Category: Connect!

(This message was delivered on February 25, 2018 by Pastor Dave Morehouse at the Allison Campus of The Journey Church)

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Let me begin with with reading a simple description of the early church – how they related together.

Acts 2:42 They devoted themselves to the teaching of the apostles, the life together, the common meal, and the prayers.

Brent – our teaching pastor has said if we were to translate this into our modern church situation we would say:

They devoted themselves:
To following the bible
To the life together,
To worship & the Lord’s Supper
And to the prayers.

To simplify this passage for the moment I want you to zero into on the phrase “they devoted themselves…to the life together.

Today I want us to chew on this idea – The life together. This is important as consider how to navigate relationships as God intends… especially within the church community

What goes through your mind when you come think of church? When you think of all the sorts of people who show up for a service –  people who may be similar or very different from you – how do you think about relating to them?

I like how the famous C.S.Lewis responded to this question – from his book God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics, pg. 61-62

He says, “when I first became a Christian, I thought that I could do it on my own, by retiring to my rooms and reading theology…”

He further discovered “how it is extraordinary how inconvenient to your family it becomes for you to get up early to go to Church. It doesn’t matter so much if you get up early for anything else, but if you get up early to go to Church it’s very selfish of you and you upset the house.”

But as C.S.Lewis attended he went on to make this observation – “I disliked very much their hymns, which I considered to be fifth-rate poems set to sixth-rate music. But as I went on I saw the great merit of it. I came up against different people of quite different outlooks and different education, and then gradually my conceit just began peeling off.”

I realized that the hymns were, nevertheless, being sung with devotion and benefit by an old saint in elastic-side – (rubber) boots in the opposite pew, and then you realize that you aren’t fit to clean those boots. It gets you out of your solitary conceit.’”

LET’S MAKE A DEAL

Here is my observation. A lot of us might have the desire to treat each other at church the way we treat each other when we go to the grocery store.

We are all there to get something for our spiritual benefit. We recognize others might want the same thing so we are polite, greet each other with a nod and go on with our spiritual shopping.

We are calling this way of relating to church – Let’s Make a Deal. It is simply a transactional relationship. We come into a church community with a couple of simple questions:

• Does it serve me?
• What will it cost me?

Those questions make sense in so many relationships I have with others. I go to a dance class, I pay my fee. The instructor meets my need by teaching me how to line dance – if I don’t like how he/she is teaching me, or I find the cost too much…no big deal. I leave and go looking for my next dance class.

There is nothing wrong with transactional relationships. This is so deep within the culture we live. The profound difficulty is when we try to treat church like our spiritual grocery store – where I think it is primarily about serving me and the cost is not too much.

DEVOTED TO THE LIFE TOGETHER

Why would I want to do life together with people who come to church?

We are calling the relationships in church – sacred connections. I am convinced we will never really be devoted to the life together until we grasp what makes our connections sacred.

Our connections are sacred because

Christ Is Our Foundation

For no one can lay any foundation other than the one we already have—Jesus Christ. (1 Corinthians 3:11, NLT)

There is a holy mystery of the church – it is the dwelling place of God. The invisible Christ is the basis of of this community. People who have by faith have opened their hearts to Jesus are now bound together –  not by genetic DNA but by DNA of Christ.

Because Jesus is the foundation of our He defines our life together.

The foundation of Jesus Christ moves us from a marred identity to a new identity – we are a new creation. Because of the cross of Christ we who once were alienated from God are now reconciled. We who once were condemned are now forgiven. Once rejected are now accepted. At a chapel service in India the person starting the service said – “Welcome royalty – kings and queens of God’s kingdom!”. Therefore as we do the life together we treat one another with a profound honour. We are brothers and sisters in God’s family, we are the forgiven ones.

The foundation of Jesus Christ let us see things as they really are – what is fundamental and ultimate reality. When we look at the world’s ills it helps us understand the heart of the human condition. Therefore as we do life together we will focus on seeking to live out the things really matter – we will encourage one another to serve, to give, thirst for justice, to show mercy, work for peace, sharing the hope of Christ.

