Speaker 1: Hey, what up?
Speaker 1: It's Mark Carter on, the Pastor of Fierce Church.
Speaker 1: Welcome to our podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm so pumped that you're able to join us today.
Speaker 1: I hope this encourages you, inspires you, strengthens you, gives you hope to keep pressing on, and it's my prayer that this sermon gives you a more expansive view of God's love for you.
Speaker 1: Enjoy the message.
Speaker 1: Hey, we're going to go to God's Word today and we're going to learn about friendship and how it's a power up to us.
Speaker 1: So some of you maybe only a few might be familiar with the movie the Bride of Frankenstein.
Speaker 1: There's a scene let's see if we can get that on the screen.
Speaker 1: There's a scene where Frankenstein is kind of running away from everybody.
Speaker 1: He's hurt, everybody rejects him, he's scary, he looks like a monster, he is a monster, and so he's running out into the woods and he's just kind of like looking where do I go?
Speaker 1: And he happens upon this hermit's little house and this hermit is blind.
Speaker 1: The hermit begins to sense him and hear him and right away runs out and tries to bring him into the house.
Speaker 1: He can't see him, so he's not afraid of him and he starts to treat Frankenstein really well.
Speaker 1: In fact, he gets him to sit down and he begins to feed him, and then he even gets him to lay down and he begins to pray and he says God, I thank you so much that you led me to a friend.
Speaker 1: I've been asking you to a friend and here's my friend.
Speaker 1: In a similar way, we're all kind of looking for friends.
Speaker 1: We're all asking the question is there anybody like me out there?
Speaker 1: And the good news is there's lots of folks like you and there's a lot of unique contributions that you're going to bring to them.
Speaker 1: Last weekend we talked about relentlessness and how that's a power-up and how that's a kind of like when you eat a Mario mushroom and you get really big and strong.
Speaker 1: That's what the attitude, that's what the posture of relentlessness is in our lives, when we choose to take something that God wants us to take when we choose.
Speaker 1: I'm not just going to do Christianity in the passenger seat, I'm going to be in the driver's seat, so I don't find myself a little bit later in the ditch not knowing what happened.
Speaker 1: But today we're talking about the strengths that we get from being in community.
Speaker 1: How do we become better friends?
Speaker 1: How do we get better friends?
Speaker 1: Some of us are asking that question how do I get better friends?
Speaker 1: And some would say, well, you know what you do, is you trade in the friends you got for better friends?
Speaker 1: It's kind of like a car okay, you're like done with you, guys, I need this kind of people and you're done with them.
Speaker 1: Others of us might say, well, you're not really going to be able to do that.
Speaker 1: So what you really want to do is you just want to change the friends you have into the friends that you wish they were, and so you can manipulate them and push on them and be passive, aggressive, and hopefully they're going to get it.
Speaker 1: This is super destructive, especially when those friends are married.
Speaker 1: It is not a good plan.
Speaker 1: I encourage you not to do it.
Speaker 1: To make this more complicated friendship can be very hard.
Speaker 1: We've all probably experienced a little bit, or a lot of it, of pain from friendships.
Speaker 1: They didn't always go well.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's produced some resentment.
Speaker 1: Sometimes we're carrying with us stuff that we really wish we weren't carrying with us.
Speaker 1: So that's a given.
Speaker 1: We're going to say that that's true.
Speaker 1: I'm going to hopefully convince you to try again by the end of this message.
Speaker 1: But what is a friend?
Speaker 1: Here's the definition that I wrote down.
Speaker 1: Friendship is a reciprocal relationship characterized by intimacy, faithfulness, trust, unmotivated kindness and service.
Speaker 1: The way to have better friends is to be a better friend to more people.
Speaker 1: We'll say that again the way to have better friends is to be a better friend to more people.
Speaker 1: So we're going to look at a very famous friendship.
Speaker 1: This is David and Jonathan, and they've got a super close, tight relationship that most of us we're not going to necessarily have a ton of those, but their relationship is so instructive that God is going to teach us a lot about it.
Speaker 1: So, just to set the stage, so to speak, david has recently just he just killed Goliath.
Speaker 1: The whole nation is really excited about it.
Speaker 1: They're wow, this guy here's our hero.
Speaker 1: Jonathan is also.
