Well, I hope y'all have had a good weekend. The rain scared us. The sun is back out. And as we're getting ready for summer, we can already feel it coming.
That's one of the joys of living in Louisiana. When I was a kid, I loved the summer, because the summer meant that I got to spend time with my best friend. When you're a kid, that whole language of best friend is really important, right? It's a guy, like we kind of teamed up, like just have our little buddy.
And I remember when I was seven years old, my best friend, he lived in my neighborhood, went to church together, his name was Randy Nick. I did everything with Randy. He went two blocks behind me. Randy told me how to ride a bicycle, because that was that weird kid who took a long time to do that.
He was adventurous. He would climb trees. And I remember one time we were playing the drainage ditch next to my house. We had like an eight foot deep drainage ditch in our front yard.
It's like, keep it country. And I remember like a water moccasin was coming at us. I remember Randy, like, like, through a stick at it. And when I was seven, eight years old, I thought that was like, oh man, this guy's awesome.
I love Randy Nick. He was my buddy. He's my best friend. You know, that kind of keeps on going with the best part about that best friend relationship in the summer.
I remember every morning was either waiting for him to make that call or me making that call. And you ride your bike down to their house and you knock in the front door and you say, can Randy come play? You remember that? Can someone still come play?
OK. When I still do that now, like the adult version of come play, my neighborhood is like 200 yards away. I got a lot of friends living in my neighborhood. And the adult version is like 839.
It's in a text message, what you doing? It still happens. I remember when I was a kid, my dad and my dad's a pastor. And back then, he was the youth minister.
And the senior pastor of the church was my dad's best friend. And we moved like a block away from Big John. That's where big guy, Big John. And Big John would call like one or two nights a week, like at 7.45, eight o'clock.
And he's Dave there. And my mom's put her at, remember this back before we had holds on the phone? She put her hand over the receiver. David, Big John wants to know if you can come play.
We have that language. We're doing our best friends. It doesn't change. And I remember, I thought about this week, and I tried to put a timeline together.
And so long ago, I can't. But when I was about 4th grade or so, David, Randy moved to Atlanta, Georgia. Like, didn't seem again. Like, when you're a kid, and I move neighborhoods around the same time, I can't figure out.
And remember, who moved first? But I know, like a summer after third grade, I lost my best friend. Like, when you're a kid, proximity is a big deal. And I remember in sixth grade, it was vacation Bible school in the summer.
And Randy was coming back to say, it was a grandma for a month. And my mom told me, Randy's going to be the vacation Bible school. And I was just stoked, because I needed the best friend that point in time. Like, sixth grade was really awkward.
I was like, I'm not going to nerdy, spastic kid. I needed my buddy. And I remember, I walked in the classroom, and I saw him there. And I was just like, so excited.
I feel like I need to tell him, like, three years worth of stuff. And I go to sit down next to him, and what I'm doing. And the teacher starts calling the roll, and she says, David, Nick. And he raised his hand and said, here.
And I interrupted him. And he said, no, no, his name's Randy. And he's like, no, no, no. I go by David now.
Randy's a kid's name. I just deflated. Because I was like, hey, I kind of felt ashamed a little bit. I got a hand slapped by my best friend.
But also realized I didn't know him anymore. Been three years since I'd seen him. I hadn't talked to him. I had not had contact with him.
Well, that's not actually one Facebook to see if David is on Facebook. And I found him. And I almost sent him a friend request. But I decided not to.
Because I realized, like, well, this guy even remember me. I've not talked to him in almost 30 years now. But the contact was not there. And that's what we're going to talk about this morning.
We're talking about friendship. We're going to talk about contact. Because true life needs true contact. It's an important thing.
And as we've been in this series called Status Update and talk about relationships in the digital world, there's a couple places we could go this morning with some. A lot of people loved it to cry, social media, saying that it's ruined friendship. I don't think that's the case. We all have those friends that we have not seen in ages, that we find to get on Facebook.
Meredith and I had a funeral in the family a couple of weeks ago. And it was her uncle who died. And his last eight years of his life, he reconnected with Meredith Ant. It was his high school sweetheart.
He got far from Facebook and found her on Facebook. My best friend Joshua lives in Georgia. I see him once a year. We talk on the phone all the time.
But every single time we get together, we automatically can pick back up with each other. Because the relationship, we know what's going on because of Facebook, Instagram, and all that kind of stuff. OK, so there's some bad parts to it. We can talk about that bad.
There's also parts that are good. And so this morning what we're going to do is we're going to get around the negative conversation. So many people talk about this. And we're just going to build up a biblical view of friendship.
