It’s Complicated – Uncomplicated Friendship

This podcast is presented to you by Pastor Jason and Liz Burns in Access Church in Lakeland and Bartow, Florida.

For more information, visit Access.tv.

Well, welcome everybody.

You are here for part two of a series that I'm really excited about.

We kicked this thing off last week.

The series is called It's Complicated.

And what we're doing for the next few weeks is we're talking about all of our relationships.

And here's why our relationships, they be complicated at sometimes.

You ever know this?

And all of our friendships and all of our relationships and every relationship you'll ever experience can be a little complicated.

So last week we kicked off a the series by talking about the most beautiful and honestly the most complicated relationship, which is the relationship of marriage.

And we said, I know that that one doesn't apply to every single person in the room, but it's something that the principles do apply.

And we said that marriage can be one of the great testimonies that we have to the world around us, but for so many people, we just take it off-road and don't do it God's way.

So we said, What does marriage look like when we do it God's way?

Today, I have a message that literally is for everybody.

That no matter what age or stage of life you're in, no matter what season you find yourself in, this is one that absolutely applies to absolutely everybody.

And if we can get this one right, I think it's gonna have unbelievable change and benefits to us for the rest of our life.

To get us started today, this last week was a week full of adventure for me.

For Christmas, my wife and my brothers Mike's wife, Katrina, they surprised us with a brother's trip.

And so for Christmas, we had no idea.

And they said a week after Easter, and we want you to rest and recuperate.

So they sent us to a beautiful place called Wyoming.

And I had never been there.

I'm gonna be honest with you and tell you, I don't know where it is on a map, but we went there and it was beautiful.

We had a great time.

This is me sitting in a bear chair because when you're in Wyoming, what else are you gonna do?

I guess you know.

We saw all kinds of amazing animals.

I saw this moose, I saw that with my own eyes.

I also saw this ram.

I don't know what that is, but I saw that thing.

That was crazy.

Also saw this guy, Mike, in the wild.

That's my brother Mike.

Had a great time together.

We got to explore the Grand Tetons.

And the truth is, a part of the trip was amazing, and a part of the trip was kind of a bust, if I can just be honest.

I've always wanted to go to the Grand Tetons.

It's this amazing national park with these huge mountains, and I was so excited to go, but a few things didn't quite cooperate with us on the trip.

Okay, first of all, the weather did not cooperate.

I never saw the tops of the mountains.

I saw the bottom of the Grand Tetons because it was cloudy and foggy the whole time we were there, so I didn't see that.

Another thing is um I didn't know this, and this is probably my fault, but I didn't know that in Wyoming, for some reason, probably because it's Wyoming, for some reason, they do this thing where they shut everything down for literally a few weeks in between April and going into May, and the reason is it's in between seasons.

Well, ain't nobody told me nothing about that.

And so and so we go and nothing's open.

Like you can't drive through the national park and see all of it.

You restaurants aren't open, like nothing was open, all the adventure stuff was was not open, and so what did we do?

I don't know, we just hung out, but we did.

Like I went to TJ Maxx one time, that was cool.

Um, what are you gonna do?

And and here's the funny thing.

While some of the trip was kind of a bust, it was actually one of the most amazing trips of my life, and here's why.

On one of our last days there, we were sitting in some restaurant eating something, and Mike looked across the table at me, my brother, one of my best friends in the whole world, and he said, You know, I know some of the things weren't open like we wanted, but this has been an amazing trip because it was so great to connect.

It was so great to be together.

Like we love each other.

He's my brother, I love this guy, and we were so connected, it was just so fun.

I don't know if you've ever had an experience like that where it doesn't really matter the circumstances, but if the friendship is good, if the relationship is fun, everything else seems great.

Have you ever had a really busy season where you're distracted by work and the busyness?

And then if you're married and have kids and throw kids into the mix, it can be chaotic.