The foundation of Jesus Christ tells us what we value in this life – that all we say and do  – we think, act and be like Christ. Therefore we as we do the life together we worship and love God, we love others, we love one another with a joy, humility and thankfulness.

The bible says there will come a day when every knee shall bow before the name of Jesus and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. and acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord. The church already is ahead of the curve – because Jesus is our foundation – it changes everything about our connection with one another – we together know the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

“So welcome kings and queens of God’s kingdom..welcome!”

The Divisions of the World don’t Count

Now devoted to the life together also has a hard negative implication. Our sacred connection in Christ means the divisions of the world don’t count.

I just got back from India…with World Vision. They have work among some of the poorest of the poor children and families. We had the privilege of visiting them and seeing the work that is providing health, education, safety from violence, and hope.

In those travels I discovered that India still deeply struggles with their caste system. The caste system divides Hindus into four main categories – . Many believe that the groups originated from Brahma, the Hindu God of creation. One group came from the head, one from the arms, one from the thighs and one from the feet. But there is a fifth category called Dalits or the untouchables.

Most of the poor you see are in India are Dalits. And that is who World Vision works with…Go ahead and look up more  – but the point is there are divisions in the world. We experience them too.

But look what Paul says in Galatians 3:28,

There is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male and female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3:28, NLT)

The social divisions that exist in society are broken down in Christ and we are equal before God — saved by grace through faith.  We are children of God.  That is our primary status and every other status we are given in the world — beautiful, wealthy, intelligent or the insults ugly, poor, stupid — all of these with away when the God’s shout is: “This is my child.”  

Let me quote Brent’s observation – The sacred connections God is creating between his children knocks down the world’s divisions and pulls us together. The segregated life may be a reality in our world but is not the Life Together.

Therefore as we do the life together let us open our lives and homes to all – not letting our status or stash define us – but rather our sacred connection in Christ.

We Are the Body

He makes the whole body fit together perfectly. As each part does its own special work, it helps the other parts grow, so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love. (Ephesians 4:16, NLT)

One last implication of our sacred connection is that is how faith in Christ is lived out. The experience of following Christ though it is a individual decision – it is meant to be lived out in community. We are not separate chess pieces – rather we are a spiritual body that is knit together.

We are the body of Christ. The funny thing about parts of the body is that they are deeply connected not loosely associated. Anytime we remove part of the body it is a big deal. When you remove yourself from the body it is a big deal.

A healthy body is deeply connected – fitting together perfectly. If a body part starts to become detached – that is a matter of serious concern. Detached retina, a valve is detached from our heart, our hip gets detached from our leg – it affects the whole body.

But when everything is healthy and deeply connected the body can do amazing things – the Olympic athletes prove that over and over. It is a wonder and amazing to watch. Virtue and Moir winning gold in dance competition of skating was incredible!

When we are deeply connected as the body of Christ amazing things happen as well – lives get changed, God’s presence, love and truth is experienced, people find hope and healing through the Body life of Christ.  

We today are seeing people come to faith in Christ – don’t you think for a minute that is all because of a single individual – it is the body of Christ working together in a healthy way – each part did its special work – God is glorified and all heaven rejoices and people find hope and eternal life.

Conclusion

When people come to church – people are simply wanting deep in their hearts to say – can I meet God?

• So we gather to hear teaching of the bible –
• we pray –
• we remember the Lord’s sacrifice for our sins as we break bread and drink the cup.  

Everyone of us these 3 practices are good, right and needed. But just like a four legged table we must have one other spiritual practise in our life – doing life together.

But I don’t want to – my family matters, my work matters, my buddies at the club matters – beside these people are so not like me –

May we ask God to do one thing in our lives – fill our hearts with Christ-like love. The supreme mark of the life of Jesus Christ within a Christian is love.  