And we're going to see what does it like to be in relationship with people. And also, what does it look like to have relationships? Like deep, good relationships with people. When they might live a long way away.
So let's open our Bibles up. We're going to be in a book of Philippians today. Philippians was a letter that a guy named Paul wrote. And Paul was a missionary.
And he started churches. And one of the churches he started was in a town called Philippi. And Paul had moved there. It started as his church.
He had invested and loved these people for several years. And he went on down the road to keep on doing what he did. He ended up in jail for Jesus. Is that a bumper sticker, maybe?
Well, he was arrested because of his faith. And he ultimately died for his faith. But while Paul lived in Rome, in prison, he would write letters to all these people he cared about. And most of these letters, Paul wrote over a third of the New Testament.
And they're all letters he wrote to his friends who lived in a long distance way. So 2,000 years ago, we're going to read about the witness of friendship that stretches across geographical boundaries. And so Philippians, one, three, you can read it on your Bible. You can read it on the screen ahead.
Or if you have the Bible app on your phone, you're more than welcome to do that. But this is what Paul says. Every time I think of you, I give thanks to my God. Whenever I pray, I make my request for all of you with joy for you have been part of my, or have you been my partners and spreading the good news about Christ from the time you first heard it until now.
I'm certain that God who began the good work within you will continue his work until it is finally finished when Jesus Christ returns. So it's right that I should feel as I do about you for you have a special place in my heart. You share with me the special favor of God, both in my imprisonment and in defending and confirming the truth of the good news. God knows how much I love you and long for you with all the tender compassion of Christ Jesus.
And so I pray that your love will overflow more and more and that you will keep on growing and knowledge and understanding. I want you to understand what really matters, so that you may live pure and blameless lives until the day of Christ's return. May you always be filled with the fruit of your salvation, the righteous character produced in your life by Jesus Christ. For this will bring much glory and praise to God.
So there's three things that we're going to look at this passage and talk about friendship this morning. And the first one is this, that friendship means mutual partnership. It's a different way than the world will talk about friendship. Friendship means mutual partnership.
If we dig down in verse 1, 5, this tiny little word tells us so much. And it says, for you have been my partners in spreading the good news about Christ from the time you first heard it until now. Let's sing with the relationships we have. This is where a lot of times our lines get blurred.
There's such a thing as a connection and there's such a thing as a friend. And our world now, because of the plethora of requests, the friend request we take in, and the people that we know, we have a hard time discerning between those two. And connections are great, and friends are great. They're different relationships.
Connections are a one-sided relationship. We all have connections. We pass business cards out. We meet people.
We might know people because our kids play on the same sport team with them. We know them from an email address at work, especially as companies get bigger and bigger in places spread out across the country. We might have emailed with somebody 200 times and have never met them before. Connections can be two people that really enjoy doing something together.
The only time you see them is when they're maybe fishing together. It might be that the relationship you might have with the person that you see at a grocery store or at the gas station, that's a connection. Connections are fun. But friendship is based off of this mutual partnership.
It's based on the same goals, the same loves, the same desires. Friends want their friends' lives to be awesome. Just plain and simple. We're willing to do things for the sake of our friends, because we love them and because we care about them.
Friends challenge us. Think about that. So right now Meredith and I are on a 21 day sugar detox. It's miserable.
It's absolutely worth it. But it's miserable. My friend, Kade Reynolds, Kade, goes to church here. He's on a work trip this weekend.
So I walk into the coaching teaching session and octane fitness down the road the first time before we get into this. And I immediately felt awkward. Because when the big guy walks into the room full of skinny people, I looked at Meredith and I said, I'm not wearing near enough Lycra to fit in right now. And so we're sitting there and we're all doing our pow-wow.
And Kade told me, I'm going to do this because you need to do this. I'm going to keep it together accountable. That sort of thing. That's the relationship I have with Kade.
So he's there talking and he says it kind of loud and then Jessica's wife's. Well, here's 4 chat too. And I love this sport. Friends do.
And then the whole room, oh, we're here for your chat. I mean, it's a total stranger. It's like, OK, great. The one fat guy here.
Thanks, y'all. But friends challenge each other. Friends want what's best for the other person. My relationship with my friend, I see once a year, is great.
Because we're consistently keeping up with each other. It's that person you can tell anything. That person that you trust to get into your business, wants somebody to get into your business. I think about that.
You don't get into a business connections business, do you? You don't dig deep into the cashier at the grocery store's life. No, we've got to have relationships that do that. Friendship is about a mutual relationship, a mutual partnership.
It's a different level of things. We go into Psalm 2514. It's the kind of scary verse at first. But it opens things up.
