Friends: How are you doing at being a good one?

Are you friends who can sit with someone through the hard times? Do you deal with facts and empathy or misinformation and chaos? Can you empathize with your friends from the highest highs to the lowest lows? Before you speak, are you asking God for wisdom to reflect His truth into their lives? Let’s be friends who build up rather than tear down. Let’s be friends who provide a hand-up rather than a hand-out. Be the dads who model true friendship to this world we live in.

There was a short series of 3 Sermons recently that I got to hear and they were titled Friend Requests. Below are links to the YouTube sermons and their key bullet points. Please watch them to get all the great details.

Friends Requests

How To Be Good At Friendship

• Friendships are hard but the hard things are worth it and the best things.
• John 13:34 – Agape Love – more than just friendship
• Romans 12:9-10, 13 – Love must be Sincere
• To be good at friendship we have to Give. It’s intuitive but not natural. Giving without expecting anything in return

The Failure of Modern Friendship

• Proverbs 27:17 – Iron sharpens Iron
• To be a disciple of Jesus requires we need friends who sharpen us.
• We can’t be disciples in isolation
• Today we are more connected and more alone
• 1 in 3 adults have a deep sense of loneliness weekly
• 5 Things Develop Iron Friendships
  • Proverbs 18:1 – Intentionality – DTR – Define The Relationship, Ask for Iron friendship
  • Ecclesiastes 4:9-12 – Work is required
  • Proverbs 27:5-6- Friction – Need sincere
  • Galatians 6:9-10 – Time – Can’t rush the process
  • Hebrews 10:24-25Regularity – Process never finishes

CROWD CONTROL

• Exodus 32:1-6
• Mark 11:27-33
• Matthew 27:15-26
• Mark 15:15
• Romans 12:2
• The “C”‘s for Friendship
  • The Christ – Jesus in the center
  • The Crew – The next layer is the inner group defined in the previous sermon people who sharpen you – Ephesians 4:1-16
  • The Church – Similar beliefs part of the body of Christ in the world
  • The Crowd – everyone else

If you have time use the links above and catch the recorded messages. If you have more time you can rewind and join the worship sets.

Topic: JOB’S PALS

Verse: Job 16:2

'“I have heard many things like these; you are miserable comforters, all of you! '

Let’s be the dads who know how to support in difficult times. Let’s be the dads who can pause and ask God for wisdom before we choose to speak. Job’s friends were okay until they opened their mouths, so we need to be slow to anger, slow to speak, and quick to listen.

Being friends needs to go beyond the start

Today’s Devotional kicks off with a reference to “humorist Arnold H. Glasgow who said ‘A loyal friend laughs at your jokes when they’re not so good and sympathizes with your problems when they’re not so bad.'” It then goes to the story of Job and how well they did in the beginning when it references Job 2:11.

'When Job’s three friends, Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite, heard about all the troubles that had come upon him, they set out from their homes and met together by agreement to go and sympathize with him and comfort him. '

Friends need wisdom before they speak

We need to be the dads who when someone is going through a tough and troubling time don’t just start well like Job’s friends did but finish stronger by seeking and receiving God’s wisdom before we choose to speak. Be the dads who seek God’s wisdom so as not to “spout opinions with misinformation” and end up “taking a wrong turn” which exasperates the situation.

Today’s Devotional closes with the following question:

• “How many times have you resembled Job’s friends?”

It closes with the following challenge when we are confronted with a friend who is suffering: “Let’s sit where they sit, weep where they weep, laugh as they laugh. Let’s ask God for wisdom to reflect His truth into their lives in a way that builds them up” before we speak find ourselves in the position of “miserable comforters.”

“Friends are relatives you make for yourself.”

EUSTACHE DESCHAMPS