Jesus speaks to us all:

This is my commandment: Love each other in the same way I have loved you. (John 15:12, NLT)

This is the unifying force that helps us as the church to carry out its purposes in the world. This is our one strategy – our one weapon our one force our one agenda. This love will peel away our conceit toward others. This love will be tenderhearted and forgiving. This love will lead us to live holy lives, seek God’s glory and be a witness to Christ.

This love will make our connections sacred. We will experience God more deeply as we devote ourselves to a common life in Christ – where we are present – where we give and encourage, teach and help – where we will have to practise patience, grace and forgiveness…but ultimately these sacred connections will grow great souls and we are the church as God intended…

 

[This message was delivered by Pastor Brent at River of Life Church]

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“Happy marriages are based on deep friendship…” (John Gottman)

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Introduction

Last week we began a new series called Connect.  We want to look at building deep relationships in the way that God intended.  We started our series by looking at Friendship and this week we are going to move into the area of Marriage.  I want to say up front that marriage is always a topic that is difficult to speak on because no one really has a perfect marriage. But that gives me confidence that because we are imperfect, every marriage can thus improve.

If you’re here today and you’re not married, I want to say two things. One day you might be, so you can still learn something.  More significantly though, marriage is used by Paul as a symbol of Christ’s relationship with the church and as you know, the ‘church’ is the people — you and me.  The more we learn about God’s view of marriage, the more we learn about the kind of relationship he wants to have with us — corporately and individually.  So whenever you hear a marriage sermon — look for the nuggets that will help you build your character and look at it as an opportunity to learn more about central image God uses for his relationship with us as a church.  

The first thing we need to ask in our particular culture is simply:

Why Marriage?

“A man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one.” (Ephesians 5:31, NLT)

Today more and more people are choosing to not get married. To simply cohabitate and hope it works out.  I understand the simplicity of this choice.  It avoids all the problems of dealing with family and wedding planning.  It saves a lot of money. The average wedding today could be a good down payment on a house.  All of these are great supporting arguments but the main reason, the heart of the problem with marriage for many people is that there is no guarantee that the relationship will work.  People have been pummelled into a stuper watching marriage after marriage fail all around them.  Often it was their parents marriage – either it failed in divorce or just failed while they continued on together.  I think we have all see that.  For many all of this adds up to just living together to test the waters.  

But here is the big problem.  It doesn’t really test the waters. It’s like when someone who has a puppy says to a new parent: “having a puppy is the basically the same as having a baby.”  Only people who have never had a baby could agree to that comment.  There are lot of similarities — but it is really not the same and many levels.    

Future Love

…she is your partner, the wife of your marriage covenant. (Malachi 2:14b, NIV)

I want to explain the biggest difference between living together and marriage from a biblical point of view.  God created us in a certain way and then gave us some guidelines to live by so that we could live life abundantly — not miserable or unfulfilled.  This includes marriage. 

The first thing different about cohabitation and marriage is simply this, cohabitation is all about what I know today — I love you right now and I want to be with you right now.  Marriage is a certainly based on my love today but it is also a promise about future love.  That I will demonstrate love toward my beloved in the yet unknown future.  

 Tim Keller says it this way in his book, The meaning of Marriage:

In so many cases, when one person says to another, “I love you, but let’s not ruin it by getting married,” that person really means, “I don’t love you enough to close off all my options. I don’t love you enough to give myself to you that thoroughly.” To say, “I don’t need a piece of paper to love you” is basically to say, “My love for you has not reached the marriage level.” (Keller, p. 70)

That sounds a bit harsh, but something true resonates in me when Keller says: “I don’t love you enough not to keep my options open”.  

In the Bible, the commitment of marriage is called a covenant.  It’s more than a promise, it is promise with consequences.  In the ancient times we read Abraham walking into a spot that had a chopped up animal scattered around him and God met him there and “cut a covenant” with Abraham. The scene is one of a self-imprecation.  It’s as if the covenant-maker were saying “may I be as this animal if I break my promise”.  

Needless to say, we don’t do that kind of thing now, but this is the background for the biblical idea of covenant. It basically is saying “I hope bad things happen to me if I don’t keep my word.”  It’s reciprocal, of course.  We see that throughout Israel’s history when they break their covenant with God. When that happens they need to be reconciled to God.  They need to turn away from the things they were doing and act in a way that showed they loved God before anything else.

