OCF RETREAT: CONCERNING FRIENDSHIP

INTRO: Elmo

https://abcnews.go.com/amp/GMA/Wellness/elmo-mental-health-post-viral/story?id=106823656

"Elmo is just checking in. How is everybody doing?"

If you were to be totally honest, how would you respond?

**The point: many people are lonely; more lonely than they’re willing to admit.

Part One: The Loneliness Epidemic

Loneliness is killing the next generation. They are the most “connected,” and yet at the same the most isolated. With social media, we have attempted to actualize our social lives, trying to make it as convenient and as efficient as possible. Actualizing online shopping is one thing, but trying to actualize fellowship is another. And what we’ve found is that in an attempt to be hyperconnected, we’ve lost touch with what fellowship actually looks like. We’ve realized that friendship is not as easy as just being connected with people superficially, and that we as people crave something more, and people are beginning to wake up to the deep human need for fellowship.

The Surgeon General put out a general health advisory almost a year ago listing loneliness as one of the top health concerns in America. Here are some things that they said…

Today, United States Surgeon General released a new Surgeon General Advisory calling attention to the public health crisis of loneliness, isolation, and lack of connection in our country. Even before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, approximately half of U.S. adults reported experiencing measurable levels of loneliness. Disconnection fundamentally affects our mental, physical, and societal health. In fact, loneliness and isolation increase the risk for individuals to develop mental health challenges in their lives, and lacking connection can increase the risk for premature death to levels comparable to smoking daily.

***

Objective measures of social exposure obtained from 2003-2020 find that social isolation, measured by the average time spent alone,... has been on the rise. At the same time, social participation across several types of relationships has steadily declined. For instance, the amount of time respondents engaged with friends socially in-person decreased from 2003 (30-hours/month) to 2020 (10-hours/month).... This decline is starkest for young people ages 15 to 24. For this age group, time spent in-person with friends has reduced by nearly 70% over almost two decades, from roughly 150 minutes per day in 2003 to 40 minutes per day in 2020.64 The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated trends in declining social participation.

The number of close friendships has also declined over several decades. ...Almost half of Americans (49%) in 2021 reported having three or fewer close friends —only about a quarter (27%) reported the same in 1990. Social connection continued to decline during the COVID-19 pandemic, with one study finding a 16% decrease in network size from June 2019 to June 2020 among participants.

In a U.S.-based study, participants who reported using social media for more than two hours a day had about double the odds of reporting increased perceptions of social isolation compared to those who used social media for less than 30 minutes per day.

Needless to say, all of this data points to the fact that loneliness is not good. And yet, across our society, lonliness is the norm.

And all of this should be totally unsurprising to Christians. Why? Because of what we believe about humankind! See a part of the reason that our culture is having so much trouble with fellowship, with the way that people relate, is a direct result of what they believe about people. I mean, what is a human being? The way we answer this question will determine how we think about and how we go about fellowship.

Compare answers

Aristotle → a human is a political animal

Marcion → a human is a sack of excrement, begotten by an obscene act, cast into the world by grotesque convulsions, and finally doomed to be dissolved by death

Jean-Paul Sartre → The human being is nothing else but what he makes of himself

George Simpson → Humankind is the result of a purposeless and natural process that did not have him in mind

Jared Diamond → humans are little more than glorified chimpanzees

Answers.com → a human being is the complex assembly of oxygen (65%), carbon (18%), hydrogen (10%), nitrogen (3%), calcium (1.5%), phosphorus (1.0%), potassium (0.35%), sulfur (0.25%), sodium (0.15%), magnesium (0.05%), along with copper, zinc, selenium, molybdenum, fluorine, chlorine, iodine, manganese, cobalt, iron, (0.70%), plus trace amounts of lithium, strontium, aluminum, silicon, lead, vanadium, arsenic, and bromine.

CHAT GPT AI → A human being is a biological organism of the species Homo sapiens. Humans are characterized by their highly developed brain and complex social structures, as well as their ability to communicate and create culture through language. Humans are capable of experiencing a wide range of emotions, and they have a profound capacity for reasoning, creativity, and abstract thought. They also possess physical characteristics, such as upright posture and dexterous hands, that have allowed them to become one of the most successful species on the planet.

