BONUS TRAIL | Great Friends

If you are listening to the Gateway Franklin Church podcast, to learn more about Gateway Franklin Church, including our service times here in Franklin, Tennessee, visit us online at gatewayfranklin.com.

And now, here is this week's message.

So I've been a pastor, I've been in ministry for about 20 years.

And before that time, I spent about 10 years in IT.

And at one point in time, I worked with a coworker named a guy named Lee Van and a lady named Judy.

And we worked, the three of us worked in an office together, and it was um we worked hard in this office.

We also had a good time, laughed a lot.

And one particular morning, uh, we were all busy working and the door flew open.

And I don't know if you've ever noticed that uh sometimes someone can walk in the room, and you know something is wrong without them saying anything at all.

And that's what happened.

The door opened, and our boss, Ken, walked in the room.

And I knew immediately something is off.

Now he had a little bit of a temper, but usually we didn't see it very much.

That was not today.

So he walked into our office and he made a beeline for Levan's desk where he had a big, beautiful grapefruit sitting next to his keyboard.

And he went to that grapefruit and he picked up that grapefruit and he squeezed that thing with everything that was in him.

And it was very odd, but juice is squirting everywhere.

Juice is pouring down his hands, and he just takes the grapefruit and keeps squeezing it, threw it on the floor, stomped on it.

Okay, stomped on it a couple times, then he picked it up again, squeezed it more, threw it down on the floor, and without ever saying a word, walked out of the room.

Not one word.

So we sat in stunned silence for a little while.

And finally I said, Somebody's got to fill me in, man.

What in the world just happened?

And Levan said, Well, I think I know.

I was in Ken's office this morning, and uh we were talking about things that needed to happen today.

And while we were talking, I noticed he had one of those stress balls, squeezy stress balls, on his desk.

And I picked it up and started squeezing it.

And before too long, I realized it wasn't a stress ball.

It was a plum.

100% true.

I tell you that story because sometimes we can handle something with complete confidence and still be wrong about what it is and what it's for.

Today I want us to examine something so familiar, something so right in front of us that we rarely stop to question our assumptions about it.

And that is community.

So let me tell you where we are in this series.

Last week, Pastor Charlie spoke about fresh starts, and that's our connection with Christ.

Next week, we're going to close out with real purpose, and that's our connection to what God has made us for.

Today, we land right in the middle.

Great friends, real Christ-centered community.

And that is our connection with one another.

And of those three, great friends may be the one that modern Christians, especially in the Western church, are most likely to treat as optional.

We understand that we need Jesus, of course.

We understand that God wants our lives to matter, but deep, Christ-centered friendships, a lot of us treat that as something extra.

Nice if we can get them.

Great if our schedule has room for them, but definitely not essential.

So I want to challenge that today.

I don't want you to leave simply asking, does my schedule have enough margin for relationships?

I want you asking a much deeper question.

Can I actually become who God is calling me to be without them?

I read a book a couple of months ago called Tribe by Sebastian Younger.

It's about our need for belonging and what modern life has quietly done to it.

He made an observation that really stayed with me.

A person living in a modern city or suburb can, for the first time in history, go through an entire day or an entire life, mostly encountering complete strangers.

They can be surrounded by others and yet feel deeply dangerously alone.

Surrounded and alone, all at the same time.

We can walk into a packed room and leave without anyone knowing that we were there.

Think about how many contacts you're in your phone right now.

I've got more contacts than I've ever had in my life.

But lots of contacts doesn't equal lots of connection.

I may have a network, but that doesn't mean I have a community.

Showing up at church matters, of course.

We believe that and we teach that, but showing up is not the same thing as belonging.

You can be in this room and still not be fully part of it.

And it's important to point out that our need for relationship isn't a weakness that modern life created.

It goes all the way back to how God made us.

Remember that before sin entered the world, God repeatedly looked at what he had made and he called those things good.

Then for the first time, God looked at something and said, it is not good for the man to be alone.

Sin had not entered the world.

Adam wasn't alienated from God.

And yet human aloneness was not the final picture of flourishing that God intended for us.

Genesis 2 moves towards marriage and the creation of the first family, of course, but the truth reaches beyond marriage.

We were not designed to live self-contained lives.

The rest of Scripture keeps developing that truth.

God forms a people, Jesus gathers disciples, the Spirit creates a church, and Paul describes this as a family, a household, and a body whose members belong to one another.

So when we treat Christ-centered relationships as optional for our faith, we're treating something as incidental that God has already established as essential.

We tend to think of spiritual growth as primarily private, right?