This is what it says. The Lord is a friend of those who fear him. He teaches them his covenant. OK, last month we did a series on fear.
We talked about what fear is. And I understand that in the Bible, what fear really is is awareness. It's when you understand something's full capability and you respect it. So the Lord is a friend to those who are aware of him, who know who he is, who know what he is, knows what he is doing.
And because of our friendship with God, I think about that. God wants to be our friend. That's the way that God consistently offers himself to us, a friend. But because the Lord knows us, he made us a friend, and we're aware of him.
He teaches us his covenant. That's a fancy word. It means a holy partnership. Because of our relationship with God, he shares with us his strategic vision for this world.
That might be an easier way for us to understand it. So friendship means mutual relationship. The second thing is that friends meet face to face. OK, now this is where a lot of people get into a geographical argument about friends and social and be like, well, you never see them.
They're not a real friend. So Exodus 35, this is what it says. Inside the 10 of meeting, the Lord would speak to Moses face to face is one speaks to a friend. After Moses returned to the camp, but the young man who assisted him, Joshua Son of Nun, would remain behind the 10 of meeting.
The Lord would speak to Moses face to face as one speaks to a friend. Now, at first what this looks like is that our friendship relationship means we have to be right in front of that person. OK? An old testament especially, the idea of someone's face was completely different from ours.
It wasn't just a picture so you would recognize them. But they believed that the face was the gateway to the heart of someone, what their passions were, who they truly were, the things that they cared about, like to see someone in a face to face way, was much bigger than just actually seeing them. We can read this as instead, it's like inside the tent of being the Lord would speak to Moses, relationship to relationship, or truth to truth, or purpose to purpose. This one speaks to a friend.
Early writers described friendships and relationships as the knitting of the soul, that friends are the person that we are in lockstep with for our passions and for our dreams and for our goals and for our troubles and our pains in life. And when we had that relationship, we were both confronting those same things at the same time to each other. It's much deeper than just physically being able to see somebody, that in our friendship that we are locking arms with the same reality of life, the same truths of life, and we are going through this together. It's a deep, deep relationship.
I think about this, the easiest way to understand this, and I had to work really hard, something on the Mollie Masters, Mollie works at the church. We hired Mollie back in November. Mollie's 22, turned 22 a couple of months ago. And Mollie made fun of me for months because I was attempting to use the term squad goals.
It took me a long time to be. I remember I said it one time, and I remember you finally got it checked. I felt like an old man. OK, let's phrase it, I tell you what's with popularized, hashtag squad goals.
Am I age? I'm from the idea of an entourage. OK? But this is what happens when a group of people who share similar goals and visions and dreams and purposes and reality that deeply love and care for each other when this relationship, whether it be two, three, four, five, or six people, is that it's absolute peak, that they are completely resonating together with what they want out of life.
It's meaning face to face. Confronting with just those realities right there, true life. It means true contact. And that means that we have to be in a face to face relationship with people sharing those levels of things.
The third thing that we realize is that friends they connected to a shared focus. Friends they connected to a shared focus. And John, chapter 15, this is the last night that Jesus was with his disciples. And there's two or three chapters of the things that he shares.
And they're all just beautiful and deep. Take the time one afternoon and read John 14 through 16. This is what says in John 15. So there's no greater love than to lay down one's life for one's friends.
You were my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you slaves because a master doesn't confide in the slaves. Now you're my friends. Since I have told you everything the father told me.
Just think about that. And the night that Jesus is the middle of this completely different conversation with disciples and he's ever been. And they're starting to really become aware of what's actually going on. And here's you saying, you're my friends now.
Our relationship is changing. Talk about one side of relationships. So whether your translation might say a servant, might say a slave, or the master language. This is the one side.
It's one person telling somebody else what to do. Does anybody like relationship for someone who's just consistently telling you what to do? Nobody likes those. That's not a friendship.
But friendship means that you're sharing in what's going on. You're sharing in the mission, in the dreams, and the vision, and the values of what life is like. One of the best illustrations I've ever seen of just these two verses is with a classic movie Napoleon Dynamite. Greater love has no one in this and someone who would lay down their life for their friend.
Think about that dancing? There's a picture in our mind. Like if Pedro's tanking, running for a student council president, they don't know that to come up with a skit. And the best word I can use to describe this guy is doofy.
And here he comes and says, I'll take care of it. Don't worry about it. I will risk everything for you. And he can put you turn the situation around.
Greater love has no one in this. And someone who would lay down their life for their friend. And Jesus did that physically and literally. But each of us have situations where we can say to our friends, I'll take care of it.