Think Pair Share — Make a list of the things that make a human a human.

Part Two: What Do We Think About People?

Ask students to share, and write responses up on the board. As students respond, recognize the following:

Human beings are complex and difficult to understand. “The answer will change depending on whether one wants to give a biological, psychological, cultural, ontological, or religious answer” (Bird 731).

We bring our personal experience into what we think about human beings.

HOW WE ANSWER THIS QUESTION MAKES A DIFFERENCE. It changes what we think people are capable of. It changes what we think people were intended for, or if they have purpose and meaning at all. It changes what we think people are worth. It changes what we think about issues like sexuality, and whether or not people and our impulses and desires are naturally good, whether or not people have inalienable rights. EVERY EVIL ACT BEGINS BY DEHUMANIZING ANOTHER PERSON, starting with genocide. (cf. Kant’s Categorical Imperative; treating people as ENDS, not as MEANS). How we answer this has major moral and teleological significance. If people have no purpose, then why pursue one another?

And, of course, this is a general version of a question we’re all asking ourselves: “Who am I?” Am I good? How do I understand my own sexuality? What am I worth? What is my purpose? What am I capable of?

Transition → Thankfully, God has responded to these questions in the Bible, His Word! If we’re going to love the human beings around us, and if we’re going to live into all that God desires us to be, then we need to know what God says about humans. And there’s no better place to start than with the account of Creation in Genesis.

Part Three: The Imago Dei

The Creation of Humankind

**“Elevated prose that borders on the poetic” (Wolf 96). Not two separate, competing accounts; they are two accounts with different emphasis or focus. The first is the universe, the second is God’s dealing with mankind. (Thus Elohim, the transcendent creator God; and Yaweh, the intimate God starting in 2:4 with “LORD”). **an elevated account**

Let’s read these verses together.

Genesis 1:1, Genesis 1:26–31 “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth.... Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food.” And it was so. God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.”

1:1 → In the beginning, God created

The ultimate reality of the universe is personal. “The universe is not merely the result of the impersonal plus time plus chance” (Dorman 78). A personal God created and is involved with His creation, including human beings.

God created out of nothing (ex nihilo). God is infinite, He doesn’t have a cause. Humans are finite; we are caused and brought into being by God. Without God, we don’t exist. He existed eternally; Our existence is contingent. “The universe did not come about merely by chance, and does not proceed merely by chance. God created the world for a purpose” (Dorman 78).

***This ensures that HUMAN EXISTENCE IS PURPOSEFUL. OUR LIVES HAVE MEANING.

God did not have to create us. The fact that He chose to do so is extremely significant. God would rather we exist than not exist. He purposefully chose to create human beings.

God precedes the universe.

God and matter do not coexist

God did not use preexistent matter to make the world.

God was not constrained by the materials He had to work with (unlike me when I cook! He produced exactly what He intended to!)

The universe had an absolute beginning (these points are from Bird)

How and why did God create us? (New City Catechism and Acts 17). No matter what else you do in life, God’s mission for your life is defined right here in these terms. This is why you exist! And this is all you need. He is enough.

1:26-27 → Humankind, male and female, are created in God’s Image

The first thing that the Bible wants us to know about humankind is that they are made in God’s image. It’s extremely important, and we’ll talk more about it in just a bit. For now, suffice it to say that God’s image sets humankind apart from the rest of creation.

The book The Divine Romance describes the awed shock and wonder of the angels as God created humanity: “Of no other creature could it be said that when God formed this one, He was thinking of Himself” (Divine Romance).

Notice: “THEN God said” → humans are made on the same day as the land animals, but are distinct from them. We are not the same thing as the rest of the animals that we see. We are a part of creation, but we are distinct from the rest of creation. The word “created” (bará) is only used in 1:1, 21, and 27. The difference between humanity and the rest of the living beings is like the difference between existence and non-existence. The creative act that makes something out of nothing is the same kind of creative act that brings humankind into the picture of the rest of creation (cf. Alan’s paper for the following).