And you could be going a hundred different miles an hour at a hundred different directions, it feels like, but then you have a night where you get together with friends for dinner.

Have you had this before?

And it's so fun.

And you get to talking, you start laughing so much your side starts to hurt.

And and what should be an hour or an hour and a half meal turns into four hours, and you look at your clock and you're like, gosh, it's 11 o'clock.

This was so great.

And you say things like, let's do this again.

Why?

Because your soul was created for connection.

You're and my soul, we were created to be connected, not just to God, but to God, but also to each other.

Literally, in Genesis chapter 1 and 2, God creates the world with his voice.

Genesis 1 · chapter mention

He spins it into orbit and he creates everything we can see.

And as God creates, it's interesting because there's a rhythm and a cadence to God's creation.

God creates and he says it's good.

He creates and he says it's good.

He creates and he says it's good.

Then he gets to day six and he creates man and he says it's not good.

And it's not good that man, it's not an issue with man.

He says it's not good for man to be alone.

That God's desire was that we'd be, we would be connected.

Now here's the thing.

I I believe that God wants us to have some amazing friends.

And one of the things you need to know about good friends are good friends, they can be a lot of fun.

You should have the kind of friends that make you laugh until your sides hurt.

This is what fun, this is what friendship should look like.

Friendship should be a lot of fun.

But I want you to understand if that's the depth you get to with friendships, is only fun, you're missing out on so much of what God's intention was.

Friends aren't just to be fun.

In my opinion, they're mission critical.

What does that mean?

It means to accomplish the mission of your life.

It is critical that you have God-honoring, godly friends in your life.

So let me say this to you as clearly as I can.

This is the whole message in one sentence.

You ready?

If you show me your friends, I'll show you your future.

If you show me your friends, I'll show you the direction of your life.

This is literally everything.

God created us for relationships, He created us for community.

And if you want to know what your future is gonna look like, just pay attention to the friends in your life.

We become like the five most influential voices in our life.

So if you want to have a body that's healthy, get around people who are healthy.

If you want to have a body that is, you have a life that's generous, get around people who are generous.

If you want to get closer to God, get around people who are close to God.

This is what happens.

We become like the friends in our lives.

But if I can just be honest, I know that sounds right and it sounds good.

But statistically, according to everything I can find right now, so many of us are lonely.

Like we know we were created for friends, but we're lonely.

And maybe when you were in middle school or high school it seemed easy.

You went to college and friendship was easy, and then you became an adult, then you moved to a new city, and then friendships are just hard and they're awkward.

And they're and they're challenging.

Okay, let me get weird for just a moment.

How do I know I'm right?

Because when I say things that are difficult, people start coughing.

We're lonely.

Let me run you through some statistics that prove what I'm talking about.

According to the most recent research I can find, about one in two adults in America report experiencing loneliness at least sometimes, but roughly one in five say they feel lonely often or always.

Like look, look down your row.

Literally, one in five is often lonely.

This disproportionately seems to affect men.

In 1990, the stats said that the average man in America had six friends, but today the average man in America has between zero and three.

It's what experts are calling a male friendship recession.

We we just don't have relationships and we were created for it.

And you might think that Gen Z, this up-and-coming next generation of young people and young adults, they would have it figured out, but statistically it's even worse for them.

70% of Gen Z report feeling lonely.

I've heard it said that there's a link between our psychology and our physiology.

And experts have said this that loneliness is as dangerous to the human body as smoking is.

It literally shortens your lifespan.

A few years ago, the Surgeon General for the United States came out and said this.

He called loneliness an epidemic in our country.

It affects so many people.

And this stat breaks my heart.

According to research, about 60% of Americans say they don't feel truly known by others.

Let me say this to you.

And this was never God's intention.

God wanted us to be intimately, deeply, profoundly connected with each other.

And here's what I need you to understand.

Andy Stanley, a pastor in Atlanta, says this.

He says, Your friends will always determine the quality and the direction of your life.