This is the kind of promise that creates a strong foundation to build a relationship.  It’s not everything.  Lots of people have made those promises and not followed through.  But it starts with a promise.  

I wonder what God would have said if after a few miles on his journey and still with no heir, Abraham said to God: “I wish I never covenanted with you.”  The thing is, we don’t have to say it out loud. We just have to live it.

Marriage starts with a promise but it doesn’t end there.  Bob Goff likes to say: “Love Does” but it also grows.  The Greek had four words to describe different kinds of love ranging from desire, friendship, affection, and sacrificial love.  We always have these four loves in us — but we all know in the vast majority of cases, it gets started with desire for each other. But if it just stayed there, the relationship will fail.  It was psychologist John Gottman who said: ““Happy marriages are based on deep friendship…” and this is true.  Desire is important but the other loves are what keeps things getting better and deeper.  After a while, you can’t even imagine life without the other.

The Covenant commitment is the fertile soil that allows trust and friendship to take root and for the sacrificial love — Agape love — to grow and bear fruit in our marriages.  It starts with a promise, but it ends with an entanglement of identity and an understanding of the deepest kind of love. When another person knows you completely — warts and all — and loves you still and freely gives themselves to you.  

Some people will say that marriage is just a piece of paper — but that is just not accurate.  It is a piece of paper that holds a binding promise about an unknown future.  A promise of future love.  It won’t be the same combination of four Greek loves – ερος, φιλος, στοργη, & αγαπη — and we celebrate that the quality and essence of that love will be matured and even more wonderful — but it is a promise just the same.

One of the things that Paul says about Marriage that I think anyone who is married can readily agree with is that it is a mystery.  The reason why it it is compared to God’s relationship to the church, the depth of meaning that brings to our human relationships. The deep-meaning of marriage is indeed a mystery.  What is not a mystery is what we must do to create healthy loving marriages.  John Gottman wrote a book a few years ago called The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work.  He took the view that he wanted to study happy marriages to understand what they had in common rather than study bad marriages to see what is wrong.  His idea was that it is better to do what is right than to avoid doing what is wrong. You can avoid the worst mistakes of a bad relationship and still have a bad relationship.  But if you employ the principles of a happy marriage — you can improve your time together and increase your possibilities for happiness.

You can buy his book to get the full scoop — and I would highly recommend everyone who is married to read it.  But I just want to compact them together and give a very brief practical ideas to make marriage stronger and happier.

Puzzle Pieces

This is a huge mystery, and I don’t pretend to understand it all. What is clearest to me is the way Christ treats the church. And this provides a good picture of how each husband is to treat his wife, loving himself in loving her, and how each wife is to honor her husband. (Ephesians 5:32, 33, The Message)

 

• Kɴᴏᴡ Eᴀᴄʜ Oᴛʜᴇʀ

 

The first thing is to know each other.  What I mean by this is that you need to create mental space for your beloved.

1. What is the favourite colour?  
2. Who is their best friend?  
3. What is their happiest childhood memory?
4. What is their favourite movie?
5. What is the favourite song?
6. Who at their work is driving them crazy right now?  
7. What music are they listening to right now?

Gottman has a lot more questions and in the book he has a 20 Questions game to play with your spouse to learn more about them.  More importantly, the number one key for making conversation with a stranger, he says is also important for relationship building in marriage.  What is that key?  Ask open ended questions.  Don’t ask questions that have a yes or no answer.  Ask questions that allow the other person to talk.  Talk and listen.  Know each other.  Don’t stop learning.  

As you learn more about each other, think of the ways you admire and are inspired by your spouse.  Everyone who has been married for more than 5 minutes can list the annoying things.  But fixating on that is a killer.  Instead focus on areas of appreciation and admiration.  The other things will come naturally 🙂  

When you keep those positives close to your heart, your appreciation comes through in your words and mostly in your tone because your heart is moved and you actually get to a place where you can put your own pride on hold and allow that person to influence your decisions and the way you look at things.   