Read your Bible, pray, listen to good teaching.

And all of that is good.

All of those things matter, of course.

But interestingly, you can do every one of those things without another person really knowing you.

Following Jesus is personal.

No one else can believe for you.

But personal was never intended to be private.

Remember LeVann squeezing that plum, convinced it was a stress ball?

Maybe we've done something similar to community.

We've handled it our whole lives, confident we know what it is and what it's for.

Or maybe, maybe it's time for us to check that and make sure.

So today I want to walk through three questions to help unpack this idea.

The first question is, what are we saved into?

What are we saved into?

The second question is, how does God intend to use that to grow us?

And the third question is, what lies keep us from letting him do that?

Nineteen years ago, the hospital did something that I still feel was wildly irresponsible.

They allowed Mary Beth and I to go home with a baby.

We took no test, we had no certification, and no experienced adult came home with us, which was a big bummer to me.

But what they did is they strapped Asher into the car seat and essentially said, good luck, guys.

Of course, we were terrified.

But Asher hadn't done anything to earn his place in our family.

And I want you to hear this.

He hadn't contributed anything, he hadn't filled out an application, provided references, or attended a class called Discover Dodd.

He simply belonged.

He had a name, he had a home, he had people committed to helping him grow up and become who God created him to be.

Because birth doesn't only give you life, it also gives you belonging.

And when Jesus gives you new life, he doesn't leave you out as a spiritual orphan.

He births you into a family.

That's the reality that Paul describes in Ephesians 2.

He's writing to Gentiles, non-Jews, whom Paul describes as separate from Christ, excluded, foreigners to the promises, without hope and without God.

And that excuse that exclusion exclusion, that's the word, wasn't merely an idea.

Even the Jerusalem temple had a stone barrier that was about four feet high called a Soreg.

And there was a warning on that that said that Gentiles could come this far and no farther, and that crossing it would cost them their lives.

This is a real barrier.

But then come two of the best words in the New Testament.

But now.

But now in Christ Jesus, you who were once far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

In Ephesians 2, 13.

Far away, but brought near, outsiders but brought in, strangers, but made family.

Then Paul explains how Jesus brought them near.

For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations.

His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross by which he put to death their hostility.

And then in verses 19 and 22, Paul tells us what Christ brought them into.

You are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God's people and also members of his household.

And in him you two are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his spirit.

So tearing down the wall was not the end.

It was the demolition before the building started.

Jesus gave them a house, a family, and a people, and began building them together into one people.

New Testament scholar Joseph Hellerman summarizes this with a simple statement.

He says, a person is saved to community.

Not saved, and then perhaps you find community later if you have the time or the interest.

We're saved to it.

There's one more thing to notice.

Every U in this passage is plural, but English doesn't communicate that very well because the same word, we use the same word you to mean one, and you mean more than one.

But Greek doesn't have that problem, and neither does the South.

You guys know what our word is?

Y'all.

That's right.

That's right.

And so what Paul is essentially saying is y'all are members of God's household.

Y'all are being built together into a dwelling place for God.

It's not just a promise to isolated individuals, it's a corporate promise shared by people that Christ has joined together.

The promise is personal, of course, but it's also plural.

Christ didn't only rescue you from something, he brought you into something.

The church is not just an event that you attend, it is a family that you belong to.

But belonging to a family and actually growing within that family are not automatically the same thing.

So that brings us to our second question.

How does God use that family to grow us?

Jesus births us into a family, and then he uses that family to make us like himself.

That's the whole movement from Ephesians 2 to Ephesians 4.

In the first three chapters, Paul largely describes what God has done for us in Christ.

And then in chapter 4, he turns to how we should live in response to that.

And when Paul begins describing that life, what does he name first?

He doesn't name courage, he doesn't name leadership, he doesn't name, go out and change the world, guys.

He doesn't do that.

This is what he says.

He says, as a prisoner for the Lord, then I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received.

Be completely humble, gentle, be patient, bearing with one another in love.

Make every effort to keep the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace.

Humility, gentleness, patience, and bearing with one another in love.

Those are relational qualities, which means this: you can't practice them alone.

You do not learn humility by yourself, you learn it in relationships.

You don't learn patience from a sermon, you learn it by being patient with difficult people.

And you don't learn forgiveness from a podcast, you learn it by forgiving.

God forms those qualities in the give and take of real, raw, authentic relationships.

A few verses later, Paul explains that every member of the family has a part in that process.

Verse 7 says, But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it.

Then Paul names apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers, not to do all of the ministry themselves, but to equip his people for works of service so that the body may be built up.