Don't worry about it, because we want the same thing. It's a beautiful picture of friendship. The fact that God wants to be friends with us. That this gives us a much bigger vision of what friendship looks like in the world.
Think about the power of what that is when we live, those relationships of intentionality with people. You know which patience that could mean? Think how much care it could mean? It could change everything.
And also once we understand it and see this bigger vision, it helps us process the folks who do kind of have a janky relationship or a janky idea of friendship. It's all right. We rise our jobs to be intentional with them, to lead them to a bigger vision of what friendship actually looks like. So there's two things that we do about this.
One of them is hyper practical. And the other one is just us dreaming and pouring into people. So the first one is this. What relationships do you need to define?
When I was younger and I was single and all my friends were single, we had this idea of something called a DTR. You don't want to define the relationship or define the terms of the relationship. It's not about a DTR. This is about you realizing what connections do you have that are connections and they're going to always be connections?
Or what connections do you have that you need to move into the realm of friendship? What are the friendships that you might have that need work? I always often find that dealing with situations when you just accept what is just going to be there, it'll make things incredibly different. So that's the first thing, what relationships do you need to define?
That might help us with some heartbreak or with some drama. So we had those people that we know were just toxic. And we have to be around them and it can frustrate us to death. And sometimes we might just have to win except the fact that this person's going to be toxic until Jesus intervenes.
And so I'm just going to prepare and wait for that. Because I'm not Jesus, I'm not Jesus, Jesus Jesus. The second thing is this, we need to think about what relationships do you need to refine? OK, who are the people that you need to be in deeper friendship with?
Who are the people that you might tell that just really could use a friend? I mean, think just the power of just knowing you have a friend of what that can do to you. Some of us are wealthy with friends and some of us are not. So what are the relationships that you need to be intentional about?
Who are the people that you need to be intentional about? And then think also about this, like, who matters to you? And who do you need to tell that to? It means a lot sometimes when you tell someone, you tell someone, I care about you and you matter to me and I just want you to know that.
Think about how that can lead us to places of comfort and ease anxiety and just change things in our life. We know who's in our corner. That's a huge thing. So I'm actually going to help you do this today.
When you leave church, we've already taken a note cards and we've already stamped them and they're already in an envelope for you. And you can grab one of those from the ushers on the way out of church. But I just want to, for you to think about that. What relationships do you need to refine and take advantage of just that because just writing a simple note can do amazing things in that direction.
So once we've talked and we've thought and we've realized just the depth of what friendship means to God's people. I want to read a couple more verses from Philippians for you. And it's just one non-serile level. We've already read them once, it's one.
But this is what it says. I pray that your love would overflow more and more and that you will keep on growing and knowledge and understanding for I want you to understand what really matters so that you may live pure and blameless lives until the day of Christ's return. May you always be filled with the fruit of your salvation, the righteous character produced in your life by Jesus Christ. For this will bring much glory and praise to God.
And true life means true contact. And that means us warning was absolutely best for our friends. And one was absolutely best for the people who are not our friends yet. My dad to this day, whenever he writes someone a note, the bottom underneath his name, he just signs Philippians 1, 3.
I've seen him do that my entire life. Never thought anything about it until I got into college. He wrote me a note one day. And I've seen hundreds of his notes.
I was right down there at the bottom, Philippians 1, 3. Just powerful, powerful words. And it says, every time I think of you, I give thanks to God. And it's not not the best posture of friendship that we have, that the people who are our friends, we realize how worthwhile they are and how much a gift they are.
That our first response is, I'm going to thank God for the relationship I have with you. And God wants to be our friend. And our call simply is to have these relationships of truth, of contact, of shared passions and shared partnerships and shared relationships. It's a simple thing, but it's also a complex thing.
Let's pray. Geezely, thank you for being our friend first. Scripture says that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. While we were still sinners, you just had friendship with us.
God, not a one-sided relationship, but a shared relationship. It's still something tough for us to comprehend. For some of us, that friendship leads us to different places. For some of us, we're well aware of you're our friend and we've been walking with you for a long time.
For others of us, we're in a tough patch. And understanding you as a friend right now is rough, because we don't understand anybody as a friend right now. So God, pray for you to pour love and grace and cheer out on us, to realize the power of seeing you as a friend first. And where there's others of us that have never seen you as a friend.
And the idea simply is just too big to handle. But when we pray for the people who are taking those first steps with Jesus, that your love and grace carries and washes over us, much bigger than we can ever imagine. You're God's big enough for all of our needs. We pray this morning to understand your friendship and understand your call to friendship and the content.
And say your name and pray. Amen.