And if you want to live the kind of life that makes a difference, if you want to live the kind of life where at the end of your life you look back over the scope of the years of your life and say, that's how you do it, that's how you live a life, then listen to me.

Pay attention to your circle of friends, because your friends change everything.

Now listen, this is not just pop psychology.

This is not just some statistics on America and loneliness.

Solomon, the wisest man to ever live in the book of Proverbs, says it like this.

He says, walk with the wise and become wise.

For a companion of fool suffers harm.

Here's what Solomon, this brilliant man, is saying if you walk with people who have what you want, and in this case it's wisdom, you will become like them.

Okay, so if you're a new parent and you want to be a great mom or great dad, hang around great parents.

If you want to be great with money, hang around people who are great with money and you'll become like that.

Like it's important for you to understand that we become like the relationships in our life.

And he gives us two sides.

If you want to be wise, walk with the wise.

But also, he says a companion of fools suffers harm.

And it's really possible for you to have had such an important mission for your life, but for you to completely miss all of it because you've saddled your life to people who the Bible would call fools.

Here's another way to say it's it's impossible to have the right life with the wrong friends.

So this is gonna be a hard line for some of you to swallow, but some of you need to really do an audit of your friendships.

And there might be some people in your life who probably shouldn't make the cut anymore.

It's not that you don't need to be kind, it's not that you don't need to be thoughtful and friendly to them when you see them, but maybe you need to diminish their voice because they're not leading you to the life that God has intended for you to live.

Let me say it to you like this.

I believe that most people in our country struggle with feeling impoverished in one of three areas.

It's just a reality.

It's not just American, this is a whole world thing.

According to research, there's about three different levels of poverty.

The first one is the obvious one, it's financial poverty.

It's just not having enough money to pay the bills, it's not having enough resources to make sure you have plenty of food and plenty of security and plenty of safety and plenty of housing.

It's just not having enough money to make ends meet.

You understand that one?

The second level of insecurity, the second level of poverty is a spiritual level of poverty.

And a lot of people, maybe it's maybe you, maybe your friends, maybe your neighbors, maybe people in your life, it's like they have plenty of money, but they just are disconnected from God.

I I think our society is starting to notice this, by the way.

This is the reason we're seeing a revival of spirituality in Gen Z and Younger.

It's because that a life devoid of purpose and meaning is a life that's not really a life.

So what's happening is people are starting to realize that if I want to know my purpose in life, I need to come back to the one who created me in the first place, who's the only one who can give me my sense of purpose.

So there's people that live with a sense of spiritual poverty, but then there's a third one.

And this is the one that, in my opinion, affects more Americans than anything.

It's a relational poverty.

What's funny is we live in a time when it's easier to be connected to everybody than it's ever been in the history of the world.

You're literally carrying a supercomputer around in your pocket in the form of a phone that you can be connected to.

You can text people, DM people, you can message people, you can send all kinds of communication to people, you can call people, you can video chat with people, you have every possible way to connect with people, and yet we feel so disconnected.

You ever been in the car with someone and you're driving and they're on their phone, and you're you're driving, you just want someone to talk to, and you look over and they're just on their phone, and you say something to them and they laugh, but they're not laughing at you, they say, hang on just one just one second, and they keep going back to their phone.

This happens to us, and it's like we can be physically near someone and emotionally and relationally a million miles away.

Why is this?

This is the reason, by the way, that I think it's really important for every single person to go on a missions trip someday.

You say, Why does that matter?

Well, here's what happens, okay?

The whole world struggles with those three levels of poverty in different places and in different ways.

And when you go on a mission trip, a couple things happen.

Number one is you go on the missions trip thinking, I'm going to bring hope and the light of Jesus to the world, and that is true.

And I think what we think underneath that is I'm going and I'm gonna be the one that makes the difference and I'm gonna bring change.

And that's kind of true.