Paul then says, This is how we mature.

And he lands here.

Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is Christ.

From him, the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love as each part does its work.

Grace was given to each one.

Not just the gifted, not just the pastors, not just the really spiritual people.

The church was never intended to be a handful of people producing something for everyone else to consume.

Paul says the body grows as each part does its work.

That means some of what you need to grow, you're going to get through people around you.

Think about how many prayers God has already answered through a person in your life.

You prayed for direction and someone gave you wise counsel.

You prayed for strength and someone called at the right moment.

You prayed for comfort and someone sat with you without trying to fix it all.

God was caring for you in those moments.

He just used somebody else's hands to do it.

Here's the thing: you're not just a recipient of what God provides, of what the body provides, but Christ has placed something in you that the body needs as well.

There are needs in this church that only you will notice.

Someone may need the encouragement and understanding that can only come from a person who has lived your story.

You need the family, and the family needs you.

Maybe we should be less concerned with discovering our spiritual gift and more concerned with being a gift to the body.

Real relationships not only encourage us, guys, they also give us a place to tell the truth.

Look at what James says in chapter 5.

He says, Therefore, confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.

Healing is connected to honesty and prayer.

That takes more than being in the same room together.

It takes being known.

Yeah.

I've heard it.

It's really much harder for us to ask the question, who am I taking the time to get to know?

Often one of the most powerful things you can offer someone is not your polish.

It's the honest story of how God met you in your pain.

We've all heard the phrase, hurt people, hurt people.

And sometimes that's true.

But hurt people who have encountered God's grace and will tell the truth about their story, those people can help other hurting people in ways that polished people will never be able to.

A man in our church named Jim Foster lost his beautiful wife, Faye, several years ago.

Today, Jim leads a group called Grief Share, with Edie Ross helping other people to navigate the kind of grief that he knows firsthand.

His tragedy.

His pain has become a way of serving others.

Whenever I see Jim in the great room, I make a point to go over and give him a hug, not because Jim needs a hug, but because I do.

When Jim asks, Chris, how are you doing?

He doesn't ask casually.

He looks at you with a depth and a compassion and a gentleness that have been shaped by what he's walked through.

And when Jim tells you that things are going to be okay, you believe it not because he knows the right words to say, but because he has walked through deep pain and discover that God is still faithful.

That's what I mean.

God has used what Jim suffered to form something in him that this church now needs.

His honesty, his compassion, and his presence have become a gift to this body, and he is not the only one.

So this is how Christ builds his body up.

Not only through sermons, programs, and moments on a stage, but through ordinary people who show up, who serve, who listen, who confess, who forgive, and keep showing up.

God does extraordinary work through ordinary relationships.

So we've answered two questions so far.

The first one is, what are we saved into?

God births us into a family.

The second question is, how does God use that family to grow us?

Well, he forms us through one another.

So our fur our third and final question is this.

If this is how God intends to form us, why do we resist the very relationships he intends to use?

And I think the answer comes down to one desire.

We want the benefits of community without its cost.

That desire wears three different masks, three lies that help us keep people at a distance while convincing ourselves we are still connected.

So let's name them because honestly, it's easier to identify a lie if you know what it is.

Lie number one is the counterfeit connection lie.

The counterfeit connection lie says, I can experience the benefits of connection without dealing with the needs of real people.

You've probably felt a version of this.

Somebody likes a picture or responds to something you posted, and for a few seconds you feel seen, you feel validated and a little less alone.

Then the feeling fades and you scroll for the next hit of dopamine.

Technology can help us communicate and stay connected, but a notification cannot know you.

A follower cannot carry your burden, and being seen by thousands of people is not the same thing as being known deeply by a few.

Proverbs puts it this way: a man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.

Many companions and one faithful friend are not the same currency.

We are tempted to influence everyone and yet belong to no one.

Yet the belonging is how we grow.

It's how we're known, it's how we're cared for.

There are actually darker versions of this lie.

For example, pornography turns a person into an image to confuse to consume and s yeah image to consume and is a cheap alternative to real intimacy.

Another example is that we can also try to replace real conversation and real relationships with AI.

Listen, AI can feel like a real companion.

One who's never too busy, always has an answer, is always ready to encourage you, never needs anything, and never asks for anything in return.

Except maybe a subscription.

All of these offer the feeling of connection while removing the risk that comes with another real person.

Yeah, we were made for people.

We were made for people who can disappoint us, misunderstand us, need something from us, and still choose to stay.

Guys, our hearts were designed for costly love, not a risk-free imitation of it.

The second lie is the audition lie.