Speaker 1: He's just kind of digging David, I don't know if you've ever had the kind of relationship where right away there's kind of a responsiveness, there's a platonic attraction of like I just like them, I just like them, I just like them, I just want to get around them.
Speaker 1: That is what is happening with Jonathan.
Speaker 1: To be sure, they've got some stuff in common.
Speaker 1: They've both been very bold.
Speaker 1: They both love their nation.
Speaker 1: One time Jonathan, just like David, was bold with Goliath.
Speaker 1: One time Jonathan scaled a cliff and, with only one other guy, attacked a whole little army of people.
Speaker 1: So they have that in common, but there's also just something that God is doing in their hearts that is causing them to come together.
Speaker 1: The way to have better friends is to be a better friend.
Speaker 1: We're going to see, especially in the person of Jonathan, to more people.
Speaker 1: One more thing about Jonathan is he believes or sees or understands.
Speaker 1: There's been a prophecy that David is going to be the next king.
Speaker 1: Now that's a little troublesome, because Jonathan is the prince and the heir apparent.
Speaker 1: He should be the next king, and yet there's this prophecy going around.
Speaker 1: Nobody knows who started it, necessarily, but Jonathan is aware and he is actually going to affirm David in it, even though his old man, saul, is super jealous and doesn't want to hear anything about that.
Speaker 1: We're going to pick it up in verse one, chapter 18.
Speaker 1: As soon as he had finished speaking to Saul, the soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David and Jonathan loved him as his own soul, and Saul took him that day and would not let him return to his father's house.
Speaker 1: He was like hey, come live with us.
Speaker 1: He just killed Goliath.
Speaker 1: Then Jonathan made a covenant with David because he loved him as his own soul, and Jonathan stripped himself of his robe that was on him and gave it to David and his armor, and even his sword and his bow and his belt.
Speaker 1: This covenant that he makes we're going to talk a little bit about that later but this is an agreement that they might have made in ancient times and there's rewards if everybody fulfills what they said they would do.
Speaker 1: But there's also punishments or, you know, negative things could happen if you don't fulfill the terms of the covenant.
Speaker 1: But they're making a covenant together.
Speaker 1: Their covenant together is not necessarily the kind of friends we all need to pursue.
Speaker 1: We don't need a ton of covenant level friends.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about the different kinds of friends that we could have.
Speaker 1: I'm going to talk about levels one through four or levels zero through three, and there's a lot of other.
Speaker 1: You know it's a spectrum, guys, so this isn't going to describe every relationship, but they're all in this spectrum.
Speaker 1: The first is zero and that's not really friends at all.
Speaker 1: These are just people that they might be on your social media.
Speaker 1: You knew them at one point, but the truth is you don't know much about what's going on in their life and you don't particularly care about what's going on in their life.
Speaker 1: They're kind of like your online trading cards.
Speaker 1: Okay, when I was a kid I had garbage pelt kids.
Speaker 1: My brother collected baseball cards.
Speaker 1: I go to my friend.
Speaker 1: I'm like hey, have you got?
Speaker 1: You know, snotty lotty or whatever her name is, you know he trade me.
Speaker 1: Y'all don't know about that man, it's a whole thing, don't worry about it.
Speaker 1: You had extras and you traded them and that's sometimes like that's the value almost of our online friends.
Speaker 1: Like I don't know man, oh, that happened.
Speaker 1: Great, I saw that you did a thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, but they're not really anything that you're thinking about after that moment.
Speaker 1: That's not real friends, that's trading card friends.
Speaker 1: Then there's casual friends.
Speaker 1: These are friends who you know about them.
Speaker 1: You probably have some casual friends here at church.
Speaker 1: Like you know something about them.
Speaker 1: You know maybe a little bit of their, maybe their job or maybe something they've achieved, or maybe the sport that they like you don't know what's on.
Speaker 1: You know that's the parent of that kid that your kid plays with, or whatever it is.
Speaker 1: You know them and you're like okay, you're not necessarily going to defend them against anything and if they try to be super, like, transparent and accountable with you, you're going to be weirded out.
Speaker 1: And vice versa, they're going to be weirded out Like you're not there, you haven't opened your hearts to one another.
Speaker 1: You're just around.
Speaker 1: You know your acquaintances A little bit further.
Speaker 1: A little bit closer is level two.
Speaker 1: These are people that you're intentionally putting yourself around.