But can I tell you what's really true?

When you go, every single time you go, the one who is the most changed, you.

I'll tell you why.

Especially if you go to like a third world country and you see the poverty, the abducte poverty people are living in.

When you see people who are living like six to eight people in one room, they're literally like they sleep on little cots and they lean the cots against the wall.

Their house is hot, there's no air conditioning, they share one disgusting toilet, and there's like a like a stove in the corner that heats the whole house up every time they have to cook rice or beans.

If you've ever seen that, it does something to you.

And here's what you realize if you feel like you don't have enough money and you go there, you realize, man, we are so blessed as a country.

Secondly, you go there and you see these people and they don't have money, they have financial poverty, but they they so lean in to the spiritual, like to God, to his provision, and then they lean on each other.

And it's funny because the first day you go, you're like, oh man, these people don't have a whole lot.

And you start to realize that it's possible that they have even more than you do because they have each other.

You were created for a relationship.

You were created for godly, God-honoring friendships.

In fact, let me say it strong and clear.

You may be one friend away from changing the course of your destiny.

Like you might literally just be one relationship, one friend, one providential friend away from your whole life looking and feeling different.

Let me show it to you in the Bible.

That there's this guy that we meet in the New Testament.

If he was living today, we would call him a terrorist.

He was terrible to these new followers of Jesus, these new Christians.

He would, he would hurt them, he would assault them, he would imprison them, he would even have them stoned or put to death.

He was hated and he was feared.

His name was Saul.

And Saul one day is on his way to this place called Damascus, and along the way, he has this dramatic encounter with God.

Like so dramatic that literally, like he's blinded by it.

God speaks to him and he says, Saul, why are you persecuting me?

What are you doing to me?

Saul realizes that God is who he says he is and literally turns his whole life around.

And then the story picks up when Saul's trying to get into some set of Christian community.

Here's where it picks up: Acts chapter 9.

Acts 9 · chapter mention

It says, when he, Saul, came to Jerusalem, he tried to join the disciples, but they were all afraid of him, not believing that he really was a disciple.

Pause here for just a moment, okay?

Try to imagine this with me, okay?

You're in one of our access groups.

You don't know what that is, that's our small groups where we get out of rows and we get into circles.

And imagine you're in this group and you've made all these friends and you're sharing your life and you're just living this beautiful Christian life together, and all of a sudden you hear about a guy who was a terrorist last week.

And he's like, hey, I want to join your group.

Hey, don't worry, I'm changed.

Different.

I met Jesus, I'm a different person.

Would you trust this guy?

Would you let him into your group?

I think some of you would, but most of us would be like, I don't know.

Like, I'd like to see a longer pattern of history of life changed, right?

And they don't want to do this, they don't want to let Saul in understandably, but it goes on and says, but Barnabas took him in and brought him to the apostles.

He told them how Saul was on his journey, had seen the Lord, and the Lord had spoken to him, and how Damascus, in Damascus, he had preached fearlessly in the name of Jesus.

So this guy Barnabas goes, look, I know everyone's nervous about him, but he put his neck on the line.

He stepped out there on behalf of Saul.

So it goes on and says, So Saul stayed with them and moved about freely in Jerusalem, speaking boldly in the name of the Lord.

This is important for you to hear.

If it's not for Barnabas, being a godly friend in a moment that he needed a friend, Saul, who literally changes his name from Saul to Paul, may not have the impact in the course of human history that he does.

If it weren't for this moment, I don't know what happens in Saul later Paul's life.

Paul went on to become this fully devoted follower of Jesus who literally wrote half of your New Testament in the Bible.

What happens if Saul doesn't have a friend who steps in in the moment he needs him to step in?

This is important for you to hear.

You need godly friends.

You are one friend away from an entirely different destiny.

So here's what I want to do.

For our last few minutes together, I want to take you through the life of a person in the Bible named David, who was this young shepherd boy who God anoints to be king, who later goes on.

