you that kind of friend or do you need to be? And the second question is, and have you opened your life for other people to be that kind of a friend to you? Who do you want to be and what kind of life do you want to live with relationship and with respect to these kinds of love relationships? My friends, to love like God does and to find courage and to give courage is the call of the scriptures on our fellowship together. So as I'm done here, what's one step that you can make this week? I mean, maybe even as we talked, somebody came to mind where you said it's weird, but I wish I could just take the initiative and step into that friendship. We have a word for it with the guys, it's weird, we call it a bromance, it's so weird. Because it feels so uncomfortable and typical American bowling alone masculinity to say, there's something in your life that I need to be around and I need you to love and encourage me. Will you be my friend? It feels weird to do that, because I don't know if it feels weird to everybody because we live so isolated, maybe it feels weird to women too. But what's one step that you can take, start a bromance, start a sisterance. You can say to yourself, you know what, I think good things about some of my friends, but I don't really, not that intentional. Maybe I need to just write one note this week, one note a day, an email, we can just write a note now, you can write one a day, Katie Kearns, love your guests for the Lord, everybody around you is strengthened by what you bring, thank you. One thing, for you to be more of a lover of those relationships in your circle and or for you to receive that from somebody so that you can live life with these kinds of rich relationships. Let me pray for you and then we'll be done. Our Father in Heaven, we love, we love being in the body of Christ, we love being challenged by these realities. We don't love following through because sometimes it's hard, but God by your grace would you speak to us today? What's one thing I can do? What's two things? Something big I can do because I don't want to live alone and I don't want to live unattached and I don't want to live not giving courage to somebody and I need them. God heighten our vision and our awareness and lead us to these kinds of friendships, lead us to the actions that will promote them. This will be for your glory, God. Our lives live like this, live like you and love the world like you do. Come and do that work in us. We pray in the name of Christ. Amen. Amen.