Speaker 1: If you're imagining you're on a boat to somewhere, these are people you're like we're going to be on the boat together for a while.
Speaker 1: I like to be in your life.
Speaker 1: I'm pursuing being in your life and you know a little bit more about them.
Speaker 1: Like you might defend them because you know their heart about a lot of things.
Speaker 1: They've opened up their heart to a degree with you.
Speaker 1: You know a little bit more than just some of the circumstances.
Speaker 1: You might even know some of the pains.
Speaker 1: They've let you know some of that.
Speaker 1: They will even let you hold them accountable to a degree, like if you see them doing something that, like that was weird.
Speaker 1: I saw you like did you know that?
Speaker 1: You did that?
Speaker 1: You just taught your wife a really bad way in front of everybody.
Speaker 1: That was kind of weird.
Speaker 1: None of my business, maybe, but you know, just as a Christian brother.
Speaker 1: You might want to.
Speaker 1: You know, maybe that's a thing to look at, but you might not go there because the relationship is not necessarily close enough for you to feel like you can do that.
Speaker 1: Then there's level three, and this is at the.
Speaker 1: This is David and Jonathan level.
Speaker 1: This is committed.
Speaker 1: This is really what every marriage is supposed to be.
Speaker 1: This is we've come together and instead of we're going to ride the boat together for a little while with these people, you're choosing which boat based on what boat they're taking.
Speaker 1: You would rearrange life to go on their boat because they're so crucial and they're so central to your life.
Speaker 1: Now, probably we don't have a ton of these, but these are.
Speaker 1: You know their goals, like, you know what they're after and you're after it with them.
Speaker 1: This is what David and Jonathan want.
Speaker 1: Like, whatever you want to get out, I'll take risks for you, I'll sacrifice for you.
Speaker 1: I'll probably mess up and I'll apologize to you.
Speaker 1: I'll defend you because we are that level of friend.
Speaker 1: Now, warning everybody is an imperfect friend.
Speaker 1: There are no perfect friends here on earth that you're going to get.
Speaker 1: You're going to have really good friends, probably, but not perfect friends.
Speaker 1: Whatever 1410 says this, each heart knows its own bitterness and no one else can fully share its joy.
Speaker 1: Even when you're married to somebody for decades, there's that.
Speaker 1: You probably know just about everything and you've shared everything you know to share.
Speaker 1: But you're going to feel one way someday and they're going to be like I don't totally get it.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to get it, but I'm not there with you.
Speaker 1: I can't totally experience it with you and that's by design.
Speaker 1: Nobody can experience that with us.
Speaker 1: Nobody knows your heart to that level, except for Jesus.
Speaker 1: He's the one who knows and he's the one he wants us to share it with him.
Speaker 1: Now, some of us you're like Carla.
Speaker 1: Can I just have like a really close friend that isn't trying to change me?
Speaker 1: Can I just tell you that's called a puppy.
Speaker 1: That's what a puppy is.
Speaker 1: Puppies are great, but they're not going to do this.
Speaker 1: They're not human friends.
Speaker 1: They're going to love you no matter what and they're not going to try to do anything.
Speaker 1: Now here's the thing Jesus loves you no matter what and he is going to set you up for change because there's ways that he wants to see you conform to his image.
Speaker 1: Come on somebody, by the way, just so you know when I'm like super out of energy.
Speaker 1: The more you say amen, it's like power up.
Speaker 1: That's feeding me a Mario mushroom right there.
Speaker 1: So now here's what's happening.
Speaker 1: After all this several years goes by and David at first is in a little bit of favor with the king.
Speaker 1: But the king grows sour and he's disliking David more and more and he gets to the point where he's trying to kill him.
Speaker 1: And first Jonathan doesn't believe it.
Speaker 1: And then, slowly, jonathan begins to see, yeah, my old man, like he's got these demons that are just making him out of his mind.
Speaker 1: He's doing erratic, crazy stuff.
Speaker 1: He's obsessed with this kid.
Speaker 1: And Jonathan is very nervous.
Speaker 1: And they're having talks, they're planning what you know?
Speaker 1: What should we do?
Speaker 1: And finally we get to.
Speaker 1: It's really the last scene that they're ever going to see one another alive.
Speaker 1: David is hiding.
Speaker 1: Saul, you know, is in Goboa with his pop, with his family.