Asher (AH-SHARE)→ “to make”; most general, used nearly 500 times in OT

Yazah (YAH-TZAH)→ “to form or fashion”; a little less common, but still implies preexistent materials

Bara (BAH-RAH)→ “to create” used exclusively with God as the agent. (cf. Ps 51, “create in me a clean heart). Emphasizes the agency and power of God.

1:31 → It was very good

From “good” to “very good” → this is both a moral statement (it was as it should be) and a statement of beauty (it was pleasing and wonderful to behold).

In our original created state, we were not merely innocent of sin, but there was truly an unadulterated beauty to human beings. We could work and rest and live with God and with one another in perfect relationship forever, cultivating and enjoying God’s creation and company in community.

Eden literally means “delight,” and that is what the originally created state was: a pure delight.

Q: How do we know that God intended for us to live in relationship with one another?

A: Because of the first thing that is considered “not good”—that man should be alone (Gen 2:18). This is incredible: In the world that the all-powerful God created, something was still incomplete. Before sin had entered into the world, something was “not good.” I don’t want to push this too far, but it’s the first tragedy in the Bible. Adam surveyed all the creatures that God had made, and realized He had no counterpart. No companion.

Even though our relationship with God is all we need on an absolute level, we were also designed to enjoy relationship with others; to need them. Sometimes in Christian circles, you can get the impression that we should not “need” other people. And there is a sense in which that is true. Yet, God created us to be dependent creatures, not independent creatures. This is why it’s so important for us to pursue gathering together, and to pursue groups like this. *Bonhoeffer? “The physical presence of other Christians is a source of incomparable joy and strength to the believer.” By nature, we are dependent on God and on others. In other words, friendship is the God-given antidote to loneliness. And that antidote is built into the way that we were designed.

Transition: So let’s take a closer look at that design by exploring this phrase that we jumped over earlier in Genesis 1:26-27, that we are created in the image of God.

The Image of God

“The most basic affirmation to be made concerning the nature of man from a Christian perspective” (Baker Encyclopedia of the Bible, “Image of God,” 1019)

Imago Dei = Image of God

Over the years, the Church has generally agreed that…

The image of God means that all human beings have worth and value (Gen. 9:6). “Whoever sheds human blood, by humans shall their blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made mankind”

Grudem’s definition: “The fact that man is in the image of God means that man is like God and represents God” (Christian Doctrine 189).

Both image and likeness “refer to something that is similar but not identical to the thing it represents or is an ‘image’ of” (Christian Doctrine 189). The idea is more like that of a statue than that of a clone. It is a monument to the glory of the original.

Probably, there is not meant to be a hard distinction between “image” and “likeness,” but rather that they nuance one another. (They are thought to be in Hebraic synonymous parallelism, cf. Ps 42:1; 51:1-2; Is. 53:5; Bird 745.)

Q: So, in what ways are we like God, and different from the rest of creation?

A: We are like God in that we have the ability to relate to God and others.

Humans are persons like God, and unlike animals. Two rocks don’t have relationships. I have a kind of relationship with a dog, but it doesn’t compare with the relationships we can have with other persons. Notice Adam sees all the animals and then recognizes that he is unique among them, without a counterpart. He has a greater capacity for relationship than any animal, and longs to share it with another person.

Concerning the Trinity → Since God is Triune, it would follow that His image brings with it the ability to have relationships. The fact that the ultimate reality of the universe is personal is significant. It makes sense of our self-perception as human persons. But the fact that God is not just a person, but is a Trinity, the fact that the ultimate reality of the universe is Triune, means that not only is the ultimate reality personal, but that it is relational. It means that God has been enjoying an intimate relationship (Father with Son and Spirit, and so on) for eternity past. God has been giving and receiving the intimate love of communion and friendship since before time began. This has traditionally been called in the Greek perichoresis—peri meaning “around” and choresis meaning “dance,” like our word “choreography.” God has been in the dance of friendship for all eternity. And when He created us like Him, He gave us the opportunity to experience and explore that same delight. “Humans image God by living in relationship to God, one another, and the rest of creation” (Treier 149).