It's said about him that he is a man after God's own heart.

As you look at David's life, there's three people, three different types of friends that he encounters.

And here's my hope.

My hope is that as I talk through these three friends and these three relationships, that you will do an audit of your own heart.

Do an audit of your own soul, and here more importantly, do an audit of your circle of friends.

And if you don't have these kinds of friends in your life, I have a challenge for you.

Ready?

I'm gonna tell you in up front.

I challenge you to be for someone else what you need for yourself.

Write these down.

There's three types of friends that I think every person needs.

The first one is this every every person needs a Samuel.

And a Samuel is a friend who makes you better.

It's a coach who says, I see in you potential that you can't even see in yourself.

To kind of help you understand this, Samuel was a prophet in the Old Testament.

A prophet is a person God would speak to, and the prophet would speak on behalf of God to humanity.

And there's this day where there's a man who is king.

His name is King Saul.

It's not the same Saul we just talked about from the New Testament.

This was Saul, he was the first king of Israel, and at one point in his life he was living for God, leading the way God would have him lead, but he kind of ran his whole life and his spirituality off course.

So God removes his hand of blessing and anointing off of Saul, and he says, I'm literally going to move the lineage of the kingship off of Saul's life onto someone else.

So he says to Samuel, here's what I want you to do.

Go to the house of a man named Jesse.

The next king of Israel is in the house of Jesse.

So Samuel gathers up his courage.

I mean, this is a dangerous moment for him.

And he goes to Jesse's house and he tells Jesse what's up.

And Jesse lines up seven of his eight sons in order of age.

Well, Samuel gets there and he goes, Okay, God, show me the one who is to be king.

And he goes to the firstborn son, and this firstborn son is tall, he's strong, he's handsome.

He literally checks all the boxes and he says, God, is this the one?

And God's like, That's not him.

Okay.

Goes to son number two, nope, not him.

Son number three, nope, not him.

He gets all the way through seven of the eight sons, and it's none of them.

And then God drops this beautiful line.

It's 1 Samuel 16, verse 7.

1 Samuel 16:7

He says, Samuel, I need you to understand how I think it's differently than you.

He says, Man looks at the outward appearance.

God looks at the heart.

What God's after is the heart.

So Samuel says, Okay, Jesse, Dad, Pops, you got any other sons?

He says, Well, I have one, but he's not your guy.

He's my youngest.

He's kind of a little guy.

He's out in the field watching the sheep.

He says, Go get him.

The people go get David, this little boy, and they bring him before Samuel.

And the Lord speaks to him.

He says, That's the one.

He's the one.

So this is surprising.

1 Samuel 16, verses 12 and 13.

1 Samuel 16:12

Then the Lord said, Rise and anoint him.

This is the one.

So Samuel, he took the horn of oil and anointed him in the presence of his brothers.

And from that day the spirit of the Lord came powerfully on David.

Listen, if it weren't for Samuel having the courage to obey and see something in David that he couldn't see in himself, we have no idea what it would have looked like for him.

I don't know if you have a friend like this, but but I do.

I have a dear friend named Dr.

Daniel McNaughton.

I got to know him very briefly, but in passing and we weren't really super close.

But he's a good amount older than me, which side note, you need all different types of friends, and it doesn't matter how old they are.

But when I did my doctoral program several years ago, he got assigned to me, I believe, providentially, to be the chair of my doctoral dissertation committee.

Well, through this we got a lot closer, a lot of great things happened as a result of it.

But this was the this was the craziest thing.

As we got closer, he started coming to our church.

And at that time, Access ran about 800 people total in one location.

And he would say things to me like Jason, listen, I know you, I know you see yourself this way, but I see so much more in you.

He would say things like, You're you're a church of like 800 people now, but I think you need to start thinking bigger, expand your capacity.

I see a day when Access is a church of thousands of people, so you need to start acting now like you're a church of 2,500 people and just see what God does.