So even when we choose to be with real people instead of substitutes, we can still require them to prove their worth before we let them in.

The audition lie says people must prove they are worth my time before I let them close to me.

So we quietly audition everyone.

Are they impressive enough?

Connected enough?

Can they help me?

Will knowing them help improve my life?

In fact, it's really easy to turn friendship into LinkedIn with snacks.

But that is not what friendship should be.

Now wisdom matters and trust grows over time, guys, and not everyone should have the same access to your life.

But someone's value is not determined by what they can do for you.

Jesus confronted this directly in Luke.

He said, When you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed because they cannot repay you.

Do you invest in anyone who cannot advance your career, expand your network, or introduce you to the right people?

Instead of making a beeline to the most impressive person in the room?

Do you seek out those on the sidelines who need a friend?

If every relationship becomes a strategy for advancement, we will eventually use people instead of loving them, and we will have a hard time becoming like Jesus because Jesus Himself moved towards people who had nothing to offer him in return.

Romans 15, 7 says, Therefore, welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you.

Guys, you didn't earn your place with him.

His grace gave you a spot, and we extend that grace to others.

We open the circle of our lives because the circle is already open for us.

Now, of course, if you stay in relationship long enough, eventually someone inside that circle will disappoint you.

The relationship will become inconvenient at some point.

The church will do something that makes you mad.

A friend will fail to meet an expectation that you never told him you had.

And that's when we encounter the final lie.

The greener grass lie.

The greener grass lie says somewhere else would be easier.

This lie says a different friend would be better, a different group or some other church.

That's where community would finally work.

So when relationships become difficult or disappointing, the answer must be to leave and find something better.

That lie offers all of the blessings of community without the cost of staying in one.

We want to be known deeply without ever being inconvenienced.

We want people who will show up for us at two in the morning without ever being asked to show up for them.

That isn't community.

That's a vending machine with a church logo.

And relationships, guys, do take time.

You can meet someone quickly.

You cannot be quickly known.

Trust is built through ordinary moments repeated over time, showing up, working through misunderstandings, forgiving, discovering that someone is still there after seeing a less polished version of you.

Hear me when I say this.

The good stuff only shows up after you've stayed past the point where things got hard.

I have a friend who's a certified arborist, basically is a tree doctor.

He's the guy that if a tree is sick or is not doing well, he's the guy that you call that can help you figure out what's going on.

I asked him last week how long it takes for a tree to recover after being transplanted.

He told me it takes, on average, between one to three years for a tree to recover from being transplanted.

And most of that recovery is the establishment of roots, the reestablishment of roots.

During that time, outward growth may slow, very little may be visible above the ground, and beneath the surface, the tree is doing all of the work necessary to flourish again.

But if you uproot it again, much of that process will begin all over.

A tree that is continually transplanted will spend its whole life recovering instead of growing and producing fruit.

The psalmist says this the righteous flourish like a palm tree and grow like a cedar in Lebanon.

They are planted in the house of the Lord, they flourish in the courts of our God, but they still bear fruit in old age, and they are ever full of sap and green.

Notice the word planted.

I don't say passing through.

It's not sampling, it's planted.

And it is the planted life that eventually produces lasting fruit.

Growth requires rootedness.

Now let me be clear.

There are times to leave a relationship, there are times to leave a group or even leave a church.

There are unhealthy situations, harmful relationships, and moments when God genuinely leads us somewhere else.

In fact, I wouldn't be here if I hadn't obeyed God's call for me to leave where I was and come here.

So I'm not saying that leaving is always wrong.

What I'm saying is we live in a disposable culture.

When something becomes difficult or disappointing, our instinct is to often replace it.

If the television stops working, we don't repair it.

We take it as a sign that it's time to get an 85-inch.

Right?

But people aren't products we can throw away or upgrade.

And when we treat relationships as disposable, we may walk away from the very process that God intended to use to form us.

Yes, the safest place is at a distance, but the most transformative place is often close enough to get hurt.

That is where love, growth, and forgiveness and transformation happen in us and in also them.

So our three lies just to review.

The counterfeit connection lie tells us to substitute something easier for real people.

The audition lie tells us to admit only the people who appear worthy or useful.

And the greener grass lie tells us to leave when things get difficult.

All three make the same promise.

You can have the blessings of community without letting people in, making room for them, or staying when it gets hard.

But that is not the kind of community through which God forms us.

God forms us in relationships that are real enough to require vulnerability, gracious enough to welcome people who cannot repay us and rooted enough to survive the difficulty.

Worship team, would you guys come on up?