These relationships require certain capacities which God has given in order to provide beauty and depth:

Moral - we have a will, an inner sense of right and wrong, and are accountable to God.

Spiritual - we are spiritual beings with a spiritual inner life that enables us to relate to God (we can communicate with Him, and He can communicate with us). This spiritual component also means that human beings will exist eternally.

Mental - we are conscious, have the ability to reason and think logically, have memory and creativity, and communicate complex thoughts.

Emotional - we have complex feelings and a sense of self. We have a desire for and innately value relationship (WILSON).

CONCLUSION: God has created us like Him, in His image, and has built us for relationship with Himself and with other people. Our will, our soul, our mind, our heart, and our body allow us to have a depth of relationship that would not be possible if any one of these elements were displaced.

Consider this: earlier I mentioned that our mind is a part of what it means for us to be created in the image of God. So, what would it be like to try to have a relationship with someone who has (literally, and entirely) lost their mind? How would that relationship be less than it might be if that person were to have a mind?

Illustration: Man with a 7-second memory. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vwigmktix2Y

*What we have in the mind makes a depth of relationship possible that would not be possible otherwise. One of the reasons we seek after God to know Him is in thanksgiving and in good stewardship of the mind He has given us.

With our mind, we can remember one another, consider one another, and have good and delightful conversation with one another.

With our will, we can choose one another.

With our body, we can hug and wrestle and affirm and comfort one another. Our bodies mediate all of our relationships. In a physical world, without a body we would have no way to interact with the world.

With our soul, we can share the deepest parts of ourselves with one another.

And in the same way that a clarinette would look worse for wear if I used it as walking stick rather than an instrument, today many people are suffering and struggling because sin has caused them to ignore or distort the kind of relationships that they were intended for.

**SUMMARY** — So, what we learn from the Creation account is that loneliness is not good, and that God deals with our loneliness by equipping us with everything we need for deep relationships with one another, and then gives us one another as a gift to be enjoyed in relationship. In other words, Loneliness is not good, and friendship is the God-given antidote to loneliness.

Part Four: What’s the Problem?

THINK PAIR SHARE: If we were made for relationships, then what makes friendship so difficult and rare in our society?

There are both typical and tragic answers to this question. For example, language and culture barriers are not morally wrong, but selfishness and hurtful behaviors are. We are FINITE and we are FALLEN.

At least part of the reason that our society fails is because we think that friendship is all about ourselves. We treat our relationships like a network that is built to prop us up, provide a safety net, and serve as a means to the end of our self-actualization. And if this is true, then the bigger the network, the better! So we use social media and we try to create friends like we’re closing business deals: get it in the bag, and always be finding a new friend.

But as finite creatures, we don’t have an infinite capacity for relationship. We only have so much time. We only have so many resources. And so, more doesn’t always mean better. In fact, British Biological Anthropologist Robin Dunbar theorized that you can only meaningfully maintain 150 relationships. We have tried so hard to be so connected, and it’s failed, in part, because we are trying to connect with everyone all of the time. And in the meantime, we feel like we don’t know anyone; we fear that no one really knows us. And so we try to fix the problem of our lonliness by getting more superficial friends, or by pursuing intimate encounters with people, but it just isn’t the same. It’s like C.S. Lewis writes in The Four Loves, “It's all love or sex these days. Friendship is almost as quaint and outdated a notion as chastity. Soon friends will be like the elves and the pixies - fabulous mythical creatures from a distant past.” We were not meant to be used to satiate one anothers’ needs and lusts; we were meant to know and be known by one another.

So, our limits make friendships difficult and rare, but also our sinful self-centeredness makes friendships difficult and rare. In other words, friendship is difficult because of sin.

Psalm 51:2 - “wash me thoroughly from my iniquity” (awon; Gk. anomia, without law)

awon (pronounced “aw-vone”), also translated “wickedness, perversity, or guilt,” with the root meaning of bending or twisting.

God created a good order, and sin is a twisting or distortion of that order.

This means that “sin, strictly speaking, has no ‘essence.’ Only a created being has an ‘essence,’ a stable set of qualities which are constituted and held together by God” (cf. Col 1:16-17; NDBT “Sin,” 783). In other words, sin is not natural to God’s created order.