Speaker 1: They must have some kind of like network where secret things are being communicated, because even though David isn't hiding, jonathan finds out about it and he goes to see him.
Speaker 1: Let's pick it up First.
Speaker 1: Samuel 23, 15.
Speaker 1: David saw that Saul had come out to seek his life.
Speaker 1: David was in the wilderness of Ziff, at Horesh, and Jonathan saw his son Rose and went to David at Horesh and strengthened his hand in God and he said to him do not fear for the hand of Saul.
Speaker 1: My father shall not find you.
Speaker 1: You shall be king over Israel and I shall be next to you.
Speaker 1: Saul, my father also knows this, and the two of them made a covenant before the Lord.
Speaker 1: David remained at Horesh and Jonathan went home.
Speaker 1: These guys have a very special relationship and it's very empowering, but there's ways all of us can grow in some of the characteristics of their friendship.
Speaker 1: They were what we could just call their power up friends, their friends.
Speaker 1: When you're around them you get better and bigger and stronger, versus necessarily folks that just you know they're fine or maybe even they're a little bit depleting.
Speaker 1: These are power up friends and we all need power up friends.
Speaker 1: Now we're going to go through these characteristics and here's what I want to challenge you to do.
Speaker 1: The best thing to do is not to be disappointed with all the ways people weren't friends to you.
Speaker 1: You're going to be disappointed and I'm sorry if that happened, but the right way to do this is we're going to look at these characteristics and we're going to ask Holy Spirit of Jesus, would you show me any of these places where, this year, you want me to be a better friend?
Speaker 1: I'm not going to be a perfect friend.
Speaker 1: We're not guys.
Speaker 1: We don't aim at perfect in this church, like we're aiming at Jesus and he's going to help us get perfecter, but we're just trying to be a little bit better.
Speaker 1: That's a good goal.
Speaker 1: I'm going to try to be a little bit better in this thing.
Speaker 1: Okay, no-transcript.
Speaker 1: Number one power up.
Speaker 1: Friends are open and transparent.
Speaker 1: When he says and Jonathan loved him as his own soul, that's a metaphor for transparency.
Speaker 1: That just means hey, man, it's kind of like an open door policy.
Speaker 1: I get to see into your heart.
Speaker 1: You tell me what's really going on.
Speaker 1: This is where you don't only talk about facts or the weather or something like that, like you talk about your feelings when you want to and the other person tries to understand those feelings and tries to maybe be a signing board and walk you through that.
Speaker 1: So here's one question that some of us have got to ask are you living so guarded that people can't even really get to know you, or not enough people?
Speaker 1: Your mom, okay, that's fine, but not enough people are getting.
Speaker 1: You can't really be super transparent with somebody and you're like, well, I'll just be that for them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's not the same thing and over time that's gonna still lead to loneliness and possibly resentment, which leads to pride and further isolation.
Speaker 1: So we wanna watch out for that.
Speaker 1: Friends are not afraid to point out one another's faults.
Speaker 1: That's part of being transparent.
Speaker 1: Proverbs 27, 6,.
Speaker 1: Faithful are the wounds of a friend, but deceitful are the kisses of the enemy.
Speaker 1: One of the things I try to tell all the groups at the Grove and fierce men when we meet is as you're in your groups, guys, go a little bit deeper than you feel like you should be a little bit more transparent, push on it a little bit.
Speaker 1: And the reason for that is I've been in like church community groups where everybody was so surfaced and dude, it was bogus man, these people were not connecting and it was very unsatisfying and I was like what are we doing here, guys?
Speaker 1: Like either let's do this or let's not do this.
Speaker 1: So I wanna challenge everybody to be a little bit more transparent than you think maybe you should.
Speaker 1: A great place to do that, ladies, is fierce women.
Speaker 1: Okay, it's coming up this Saturday.
Speaker 1: I think you're gonna have a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: It's the first one, so we're gonna figure it out.
Speaker 1: There's gonna be some stuff that probably gets a little bit shaped differently than fierce men, but I think we're gonna have a good time.
Speaker 1: Some of us say, yeah, macarthur, what if I don't like everything that I see?
Speaker 1: What if I'm with this person and I begin to see some of the not so pleasant parts and maybe they don't even see them?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the real reality.
Speaker 1: That's part of the openness and transparency, and here's what I would try and encourage you.