 

• Dᴇᴀʟ Wɪᴛʜ Iᴛ

 

If the first thing is to know each other, the second is to deal with problems that can be fixed.  There are a lot of things in any relationship that need to be worked on.  But you can work on you.  If leaving the toilet seat up or leaving the cap off the toothpaste is an annoyance — fix it.  If interrupting your spouse bothers them, stop doing that.  Learn what the problems are, how you are contributing to them, and work on that.  Apologize when you don’t get it right and reaffirm your desire to bring them joy. Also, if those thing bother you, you need to ask yourself why it bothers you so much?  What is it about you that makes those things so annoying.

The main thing is to solve the problems that can be solved. For the problems that are deeper, there is a need to allow God’s grace to change us.  We need to be forgivers and practice grace in our lives with each other. There will always be things that annoy us about others.  I want you to start seeing that as a gift because our ultimate goal in life is to be like Christ and that starts by being gracious to one another.  

When we do not live as gracious people — as forgivers — bitterness takes root in us and from that comes contempt.  Contempt is a cancer that destroys a marriage.  It is bitterness on steroids and sadly it is alive and well in marriages everywhere.  It can be fixed if caught early but most of the time it is left to fester and grow and eventually someone quits.

 

• Wᴇ ɴᴏᴛ Mᴇ

 

Finally, we need to allow the entanglement that I spoke of earlier to actually have a place in our thinking.  The idea of “two becoming one” is something we need to practice in our thinking and planning and doing.  Life as a married person is not the same as a single person.  You are an individual and you have dreams and hopes, but you are no longer alone in those.  You need to share those and allow them to be both cherished and challenged — because there is no “me” just “we” when it comes to marriage.  

Each of these practical points are clearly seen in God’s relationship with his church.  We are connected to him and we are called to be of one mind in the church.  We are give guidelines to live our lives and a helper to empower us but we need to do the work.  God isn’t going to do it all himself.  We need to practice spiritual disciplines and exercise our faith so we grow in Christ.  We need to know God more.  We may not be able to ask God open ended questions, but we can hear from him in his word and his Spirit continues to speak to us.  

When we take these practical steps in our marriages we grow together in love and unity and ultimately we experience greater fulfillment in our lives.

Ephesians 5 shows us the deep connection of marriage relationship and God’s relationship with his church.  Let us listen to the opening verse of Ephesians chapter 5:  

Imitate God, therefore, in everything you do, because you are his dear children.  Live a life filled with love, following the example of Christ. He loved us and offered himself as a sacrifice for us, a pleasing aroma to God. (Ephesians 5:1–2, NLT)

Husbands and wives – Imitate God in everything you do, because you are his dear children — live a life filled with love.

 

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[Brent Hudson gave this message to River of Life Church to start the new series]

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Becoming the friend you want to have

Now you are my friends, since I have told you everything the Father told me. (John 15:15b, NLT)

Today we begin a new series called Connect. Over the next five weeks we are going to be looking into building deep relationships in keeping with God’s intentions for us to experience an abundant life in Christ.

As we begin, our first message is on Friendship. Friendship is a good place to start because most other relationships in our lives have trajectories toward friendship. Whether in marriage, or church, or family or where ever, one sign that a relationship is moving forward well is that you consider yourselves friends.

John 15:13-17 is as good a place as any to anchor our thoughts.

In that passage, Jesus calls his disciples friends and he differentiates that from those who are just servants. The word “Lord” has a synonym in our word “Master” and so definition if we call Jesus “Lord” we are calling ourselves servants. But Jesus defines the relationship he had with the 12 as more than that — they were his friends. They were in many ways elevated from disciples and followers to friends but Jesus defined that friendship by doing what he commanded and love one another.

The fact that this narrative exists in the Bible just gives voice to the importance of friendship to Jesus. By extension, friendship is important to us as well. Not just friendship with Jesus which has eternal significance but regular, ordinary friendship is something that we need to look at as a social necessity — God made us to experience friendship.