“Sin is always the corruption of something good. Its existence is parasitic; it borrows… its reality from whatever it corrupts” (NDBT, “Sin,” 784).

Sin “kicks against the goads” of God’s good design. There’s a way that God has ordered the world so that it will flourish, and sin disrupts that order and prevents flourishing.

So in the case of our relationships, the love for one another we were intended for turns to Pride/self-centeredness. Augustine called this incurvatus in se, “turned/curved inward on oneself.” God created us to live in loving relationships with others, but now there is suspicion and fear that I might get hurt. Our interactions with others are all centered around what I get out of it; what is best for me. Sin bends our souls inward toward ourselves. God and others become tools for self-actualization, pleasure, and personal advancement. We objectify, dehumanize people. We put ourselves in the center of our universe, and live to please and gratify our own desires. We treat our relationships like they’re only good for what they can do for us, and that falls short of God’s design of knowing and being known by others.

And not only that, but the result of this sinful self-centeredness is that we hurt one another. We lie to one another. We gossip and slander. We put one another down to try and raise ourselves up. So sin causes us to look out for ourselves, to be centered on ourself, and it also means that people do evil things that hurt others. And so we learn patterns of living that are all about trying to preserve and protect myself. I’ve been hurt before, and I never want to be hurt that way again. This is basically where cancel culture comes from. You said the thing, and people who have said the thing have hurt me, so I’m going to make sure you never have a platform to say the thing ever again.

So the reality is that we hate being lonely, and we were designed for friendship, but there are days when it seems like all I can do is hurt people. Or, there are days where, because of the way I’ve been hurt, we wonder if we would be better off alone. And there’s a part of us that knows that isn’t true, but there’s a part of us that knows it is.

Part Five: What’s the Solution?

Q: So then, what are we supposed to do? How can we live in fellowship with one another? How can we develop the kind of friendships that God intended for us, where we’re able to know and be known?

The answer is that it’s really hard. We have this heart that has grown hard and calloused because it’s been hurt by others and tainted by sin. And we can either find ourselves rejecting others and pushing them away, or trying to use them to fill a hole in our hearts that only God can fill. But either way it’s this cycle rejection, and objectification, and hurt—even as believers. This happens over and over again with spouses relying on one another for happiness, and with friends trying to find their identity in one another. And when it doesn’t work out, there hurt and enmity and strife.

What we have to do is somehow break that cycle. See, this cycle is the same cycle that has played out over the years throughout human history. And this was certainly the case in the churches that Paul pastored and wrote letters to.

I want to quickly attend to Paul’s argument in the book of Ephesians, because in this letter he adresses some deep hurt and tension between people. Evidently, the churches that Paul was writing to in and around the city of Ephesus and in Asia Minor were having trouble relating between Jews and Gentiles. In this case, it was a complicated and well worn ratial divide that doubtless had sin issues and self-centeredness that energized the conflict and turned diversity into a problem. But rather than Paul throwing up his arms and giving up, he points to a solution.

In chapter one he reminds the church about how they have been blessed abundantly by God in Christ.

In chapter two he reminds the church of their common place at the foot of the cross, and of the great grace of God in salvation.

And then at the end of chapter 2, on the heels of presenting the gospel, he adresses this tension, saying…

Ephesians 2:11–22 NIV

Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called “uncircumcised” by those who call themselves “the circumcision” (which is done in the body by human hands)—remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ. 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. He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit. Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.

Paul is saying that these relationships are restored because of Christ’s work on the cross, through which we can come together in the church as one humanity. In other words, in the midst of both typical and tragic differences that make relationships difficult, Friendship is possible because of Christ. The gospel enables us to choose to love differently. Christ breaks the cycle of hurt and takes our sin onto Himself, and insodoing Paul says He “put to death their hostility.” So rather than allowing hostility to continue among people, Christ takes our hostility onto Himself, forgives us, unconditionally loves us, and then frees us to do the same for one another.

The result is that we don’t have to be guarded, because we are secure in Christ.

We don’t have to find our identity in others, because we know who we are in Christ.