Speaker 1: We don't love people because they're so like us or because they do everything right.
Speaker 1: We love them because of what Christ did for us and therefore, what we want to happen is I wanna see all my relationships, you wanna see all your relationships, through the lens of the cross.
Speaker 1: That means between you and every relationship there's a cross and you're saying Jesus did this for me.
Speaker 1: He did for me better than I deserve.
Speaker 1: So for my friend, I'm gonna do better than they deserve, because I'm trying to be a cross-shaped warrior.
Speaker 1: Power-up friends love us better than we deserve.
Speaker 1: They love us better than we deserve.
Speaker 1: I've got some friends who you know.
Speaker 1: I respect them, kenzie, and I like them.
Speaker 1: If they come over.
Speaker 1: You know we wanna make a good impression.
Speaker 1: We're gonna clean up the house.
Speaker 1: It's gonna look nice.
Speaker 1: We've got some friends that we've known a little bit longer, maybe we've been a little bit closer to.
Speaker 1: We're so close that if we don't have time to clean the house we're like it's only them.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: You're close enough that it's like dude, you've already seen inside my soul.
Speaker 1: So this family room is fine.
Speaker 1: You'll be.
Speaker 1: You know there's no surprises for you.
Speaker 1: Well, let me ask you this question this year, would you say you think the Holy Spirit would say are you loving it?
Speaker 1: All the opportunities you have your friends better than they deserve, because that's the call, it's not just to love them for how they've done, it's better than they deserve.
Speaker 1: Here's number two friends are constant in hard times.
Speaker 1: They're constant in hard times and Jonathan rose and went to David at Horesh.
Speaker 1: Now scholars will tell us that Gilboa and Horesh, they were about 30 to 40 miles apart.
Speaker 1: So that's long on foot.
Speaker 1: In those times you could on a great day you could make it 20 miles on foot if everything was great.
Speaker 1: But this is probably lots of difficult terrain and he's probably going in stealth mode because he doesn't want anyone to know that he can't just walk out there.
Speaker 1: The king will follow him.
Speaker 1: So he's trying to get to his friend and it's taking many days, maybe through lots of difficult things, to get to his friend.
Speaker 1: Because he's constant, because he's faithful, he's trying to get to him.
Speaker 1: A really interesting idea, just to ponder this At the beginning of David's hardships, okay, he beats Goliath and then there's a period of hardships in David's life all the way up until really he becomes king, until Saul is dead.
Speaker 1: In between those hardships is all that trial and it's bracketed with the friendship of Jonathan.
Speaker 1: It's bracketed with the friendship of Jonathan.
Speaker 1: It starts with Jonathan and it ends with Jonathan.
Speaker 1: I wonder if that just means that there are certain friends God sends us to because they're gonna go through a season and God's like I want you to be a help in that season.
Speaker 1: They're gonna go through some stuff and I sent you, the Lord sent Jonathan, and he sent you to be a Jonathan in their life.
Speaker 1: See, I believe we're all called to be Johnnissans to somebody and that's gonna take sometimes.
Speaker 1: It's gonna take constancy and faithfulness and traveling a little further and doing it a little harder and shutting some things down and I think it might be helpful for all of us to think about.
Speaker 1: There might be some people because you're like, well, yeah, maybe I could do that, but I'd like some people to do that for me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1: But consider this there might be some people that already are doing that for you.
Speaker 1: They're loving you way better than you're knowing about, or that you're appreciating.
Speaker 1: There's some people that God has put in your life and, to be honest, we've all done this.
Speaker 1: You kind of take them for granted and the truth is there's things they don't even bring up and they're crushing it being faithful to you, and we ought to do our best to give them a high five every now and then.
Speaker 1: Be like I am so blessed that you are my friend.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I like seeing his bosses high five each other.
Speaker 1: That's really dope right there.
Speaker 1: Here's some things that shouldn't keep us from our friends, from fellowship.
Speaker 1: It's shame.
Speaker 1: We're feeling bad about ourselves.
Speaker 1: I'm too sinful, I messed up too much this week.
Speaker 1: I can't go to fierce women because they're all holy girls and I'm not, and that's the enemy, dude.
Speaker 1: Those gals are gonna strengthen you, they're gonna super Mario you, they're gonna make you better and they're not gonna shame you, because Jesus doesn't shame you.
