Close Friends : Being a friend means serving your friends.

INTRODUCTION

· How many of you love Pixar Movies? One thing I love about them is that they often highlight the most uncommon friends.

Buzz and Woody, Carl and Russell, Remy and Alfredo Linguini, Marlin and Dory

Lightning McQueen and Tow Mater

“I knew it! I knew I made a good choice”

“In what?”

“My best friend.”

· One thing those fictional friendships don’t teach you? How to translate all that good friendship stuff into your own life.

Moving from Ohio - I didn’t realize how hard it would be at making new friends. I had my friends my whole life.

I wish someone would’ve said, “This is how to friend.”

How to make friends, How to keep friends, how to be a friend, how to change friend groups, how to let go of a friend.

I have had to experience all of these in the past 9 years of my life since moving to North Carolina and maybe you have experienced some of these too.

TENSION

· The truth is that close friendship can be difficult. Anytime you mix two unique and complicated human beings into a close relationship, it isn’t always easy.

· Friendships take a lot of work for all kinds of reasons!

· Let’s be honest, when we were kids, most of us weren’t really taught how to be a good friend.

We might know how to be polite, to say thank you, to be kind, and include others.

But knowing how to treat someone like a REAL friend - how to show up, stay loyal, set boundaries when you need, work through conflict- that part didn’t always come with instruction.

· At least while we’re in school, our friendships just sort of happen.

· When it comes to friendship . . .

o Things are always changing. - You move to a new school, switch classes, join a new team, people change in your life. You’re constantly making new friends, which is cool, but building and maintaining deep friendships while change is always happening can be tough.

o You’re not always sure where you stand with friends. - Sometimes it seems like you’re left out of text threads, or you don’t get a voice in making plans, or nobody’s inviting you to anything. If we are honest, sometimes it feels like we don’t know whether we are “in” or “out” with our friends.

o Expectations aren’t always met. - Your friends don’t always do the things you want them to do. They don’t reach out to you like you do with them. They don’t hang out with you enough, they forget the important details of your life. You feel like those are the things close friends do, but you don’t have someone who is actually doing those things.

· When it comes to friendship, I think one of the challenges we face is where we put our focus.

We all tend to focus on what we are NOT getting from the people in our lives.

· Here’s the good news: What we’re talking about today has the potential to be a game-changer when it comes to the way we approach all aspects of friendship.

TRUTH

· What’s cool is that the Bible has a lot to say about our relationships with other people.

· The first four books of the New Testament are called the gospels. They are the accounts of Jesus’ life when He lived among us. One of those gospels is the book of John.

· At one point, John writes about a very serious moment in Jesus’ life. It took place right before Jesus would be arrested and sentenced to die on the cross.

· Jesus could have been looking around the table at His friends and thinking,

What are these guys going to do for me when all this happens? Are they going to prove they’re my close friends?

· Instead of waiting to see how His friends would respond to Him, Jesus decided to take the first step. Instead of being reactive, Jesus was proactive with his friends

· So he got up from the table, took off his robe, wrapped a towel around his waist, and poured water into a basin. Then he began to wash the disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel he had around him (John 13:4-5 NLT).

· It was gross! People walked everywhere. They didn’t have neatly paved sidewalks. They were often barefoot or had sandals on. They walked through dirt, dust, sand, sweat, and feces from the animals.

Back then, washing someone’s feet was a job typically done by a servant for a houseguest.

· But Jesus was the master of flipping people’s expectations.

· Jesus demonstrated to His disciples what close friendship really looked like. He took the first step. He didn’t wait for someone else to do something. He served them, KNOWING what they were about to betray him. Why would he do this?

· In a different gospel, Luke records Jesus as saying something that’s some pretty good advice when it comes to friendship, this is what Jesus lived by :

· “Do to others as you would like them to do to you” (Luke 6:31 NLT).

· Notice that just “don’t” do to others, but “do” to others. - It’s not just about not saying mean things, not making fun of them, not making up rumors behind their back.

DO to others - Go out of your way to DO to others as you would like them to do to you.

In other words, Jesus is saying that when it comes to relationships, we need to be proactive.

· We need to treat our friends the way we want them to treat us.

· But let’s be honest, this is so difficult to do, right?

· Usually, we take the opposite approach. We react.

“I’ll treat them good if they treat me good.”

We treat people the way they treat us. We respond to how they make us feel.

· But if we really think about it, we can agree that’s not the way we want our friendships to work.

We want our friends to value us, include us, notice us, be kind to us. We want to feel important to our close friends. We want them to be patient with us, show us grace, and offer us forgiveness.

What if we put what Jesus said in the language of our world today?

What if I text others as I would like to be texted?

What if I invite others as I would like to be invited?

What if I talk to or about others as I would like to be talked to or about?

What if I forgive others as I would like to be forgiven?

What if I listen to others as I would like them to listen to me?

What if I post about others on social media as I’d like to posted about?

· Jesus could’ve made all of His friendships about Him. He was the leader. He had the highest status and position. He could’ve used His power to leverage the relationships for Himself. But instead, He served.

· To sum it all up, this what Jesus taught us about friendships :

· Being a friend means serving your friends.

We want our friends to make the first move, treat us well, and put our needs first. But you can be the kind of friend we want to have without waiting on anyone else to make the first move. We can follow Jesus’ example in our friendships and serve other right now.

APPLICATION

· There are a million ways that you and I can serve our friends and put them first without waiting for them to do it. But for the sake of today, let’s talk about three simple ideas:

o Think about your friends.

Don’t just think about your needs and what they’re doing or not doing for you. Take a second to lay down what’s going on in your life, what you are thinking/feeling/going through. Think about their situation, their feelings, their worries, their insecurities. Try to be gracious and empathetic with them. They have moments of anxiety and fear just like you do. They have hard days just like you do. They have highs and lows just like you do. Close friends know that because they’re thinking about each other first.

Think About Your Friends EXERCISE

o Listen to your friends.

Ryan Farlow - The best at asking really intentional questions. It’s made me want to be better at asking intentional questions.

Ask questions about things that are important to them. Try to really listen to the answers! Make an effort to keep up with important things that are happening in their lives.

If you have a terrible memory, use your notes or remind app. I use it when one of my friends is going through something on a specific day to check in with them. Follow up with them.

o Pray for your friends.

Mom Prayer Posse

If your friend is going through something difficult, pray for them.

Not just “I’ll be praying for you.” and never do. That’s lying!

Take time to pray for them then.

If things are falling apart in their family, pray for them. If they have important things coming up, pray for them. Even short, quick. simple prayers are a big deal.

F+F Notes- Prayer

· If you do these things, it doesn’t mean everything is going to work out perfectly in your friendships all the time.

· But I guarantee that this WILL deepen your friendships and make you so much closer.

· For the rest of your life, you’re going to be in friendships and relationships. This is why this is important.

Learning how to serve, make the first move, and put others first will create an incredible foundation for you to be an incredible friend from now on into the future.

LANDING

· Being a friend means serving your friends.

· Imagine if you become comfortable and confident making the first move. If you were the one to initiate the hang outs instead of waiting for others. You texted instead of waiting for someone else to text. Imagine if you didn’t retaliate when someone hurt you, but instead, you forgave and showed them grace.

Imagine if you were the kind of close friend you wanted to have.

· Being this kind of friend will take work, but I promise you the work is worth it.