That is why the starting point of this message is that

Friendship is Important

“Then the Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone.” (Genesis 2:18a, NLT)

Someone may read the Genesis 2.18 passage and say “wait a minute, that’s about marriage” but I would disagree. The solution for the problem was the creation of Eve and the first couple of the biblical narrative, but the problem is simply this: “it is not good for the man to be alone” and the word for “the man” is Adam which in Hebrew means human being or as various Hebrew scholars like to translate: earthling because he was formed ‘hadamah’ from the earth. My point here is that this is not just a male situation or a particular man – Adam – situation — it is an earthling situation. We need companionship. We need friendship.

There have been a great many studies done on the matter of happiness and at this point there is some commonality among the data. One author has state quite clearly that the core factors of happiness have been identified and they do not correlate to having lots of money or it being complicated. They as follows:

1. Number of friends
2. Closeness of friends
3. Closeness of family
4. Good relationships with co-workers & neighbours.

Researchers have gone so far as to say these 4 elements explain over 70% of personal happiness. (Murray & Peacock, 1996). Of course we know now that our very DNA become unravelled by stress and how supportive social networks and compassionate friendships actually reverse the damage (Stress Damage / Sapolsky ).

Whether through psychological surveys, analyzing the telomeres of our DNA, or reading the creation narrative — the evidence is very clear — Friendship is important – even perhaps essential for a happy life.

Of course, this is not complicated and we probably already knew that but that just begs the question — how are we doing in the area of friendship? Most of us get a bit introspective at this point because we may not have that many deep friendships. The reason for this is obvious as well.

Friendship is hard

There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. (John 15:13, NLT)

There is a reason that I chose John 15:13 for this particular point. Look at what underpins Jesus’ friendship with us — sacrifice. In order to have deep friendships — friendships marked by love — it is going to take effort. We will need to work on it.

Dutch sociologist Gerald Mollenhorst has done a study showing that we lose 50% of the people in our social network every 7 years and that our close friends are drawn from these social networks. In other words, half of the people you could develop friendships with will be gone in 7 years because the networks shift. People move, jobs change, a multitude of things that change the intersection of our lives with others. Friendships survive beyond the immediate social network — but his research shows quite conclusively that it is from that social network that friendships develop.

It was in 1970 that futurist Alvin Toffler wrote his famous “Future Shock”. In that book he warned that future generations would need to learn to accept “ad hoc” friendships. Lewis Smedes commented about these friendships that were built on the transient projects and tasks that we share for a while with others: they are not built on human relations, but on job relations.

Smedes writes:

In the mobile life of the future, no job or project will last long for anyone, and friendships based on them will last no longer. As we consume disposable products, we will increasingly have to settle for disposable friendships. (Lewis Smedes)

I think Smedes saw the problem with Toffler’s vision — not that it would be incorrect of the future but that it was troublesome from a human point of view.

Friendships require effort to create and maintain when life is neutral — but Genesis 3 is pretty clear that life is not neutral. Weeds grow and sin abounds in our world. The effort of friendship is not finding people you like it is accepting that the people you like are imperfect humans just like you.

My grandmother told me a wonderful truth when I was a teenager “to have a friend, be a friend” — I thought she was so wise. You can imagine my disappointment when I discovered that her learned wisdom was actually a well-worn aphorism that had become almost cliche. Yet, it was and continues to be — for me — sage advice. Sometimes the cliches are correct.

The primary way to have good friendships is to be a good friend.
Since…

Friendship is biblical

…let’s look at two stories from the Old Testament about Friendship. One that is rarely remembered and other that has become a heroic refrain.