Speaker 1: Sometimes people are isolating themselves, and here's the tragedy, guys, I get it Like sometimes you hear about an event and you're like I can't go there.
Speaker 1: There's people there.
Speaker 1: That's the last thing I want.
Speaker 1: We can come here, you know, because no one's really gonna talk to me and we're gonna be, I'm gonna raise my hands and sing, and but there's people at that thing.
Speaker 1: Yes, there are.
Speaker 1: We'll all take the challenge.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's hard for a lot of us, but consider, they're the people that we have to practice loving on.
Speaker 1: Who else are you gonna love in life, except for your friends?
Speaker 1: Here's something we don't think about.
Speaker 1: Whether we like it or not, guys, when you die and Jesus greets you, he's gonna do a review of sorts.
Speaker 1: Okay, he's gonna lay out all your stuff, just like if you were ever in junior high and you did the science fair and you had all your little solar system stuff or whatever.
Speaker 1: You brought cup of dirt, whatever it was.
Speaker 1: You brought that and you laid it out there and the teachers came by and they were like, what is this?
Speaker 1: Well, there's a version of that that's gonna happen with Jesus and he's gonna see.
Speaker 1: Well, there's trinkets here and there's fears here and there's stuff that doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: Here we have way better than that.
Speaker 1: That doesn't matter, it's just an earthly thing and there's gonna be some love.
Speaker 1: And he'd be like that's what counted, that's what I was looking for and we want that moment to go as best as it possibly can, and if we're always isolating, we're just not gonna have the opportunities to get more on that table.
Speaker 1: Are we hearing that?
Speaker 1: And guys, I get it.
Speaker 1: I get tired and it's hard sometimes to engage.
Speaker 1: But who else are you gonna love, man, if not those people that it's gonna take a little work to get around them.
Speaker 1: Good job, saying amen.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say amen.
Speaker 1: The way to have better friends is to be a better friend to more people.
Speaker 1: I wanna encourage us to ask Jesus for faithful friends and to ask him also for friends.
Speaker 1: He's asking you to be faithful with See.
Speaker 1: We all want, like, give me some levels, two and three friends.
Speaker 1: That's what I want Awesome, and some catered especially for you.
Speaker 1: There's ears that my wife and I do.
Speaker 1: We just didn't have any friends and we're like Jesus, I don't know what to do.
Speaker 1: Give us friends, please, and then we would pray for mentors and over the years, not over the weeks, the Lord began to raise up friends that were just awesome and mentors that were just awesome.
Speaker 1: But we had to ask, and so I wanna encourage you ask.
Speaker 1: Ask for some deep people that you choose to vote with them, but then also ask the Lord to choose some people.
Speaker 1: He wants you to get on their boat and be faithful, because you're bracketing a season of their life that they're really gonna need you, or the special kind of Jesus that comes through you.
Speaker 1: Power up friends, strengthen us in the Lord.
Speaker 1: He rose and went to David at Horesh and strengthened his hand in God and he said to him you shall be the king over Israel and I shall be next to you.
Speaker 1: How do we strengthen one another?
Speaker 1: One of the ways that we can do that see, everyone's going through trials, everyone's going through difficulty, sometimes just like David was, and Saul tells him something that David probably believed, but it was hard to believe sometimes, sorry, jonathan.
Speaker 1: Jonathan is coming along to encourage him this and he just says David, if you're weak in your faith, let me be your faith right now, I'm gonna believe.
Speaker 1: So when you've got difficulty in your job, a friend comes along and says hey, man, I know it's shaky right now and you're discouraged, but I believe that God is gonna get you through that thing.
Speaker 1: He's gonna raise you up and you'll get beyond that thing.
Speaker 1: And you're wrestling with sickness and you just feel really bad and someone comes along and they put their armor on you and you're saying, hey, man, I know it's hard, I'm praying and believing for your healing.
Speaker 1: Maybe your belief is all worn out, but I'm gonna believe for you, as we need to believe for one another and we need to tell one another hey, don't worry about the faith thing so much right now.
Speaker 1: I'm believing for you, I'm praying for you and Jesus is gonna do this for you.
Speaker 1: He's gonna work it together for your good.
Speaker 1: So a friend believes God's best over us when we don't and a friend us believes the best over others when they don't, and they encourage one another in the will of God.