We don’t have to put others down in order to be lifted up, because in Christ we have been raised up and look forward to reigning with Him.

We don’t have to settle for superficiality, because we can confess to one another down to the depths of our souls and give and receive grace because we know our sin is paid for.

In other words, all true friendship has it’s source in Christ, and its foundation in Christ’s love. This was the key principle of a book titled Spiritual Friendship that was written by a man of God in the Middle Ages. His whole theory of friendship rested on this one idea: “Love is the source and origin of friendship, friendship can never exist without love,” most importantly the love that we commonly receive from Christ (95).

In summary, we can love one another the way that God has loved us in Christ! Listen to this quote from Tim Keller’s book on marriage, but which also applies to deep friendships as well:

To be loved but not known is comforting but superficial. To be known and not loved is our greatest fear. But to be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God. It is what we need more than anything. It liberates us from pretense, humbles us out of our self-righteousness, and fortifies us for any difficulty life can throw at us.

And when we receive that kind of knowing and yet loving from God, then we are freed to give it to others.

And that’s exactly where Paul goes in the letter to the Ephesians! In the second half of the book, as he’s unpacking this idea, his conclusion based on what Christ has done is this:

Ephesians 4:1–6 “As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.”

Notice the “one another language”! Paul is calling people to live out redeemed relationships as a result of what Christ has done. Because of Christ, the church is uniquely equipped to demonstrate redemptive relationships, and intimate friendships to the world. We should be the ones paving the way, “bearing with one another in love” rather than being short, self-focused, and impatient with one another’s faults. We are the ones who should be “making every effort” to remain in unity with one another rather than being quick to discard and cancel former relationships.

Part Five: What’s Would that look like?

But what would it look like for the church to take friendship seriously, and to love one another the way that God has loved us? In other words, what kind of friendship and community does the Gospel make possible? And the answer to this question, I believe, can be found by surveying what many have come to call the “one another” passages in Scripture. We see some of them in Ephesians, but there are so much more!

Time won’t allow for us to go into depth with these, but I found some infographics I want to share with you that summarize them, and that you guys can use in your reflection and small group discussion. In all, there are around 47 of these “one another” passages in Scripture, and they are commands, encouragements, or descriptions of the way that believers are to love one another as a result of what Christ has done. They add color to the second greatest commandment: to love your neighbor as yourself. They provide content to Jesus’ command to us to “love one another” (Jn 13:35).

So if you’re taking notes, you can write down that the One Anothers cast new vision for relationships in Christ.

One summary groups the One Anothers into 3 categories just to summarize some of what it talks about, and those three categories are commands concerning unity, commands concerning love, and commands concerning humility. Not all of them fit cleanly into these categories, but notice that all three categories cut against the self-centered distortion of sin. Where sin is about me and my interests, considering my own good, and placing myself before others, the relationships that are possible for us in Christ because of the Gospel are about what Christ is doing in us as a whole, even if it means sacrifice. They are about about being committed to the good of others, even if that mean I won’t get my way. And they are about putting others before yourself, even when it isn’t easy.

WRAP IT UP

What have we seen?

We’ve seen that lonliness is a serious problem for our generation.

We’ve seen that God’s antidote to lonliness is intimate friendship.

We’ve seen that true friendship is difficult to come by because of the distortion of sin.

We’ve seen that the abundance that we receive in Christ frees us up to pour out love to others, breaks the cycle of hurt and self-centeredness, and places us on a firm foundation to build friendships.

And we’ve seen that in Christ, we can build friendships of unity, love, and humility.

Time doesn’t allow for us to consider all the great benefits of friendship. But I can tell you from my life, I would not be the person I am today if I had given up on my friends. I may not even be here today if I didn’t have men and women in my life who loved me enough to bear my burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. We need to move past petty, superficial relationships into deep, Christ-centered, covenant friendships. Without this, the toil of the journey becomes too much.

Closing encouragement: God knows what we need. He is enough for us, but He loves to give us good gifts, including friendship. If you’re feeling lonely, remember that God is always with you, and that He knows just what you need. Read Matthew 6:31–34 “So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”