Well, we started that.

And literally it wasn't just me.

It's I started thinking this way, I began to expand my capacity.

I worked with our team, we expanded our capacity, and every single Sunday now we have more than that.

And I believe it happened because I had a friend who said, There's something better in you.

You you need this, you need someone who sees in you and says there's something better in you and calls it out of you.

Solomon in the book of Proverbs says it like this He says, As iron sharpens iron, so a friend sharpens a friend.

Who do you have in your life that calls you to better, calls you to greatness, and calls out of you more than even you can?

See in yourself.

The first type of friend is the Samuel type of friend, and they see something better in you.

Second type of friend that all of us need, and we certainly need to be for someone else, is what I would call a Jonathan type of friend.

Now, a Jonathan friend is a friend who helps you find spiritual strength.

Now, what is what does this mean?

Well, if you don't know, Jonathan was the son of King Saul.

Try to imagine how complicated this relationship would be.

He's the son of the king who is no longer going to be king, and that means because the kingship was removed from Saul, it would no longer get to go to Jonathan.

And Jonathan had every reason to be upset that he was friends with David.

So you've got this weird kind of relational triangle of all kinds of weirdness.

And Jonathan was there for David.

Let me ask you this question.

Who do you go to when you feel discouraged?

Do you have a friend that you turn to when it feels like the bottom is falling out on you?

Because if I can be honest and be vulnerable for just a moment, I feel discouraged almost every Monday.

I feel discouraged almost every single Monday.

I wake up on Monday and I'm like, ah, that was a good run.

I'm done.

I quit, right?

Like I just do.

And it's funny because what tends to happen to us is we tend to not be able to see all the beauty of the things that our life is accomplishing.

We tend to focus on our worst or our most difficult moments.

I'm so grateful for a friend in my wife.

Liz not only sees the best in me and calls the best out of me, she reminds me of what is true.

There's like a strength that I get from her.

And there's times when I don't have the strength in my own to wake up and face another day, and she calls it out of me.

Jonathan was this for David, the book of 1 Samuel.

This is just a couple chapters later in chapter 16.

It says this, while David was at Horash in the desert of Zif, he learned that Saul had come to take out his life.

Well, that puts a lot of things in perspective for me, doesn't it?

For you?

Like I have some bad days, but I don't think anybody's out to kill me right now.

Why was Saul out for David?

Well, people begin to hear that David was going to be the next king.

Beyond that, David had some huge victories in the battlefield.

Like he killed Goliath and led some other amazing army moments.

And people began to sing about David and Saul.

They would say, Saul has killed his thousands, David is tens of thousands.

David was this up-and-coming guy.

And Saul is so jealous of David that he sets out to kill David.

And it says this here, but the next verse goes on and it says this.

And Saul's son Jonathan, he went to David at Horash and he helped him find what?

Strength in God.

Who do you have in your life that you can lean on?

That you can borrow their strength when you don't have the courage to stand on your own.

Third type of friend that I think every person needs is a friend like David found in a man named Nathan.

Nathan is a friend who tells you the truth.

Let me tell you the story so you understand why.

Nathan was another Old Testament prophet.

And there was a moment in David's life where, in spite of how good he was as a person, and no matter how good his heart was, David blew it.

Quick side note, I love the Bible because it's honest.

I love that the Bible doesn't just tell us the highlight reels, it also tells us the worst moments.

And there was a day when it says that David should have been out to war with his men, but he was in a place he shouldn't have been.

And he was standing on his roof one night and he looked across the courtyard and he sees a woman and she's bathing on her roof.

He sees her, it was an accident, but instead of allowing it to be an accident and to move on, he lustfully looked upon her.

He wanted her, and he sent his men to go get her.

They bring her to him, he sleeps with her, he has an affair, she was married, he was married.

In fact, he had lots and lots of wives.

The Bible was in a different time, in a different place.