Speaker 1: That's what he did.
Speaker 1: He said look, david, this is gonna happen.
Speaker 1: I want you to remember that you're going to do this.
Speaker 1: We get to do that, too, with something even more powerful God's word.
Speaker 1: See, people forget the words of God.
Speaker 1: They forget what God says about them, and we get to come alongside.
Speaker 1: And when people are going through trials and difficulties.
Speaker 1: Can I just tell you I'm gonna give you a pastoral little hack here.
Speaker 1: Okay, you get in conversations.
Speaker 1: People are like I don't know what to do.
Speaker 1: They're just telling me the problems.
Speaker 1: I don't know what to do.
Speaker 1: Here's a great step one first, pray, lord, give me something.
Speaker 1: Give me something here.
Speaker 1: But step two is Lord, what is the scripture that they need?
Speaker 1: Because it's the scripture that strengthens us.
Speaker 1: The scripture is the word that they need to believe.
Speaker 1: Maybe you need to believe for them, god, give me scripture.
Speaker 1: And sometimes, when you don't even know that, it's so like all you can do is just bleed with them, be like I don't know, but God's word is true and it's still true for you, and I don't know how it's gonna work out.
Speaker 1: I don't know how it's gonna happen, but it's still true for you.
Speaker 1: What do we do?
Speaker 1: We're gentle with their pain.
Speaker 1: If we're a good friend, we genuinely appreciate all that they are, but then we point them back to God's word, and sometimes that means we point them back to obedience.
Speaker 1: Really, all of us do this.
Speaker 1: We're trying to walk around obedience.
Speaker 1: We're like I don't know what to do.
Speaker 1: Did God tell you this?
Speaker 1: Yes, but I think there's another way.
Speaker 1: No, go back to when you last knew what you were supposed to do and go ahead and do that thing.
Speaker 1: Power up friends.
Speaker 1: Here's the last one relinquish their robes.
Speaker 1: They relinquish their robes.
Speaker 1: It said in verse four.
Speaker 1: Jonathan stripped himself of the robe that was on him and gave it to David and his armor, and even his sword and his bow and his belt.
Speaker 1: Giving him his robe was saying David, this is a princely, royal robe that I'm putting on you because, even though my old man doesn't like it and even though my flesh might not like it and it means I'm not gonna get all the enrichments and all the gifts that I was going to get I know what God wants and he wants this, and I'm willing to give you my realm of strip myself.
Speaker 1: And you're gonna be the king of Israel.
Speaker 1: You're gonna be the defender of the nation, you're gonna be the one that is viewed as the one who protects all of us.
Speaker 1: That's a really big deal to lay down our rights, things that we have a right to for our friends.
Speaker 1: I wrote it down this way power up, friends, say I want you to be everything God is calling you to be, even if it costs me personally.
Speaker 1: I want you to be everything that God wants you to be, even if it costs me personally, even if I have to contribute to it, even if it costs me time, it costs me money, it costs me sleepless nights, whatever it costs.
Speaker 1: Whatever I can do, however, I can get you to that.
Speaker 1: I wanna be a part of that, because it's a privilege.
Speaker 1: And here's where we see, as Jonathan is a picture, he's a type of Jesus.
Speaker 1: See, jesus is the king.
Speaker 1: He comes down off his throne and takes off his robe and he puts it on us.
Speaker 1: He says I came from heaven so that you can wear the robe of righteousness.
Speaker 1: I came from heaven, off my throne, so you can share my throne with me later on.
Speaker 1: I came with my crown of righteousness to give it to you so that you would have the righteousness of God in Christ.
Speaker 1: That's a deep surrender for Jesus.
Speaker 1: So in some way we could say Meaning at the right way.
Speaker 1: During that bracketed time, god used Jonathan to save David in a lot of circumstances the same way, only much fuller and deeper and more meaningful.
Speaker 1: God uses Jesus to save us from our sin, our foolish mistakes.
Speaker 1: God covers us all kinds of times that we don't even know.
Speaker 1: I mean, just think about how many times God has had your back and, like you, even prayed for something.
Speaker 1: You're like, well, there it is, and it was something little.
Speaker 1: And you're like, well, there it is, and it's almost like God bothered with that.
Speaker 1: And yet he did why?
Speaker 1: Because he's your friend, or he was held something from you.