At the beginning of this talk, we talked a little bit about how we can be surrounded by people and still be deeply and dangerously alone.

And the answer isn't simply getting more people around us, it's becoming part of a people.

That is Paul's story throughout the Ephesians.

Christ brought us near, made us members of his household, and placed something in each of us that the body needs.

God did not simply place us in the same room, he joined us together with other people in Christ.

And that means there's a whole category of New Testament commands that are impossible for you to do by yourself.

And they should sound familiar to you.

Love one another, forgive one another, bear one another's burdens, submit to one another, confess to one another, pray for one another, encourage one another, serve one another, welcome one another.

Those are not commands just for social Christians.

And avoiding people is not a spiritual gift.

Every one of those commands assumes we have people close enough to obey it.

And guys, I don't want you to hear this another as another burden to carry.

That is not the spirit in which I mean this.

Guys, we do this.

We invest in people because Christ invested in us.

He came near when we were far away.

He welcomed us and opened his family to us, not because we earned it, but because of his grace.

We show up for others because Christ showed up for us.

We let others in because Christ already brought us into his family.

I'm part of a men's discipleship group called Man Year.

Over the course of a year, we work on four parts of our lives: spiritual, physical, mental, and emotional.

During the emotional module, which for a group of guys is obviously their favorite one.

One of the challenges was to write a letter to our wife or our kids.

A letter that.

A letter that they would read after we after we died.

And then we had to read it aloud for the other men.

It was difficult to explain how hard that was.

We all tried to hold it together, and none of us did.

But that was part of what made it so powerful.

We weren't processing these things alone.

We were sitting with men who knew us, listening as we told the truth about the lives we had lived, the lives we were living, and the lives that we hoped we would one day live from that moment forward.

That is something that real community can do.

It gives us a place to tell the truth and people who help us become the kind of people that we say we want to be.

I'm sure a lot of things can be said about a lot of us when our lives are over, but I gotta be honest with you.

I hope that one thing that can be said about me is that he loved well.

That's what I hope.

But guys, love is never abstract.

Love always has a name and love has a face.

We love people by walking into the hospital room even when we don't know what to say.

By sending an encouraging text when someone's name comes to mind, bringing a meal when a family's world has fallen apart, sitting with someone in grief, making room at our table for someone who needs a place to belong.

Rescuing girls and Laos, even though they live halfway across the world.

Forgiving someone when we've been hurt.

You cannot love well from a distance.

So I want to leave you with two final questions.

The first question is: who is God asking you to show up for?

Who needs you to call, to listen, to encourage, help you carry a burden?

Maybe you've been waiting for them to reach out.

Maybe, maybe God's asking you to go first.

And the second question may be even harder to ask.

Who is God asking you to let in?

Who needs to know what is really happening in your life?

Maybe your next step is telling the truth.

Asking for prayer.

Admitting that you need help.

Maybe your next step is to join a group.

A group won't automatically create deep community, but it creates a place where deep community can happen.

You don't have to be deeply known by everyone.

You don't.

But you need to be deeply known by someone.

Because the path to becoming the person God is calling you to be runs directly through people.

And often it's the people that are right around you.

You grow deep by showing up, by letting people in, and by staying long enough for roots to form.

And do you know what comes after roots?

Fruit.

Would you pray with me?

Jesus, I thank you so much.

I thank you so much, Lord, for the way you patiently father us.

You're not impatient with us, Lord.

But you help us to learn the next thing that we need in our lives.

And so, Father, in this moment, maybe the next thing that we need is to find out who do we need to let in?

God, who do we need to show up for?

Lord, you do amazingly extraordinary work through ordinary relationships.

You make us like yourself.

When we are rooted in a community that is Christ-centered, God, you do amazing things there in that place.

And so, Father, I pray that you would do that today.

Lord, we thank you for your passion for us and for your love.

And I ask that you would meet us here and that as we step into relationships, as we step into relationships, Lord, that you would you would increase.

You would increase.

We are this whole year has been about sowing and reaping.

And Lord, I pray, Father, that we would reap much from the people that we invest in.

God, that you would do amazing things.

Lord, we love you.

In your name.

Guys, every week there is communion on the left and right of me up here in the corners.

And just a reminder that this side of the altar, if you want to spend some time with God just on your own, please come and use that side of the altar as the worship team sings.

And this side of the altar, I and the rest of the team would be honored to pray with you if you'd like to do that.

Would you guys stand and sing?

We hope you were encouraged and challenged by today's message.

Again, to learn more about Gateway Franklin Church, find us online at gatewayfranklin.com.

Thanks for joining us today.