He had every option, he had no need to go for this woman, but he but he does.

He sins.

And he tries to hide it, he tries to cover his sins and cover his tracks, but it just doesn't quite work.

And there's a day when God speaks to the prophet Nathan, he says, I want you to go confront the sin in King David's life.

Now imagine how horrifying this would be.

In a time where David would just have to snap his fingers and Nathan's head would be cut off.

He has the courage to go stand in front of the king and he confronts him for his sin.

But here's how he does it.

So interesting.

David, I'm gonna tell you a story.

There was a man who was had wealth beyond his wildest dreams.

He had so much cattle, so many sheep, so many cows, he had so much that he couldn't possibly take care of all of it himself.

He had so much.

But there was another person who had one sheep.

And one day, this first person needed a sheep for a sacrifice or a meal or something.

And instead of taking one of the many that he has, he goes and he takes the one of the person across town who literally only has one.

David gets furious.

Who would do this?

Who would do something like that?

How terrible and despicable is that that person should be put to death.

Like, how terrible is that?

Then Nathan looked at David and he said to David, You are the man.

And this isn't like you're the man, it's not like that.

He's like, it's you, you're the man, you're the person the story's talking about.

This this phrase in Hebrew is ata ish.

It literally means it is you I am talking about.

You're the one who has sinned, you're the one who has taken something that doesn't belong to you.

Who in your life have you given permission to tell you the truth?

You see, like the right truth spoken in the right way in the right moment can reset a lot for you.

I'll give you a quick example.

A few years ago, there was a really busy season, and I was really, really, really tired.

And there was a Sunday, and I'd preached, I think, three times on that Sunday, and I was tired, and I made a mistake in booking.

I was gonna do a wedding for someone, and I didn't connect the dots that it was a Sunday wedding, which is already kind of difficult.

But then, secondly, it was just it was a Sunday wedding on the east side of Orlando, like it's a long drive.

So I went home, I was tired, my voice hurt, changed my clothes quickly, put a suit on, and I was right out the door again, and I was making this long drive.

And on the way, I called my dad, and I was just like, This stinks.

I didn't want to do this.

My voice hurts, I'm tired.

If I would have known it was in East Orlando, I wouldn't have done it.

And my dad goes, Hey, can I tell you the truth?

I said, Yeah.

He goes, Have you ever stopped to think about what a privilege it is that this couple invited you into the most important day of their whole life?

Like, oh, good point, pops.

Two points.

Good job.

Like, what?

It's the truth spoken in the right moment from the right voice, reset everything for me.

It changed my whole perspective.

I literally went in and gave them 110% of everything I had because they had invited me in to the best, most important day of their life.

It wasn't an inconvenience, it was an opportunity.

Do you have friends in your life who speak the truth to you?

Hey, bud, you can't speak to your wife like that.

Hey, hey, listen, I know you think it's funny, like you think you're being rough with your kids, but you're actually so demeaning to them you can't talk to your kids that way.

Hey, I know you think that the drinking thing you're doing is just fun and there's no harm to it, but it's gotten out of hand and you're getting messy, and I don't want to see you ruin your life.

So you have friends in your life who tell you the truth even when it hurts.

Look, look at what scripture again, Solomon says it like this about the truth.

He says, an open rebuke is better than a hidden love.

Wounds from a sincere friend are better than many kisses from an enemy.

He's saying that it's better to get an open rebuke, which means to be told the truth from someone who loves you.

It's so much better to hear it from someone who loves you and who wants the best for you.

Why?

Because they're always going to be looking out for what's best for you.

So here's my question.

As you audit your life, do you have friends that draw out of you the better, the greatness that's in you?

Secondly, do you have friends that can give you spiritual strength when you find yourself discouraged?

And finally, do you have anyone in your life who tells you the truth?

If you don't, let me say this to you God intended you for it.

Like we were made for relationship with God, right?