Speaker 1: And later on you saw, oh God, that was smart Dang.
Speaker 1: Sorry to be complaining about that, because why did he do it?
Speaker 1: He did it because he was your friend.
Speaker 1: Jesus is the faithful friend that always treats us better than we deserve.
Speaker 1: John 15, 13,.
Speaker 1: Greater love has no one than this, that someone laid down his life for his friends.
Speaker 1: And Jesus says you are my friends if you do what I command.
Speaker 1: No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing, but I've called you friends, for all that I've heard from my father I've made known to you.
Speaker 1: If we want to be a good friend to Jesus, the first thing we need to do is say yes, sir, I will obey you.
Speaker 1: I will aim to be a good friend, the way these guys are, the way Jesus calls me to.
Speaker 1: In your power, I'll do what you command.
Speaker 1: He said you're my friends.
Speaker 1: He says I'm already your friend, you're being my friend when you do what I say.
Speaker 1: And then he says it's so awesome, I've made known to you all that I heard from my father.
Speaker 1: I've made known to you.
Speaker 1: The second thing we want to do as Jesus' friend is talk to him, get in his word.
Speaker 1: Have this thing called a quiet time, get that down man, get the discipline it takes, whether you're starting at five minutes or 45 minutes, where you are listening to God and going into his scripture, because that's where he's making known to you all that the Father has said.
Speaker 1: It's right there you have all that the Father has said in written form that Jesus wants you to know.
Speaker 1: Jesus says I'm your friend, I want you to know this, but you got to come spend time with me.
Speaker 1: And, guys, we need it, we need it and we need it really badly.
Speaker 1: And here's why Because, at the end of the day, you and I are all Frankenstein monsters.
Speaker 1: We're all stitched together.
Speaker 1: Contradictions, right, like we like this thing over here, but we also like this thing over here, and it kind of opposes that.
Speaker 1: We can be super arrogant in one moment, and yet we're.
Speaker 1: Then we're like super down and depressed about how bad we are at something.
Speaker 1: The next moment, we can choose all the wrong things for ourselves and then be so good at choosing for other people.
Speaker 1: We are walking contradictions and what we really need, like Frankenstein, was wandering around looking for a friend.
Speaker 1: We're wandering around life looking for friends and Jesus says what you need is you need a master friend, you need the ultimate power up.
Speaker 1: You need Jesus to be your master friend because he's the one who completes you.
Speaker 1: Remember we said no one is really going to know your heart except Jesus.
Speaker 1: He's the one who completes you.
Speaker 1: He's the one that's going to make your friendship work and help others.
Speaker 1: He's the ultimate friend.
Speaker 1: Let's bow our heads and pray.
Speaker 1: Lord, we it's so incredible to think about we were out looking for a friend.
Speaker 1: We're out looking for you, but you were already out looking for us, thank you.
Speaker 1: Now we want to ask for healed hearts and hurts where we've been hurt by friendships.
Speaker 1: Maybe something just didn't go right and ended weird and abruptly and there's maybe even some business to do, or maybe not.
Speaker 1: Maybe we're just supposed to delete it and move on.
Speaker 1: Whatever that is, god, I pray that you would heal it in such a way that we can look back and say that was real, but it is healed.
Speaker 1: And then, god, would you show us the people you're calling us to be?
Speaker 1: Jonathan's to People were called to walk through seasons of life and be on the same boat and sometimes even choose the same boat.
Speaker 1: God, we put ourselves.
Speaker 1: We are clay in your hands In Jesus' name.
Speaker 1: Hey, thank you so much for joining us today.
Speaker 1: If you don't have a home church and you're looking for a Bible preaching community that has its heart set on passionately knowing Jesus and being his witness in our generation, check out FierceChurch.
Speaker 1: We'd love for you to join us, either digitally or in person.
Speaker 1: Also, if you're looking for leadership development related content, don't forget to check out the Fierce Leadership Podcast, available wherever you get your podcasts from.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to those of you who give generously to support this ministry.
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Speaker 1: Whatever challenges you're facing, I know you can make it.
Speaker 1: Don't give up.
Speaker 1: Hang on to Jesus.
Speaker 1: He won't let go of you.
Speaker 1: Jesus loves you so much and we love you.
Speaker 1: I hope someday we get to meet in person.
Speaker 1: Thanks again for listening.