Job’s friends were unwise — they gave bad advice. Yes, that perhaps is a good lesson to learn from the bible — good friends can give bad advice. Job’s friends were just that. Let read a passage from Job:

11 When three of Job’s friends heard of the tragedy he had suffered, they got together and traveled from their homes to comfort and console him. Their names were Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite. 12 When they saw Job from a distance, they scarcely recognized him. Wailing loudly, they tore their robes and threw dust into the air over their heads to show their grief. 13 Then they sat on the ground with him for seven days and nights. No one said a word to Job, for they saw that his suffering was too great for words. (Job 2:11–13, NLT)

That is one of those passages that we almost need to just sit and think about for a minute. When I first read this, I just trudged on ahead in the story. I was a young man with lots of friends and a busy life. Now as an older man, I couldn’t help but think how rare such friends are in life. Walking miles to meet their friend and then sitting with him 7 days and 7 nights not saying a word — just offering their support and presence. The depth of that kind of friendship strikes me now. For all their faults, it is not surprising that Job interceded for his friends later in the story. They clearly loved him. They just were not that wise in their advice. I think we all yearn to have friends like that. Some here are blessed to have friends like this. . .friends who may say unhelpful things — but they love enough to show up to be with you — they are actually there.

The second story is from the book of Ruth where we see the devotion of Ruth to Naomi.

16 But Ruth replied, “Don’t ask me to leave you and turn back. Wherever you go, I will go; wherever you live, I will live. Your people will be my people, and your God will be my God. 17 Wherever you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord punish me severely if I allow anything but death to separate us!” (Ruth 1:16–17, NLT)

This story is often cast in religious tones — I have done this myself — but first and foremost it is a story of friendship between two women. Young and older. Both experiencing hardship and heartbreak and bound together through commitment to one another. They both put the other first. Naomi wanted Ruth to go and find a life not get dragged down by Naomi’s loss and disadvantage. Ruth pleads to stay — she declares her commitment to God and an enduring devotion and friendship to Naomi.

Friendships are important. Friendships are hard. The Bible teaches us that friendship are also profound and life-changing. I want to give three things to do to deepen the friendships in your life. But first let me just say that if you feel you don’t have friends, you need to seek someone out who you would like to be friends with and just ask them to be your friend. If that sounds awkward, that’s because it is. But it worked as kindergarten kids and it works today.

If you want to have a friend, you need to seek one out. You can be a bit more refined in your words — you can start a book club and invite some people you would like to know better. You can ask someone to go for a coffee or to come to your place for tea and conversation. This was all natural when I was a little kid. My mom would have tea or coffee with neighbours on our street all the time. My mom’s best friend to this day is a woman who lived down the street from us when I was five years old. My mom is now in Ontario and her friend lives in the same house in Fredericton. A simple tea-time can lead to a life-time friendship. But even that requires some effort.  Here are three things to remember about being a good friend:

Listen. From time to time just stop talking and listen. It’s amazing how interesting your friends can be. The stories they share and the thoughts they are having are the stuff on which friendships are built. Put your phone away. Don’t be busy with other thoughts. Be present. For all their faults, Job’s friends made an effort to show up and they just sat there because there were no words for them to say. The Bible tells us we should be quick to listen (Js 1:19) and that is still primary advice for us today. And remember, it doesn’t matter if your listening if the other person doesn’t think you are. You may think you can multi-task with your phone and listen — but if you’re building friendships, put the phone away and just listen.

Be gracious. Job teaches us that when friends mess up, the best response is to be gracious and merciful. No friendship will ever last if you are not willing to forgive an offense and accept people for who they are.  Good friends can give bad advice, behave poorly, and cause us hurt. We can be that person too.  Friendships that allow for grace can grow and last. Friendships that don’t have grace will inevitably fail.

Be authentic
Ronald Sharp, an English professor at Vassar College who co-edited the Norton Anthology of Friendship writes:

“Treating friends like investments or commodities is anathema to the whole idea of friendship. It’s not about what someone can do for you, it’s who and what the two of you become in each other’s presence.”

He goes on:

“People are so eager to maximize efficiency of relationships that they have lost touch with what it is to be a friend.”

For Sharp, friends are people you take the time to understand and allow to understand you.

All of this takes time. All of this takes effort.

The question that remains for us:

Are you willing to exert the effort
that true friendship demands?