God wants all of that from you, that's his desire for you, and that's the best relationship.

But it's an incomplete relationship without relationships here.

So here's the thing if I were to say, how do I make this practical?

It would be this if you don't have these things, I dare you.

I challenge you.

If you don't have these friendships and these relationships in your life, I double dog dare you to do for someone what you need for yourself.

Now, I was trying to think, like, how can I make this practical?

Our church needs it.

We need it.

I mean, half of Americans report feeling lonely often.

Like we need this.

So one of the ways that we provide a solution to this at our church is we get out of our rows and we get into community.

We we call them access groups.

Access groups can be three people, it could be 20 people.

But the point is you need some people in your life that you share your life with.

You need some people in your life who love you and call out the better that is in you.

You need people in your life who you can lean on when you feel like your spiritual strength is waning.

You need people in your life that tell you the truth, even when the truth stings just a little bit.

Here's my challenge for you.

Right now, we are at the very end of one of our three yearly semesters of access groups.

It's literally ending this week, but they start back up in six weeks.

I challenge you.

If you've never led a group or never gotten into a group, I challenge you.

Do me a favor, go to access.tv slash groups.

Literally open it in your phone and fill it out later.

But I challenge you to say, God, I'm lonely.

God, I'm in need.

God, I relationally feel starved.

I don't have the kinds of friendships or relationships I was created for, but I'm willing to be a part of the solution and not a part of the problem.

My challenge for you is if you will do this, I believe God will provide back for you supernaturally in ways you can't even begin to understand.

Would you do me a favor?

Would you stand up with me at all of our locations right now?

I want to pray a blessing over you.

And if you find yourself, as I've preached this message today, struggling with friendships and relationships, I challenge you, say, God, I'm willing to do whatever it takes to open my heart to that so I can experience that from you.

Would you bow your head and close your eyes?

God, give us the courage and strength to pursue friendships and relationships the way you intended it to be.

God, for some of us, we just feel lonely.

We can be surrounded by people and feel the loneliest we've ever felt.

We can be sitting right next to someone and be so disconnected because we're on a device or our phone or something.

We just feel lonely.

God, my prayer is that that won't be true for our church.

That the statistics of the world may be what they are, but that's not going to be true for access.

May we be the most connected, the most relational.

May we find the kinds of people in our life who see greatness in us and call it out like a good coach.

May we find people in our life that we can lean on when we feel spiritually depleted.

May we find the kind of people in our lives who can speak truth to us in those moments that we desperately need someone to tell us what is actually true.

And God, the solution is may we be it for somebody else.

God, my prayer as a result is that relationships will thrive and that we'll experience the beauty of what you intended in Jesus' name.

With your head still bowed and eyes still closed at all of our locations.

Maybe you came to church and you've never started the most important relationship, which means you've never made the decision to follow Jesus.

And whether you've never started following Jesus, or maybe you just feel like you've gotten so far that you need to hit restart today.

This moment's for you.

If you need to start or restart following Jesus, would you raise your hand right now if this is you?

Come on at all of our locations.

This is for you.

Thank you, right here.

Thank you, thank you.

Yeah, I love it.

I see you in the back.

Thank you.

So cool.

If this is you, I want to invite you to make this decision public by saying this prayer out loud with me.

Don't just say it, but mean it.

And I want you to repeat after me out loud, and we're not gonna let you do this alone.

Our whole church is gonna pray with you because we're standing with you in this moment.

Let's pray this together.

Would you say this out loud?

Say Jesus.

Come on, everybody, Jesus.

I give you my life.

I need you to be my Lord and Savior.

You being Lord means you're the king.

You call the shots.

And you being my savior means you can forgive me of all of my sins.

So, Jesus, today, I ask you to forgive me, change me, make my life new.

From this day forward, I choose to follow you.

In Jesus' name.

Amen, amen.

Come on, let's celebrate with those who make that and let's think we cover now.