We Need Each Other
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Welcome/Introduction:
Welcome/Introduction:
Good morning! Welcome to Community Christian Church. My name is John Price, if we haven’t met, and I am the Associate Pastor here.
What is the most important thing in your life right now? Seriously, answer that. And no. It doesn’t have to be Jesus, even though we are in a church service right now.
EXAMPLES:
Financial Security
Finding a new job
Figuring out your future
Spouse, Parent
Kids, Education, Food
Attention: GLASS, METAL, RUBBER example
Take your life and all the things that you think are important, and put them in one of three categories, represented by three items: glass, metal, and rubber.
Things of rubber, when you drop them, will bounce back. No harm is done when these things get dropped. Missing the final game of the World Series, missing your train and having to wait for a couple more minutes,
Things of metal, when dropped, create a lot of noise. But you can recover from the drop. If you miss a meeting at work, you can get the CliffsNotes. If you don’t balance your checkbook and lose track of how much you have in your account, and the bank notifies you of an overdraft—that will create some noise in your life, but you can recover from it.
Things of glass, when dropped, shatter into pieces and will never be the same again. They can be glued back together, but they are altered forever. They may be missing some pieces, and they probably can’t hold water again without leaking. The consequences of this brokenness will forever affect how the glass is used.
You’re the only person who knows what those things are that you can’t afford to drop. More than likely, they have a lot to do with your relationships with spouse, children, family, and friends.
Need:
While we all may have differing opinions on what is the most important thing in our lives, but I think it goes without saying that relationships are extremely important because when they are broken it’s really hard to piece them back together.
As a country, with all of our issues and divisions and opinions; we can really distill everything down to broken relationships between one another that causes us to become tribal, entrenched, judgmental, and disabled to one another’s relational needs.
This is why we read or listened to our opening verse from John 13:34-35
“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
It’s interesting that Jesus doesn’t say: agree with one another. He doesn’t say, have warm feelings toward one another. He doesn’t say, have the same outlook on life and fit perfectly into one another’s camp. No. He said to love one another.
We aren’t doing a good job at that.
BROKEN RELATIONSHIPS DATA:
In an article by Amanda Mushro, were she talks about why most American’s having made a new friend in five years, she highlights a recent “study, [that shows us that] 45 percent of adults say they find it difficult to make new friends and, for many of the 2,000 people polled, they felt their popularity peaked at age 23.”
“So, how many friends do adults actually have? The number might surprise you. The average American has 16 pals. However, the breakdown of how these friends function in our lives is quite different. Of the 16, three are friends for life, five are people they really like and would hang out with one-on-one and eight are people they like but don’t necessarily seek out. For many, their best friends are the ones made when they were younger. Nearly half of those surveyed have stayed friends with their high school besties, and 31 percent still consider their college friends their closest ones.”
Not only are we bad at making new friends and developing new relationships. We are actually suffering physically, mentally, and emotionally because of inability to building the relationships that we actually want.
Harvard Study/Article
“Conversely, a relative lack of social ties is associated with depression and later-life cognitive decline, as well as with increased mortality. One study, which examined data from more than 309,000 people, found that lack of strong relationships increased the risk of premature death from all causes by 50% — an effect on mortality risk roughly comparable to smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day, and greater than obesity and physical inactivity.”
“One study found that midlife women who were in highly satisfying marriages and marital-type relationships had a lower risk for cardiovascular disease compared with those in less satisfying marriages.”
“A large Swedish study of people ages 75 and over concluded that dementia risk was lowest in those with a variety of satisfying contacts with friends and relatives.”
In an article by Robert Hall, he summaries the issues surround our relationships this way, “the numbers tell us our relationship infrastructure is unraveling: more people live alone, more people are single, more divorces, more single-parent households, fewer siblings, fewer close friends, more people working remotely, greater political animus, less people attending church, and on and on.“
If you don’t have deep, meaningful, satisfying relationships; then scientific studies show that you won’t live as long, you will be at a higher risk for heart disease and dementia. So, this is a really important topic that we are taking on for the next three weeks and it is my prayer that by the end of this series you will have done two things: 1. Established several goals for your relationships and 2. Develop an action plan on how to implement those goals in your life immediately.
We have a relational pandemic on our hands. What I mean by that is that we, generally speaking, are failing to build deep, meaningful relationships that would characterizes like the writer of 1 Samuel characterizes Jonathan and David’s relationship.
Transition: The best example of #RelationshipGoals that we have is found between guys who lives well over 3,000 years ago. Their relationship with one another will actually help us today to build the type of relationships we actually want to have and reverse what is happening in our culture, in our city, and even in our own lives or families.
The relationship I am talking about is found in 1 Samuel 18:1-4 and its between two guys who really shouldn’t have been friends at all.
Read 1 Samuel 18:1-4
After David had finished talking with Saul, Jonathan became one in spirit with David, and he loved him as himself. From that day Saul kept David with him and did not let him return home to his family. And Jonathan made a covenant with David because he loved him as himself. Jonathan took off the robe he was wearing and gave it to David, along with his tunic, and even his sword, his bow and his belt.
POINT #1: YOU WERE DESIGNED WITH RELATIONSHIPS IN MIND
Jonathan and David‘s relationship with one another shows us, first and foremost, that relationships are important because we were designed with relationships in mind.
After killing Goliath and winning a massive victory for Israel, David speaks with Israel’s King and during that conversation, Jonathan meets David and they instantly became close friends or really, if you look at the Hebrew words, they became soulmates.
“This was understandable because David and Jonathan had much in common; they were both courageous and capable young warriors who possessed profound faith in the Lord. Both had initiated faith-motivated attacks against militarily superior Philistines that had resulted in great victories for Israel.”
They found, within each other, someone who instinctively and naturally understood them and was like them.
I have a friend back home who is like this for me. Stephen and I have gone months without talking to each other, but when I was in Cincinnati back in August we met up and it was like we hadn’t even missed a beat. We talked for hours. Prayed for one another, laughed with one another, got vulnerable with each other, challenged each other, encouraged each other, and we simply knew that even though we were going to go several months without seeing or talking to each other - we still had each others back and that we’d be for the other one no matter what.
That’s the type of relationship that Jonathan and David have because they knew that they were purposefully designed with relationships in mind and they were on the look out for others who were like them and could build into them.
Read Genesis 1:26-28,31
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.”
God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.
Application: Be Like Jon and David
You were intentionally designed to be in relational community with others, including with your Creator. Be like Jonathan and David and start looking for the people that puts in your path and develop those relationships.
Transition: The best example of establishing good #RelationshipGoals in our lives is found in Jonathan and David’s relationship because they show us that we were designed with relationships in mind. But they also show us that trust is the bedrock from which we can build any relationship off of.
POINT #2: VULNERABILITY IS THE FOUNDATION OF ANY RELATIONSHIP
For any relationship to survive the surface level and become deeper, meaningful, and satisfying; it must be built on the foundation of vulnerability.
We see this in the relationship that existed between Jonathan and David.
READ 1 Samuel 18:3-4
1 Samuel 18:3–4 (NIV)
And Jonathan made a covenant with David because he loved him as himself. Jonathan took off the robe he was wearing and gave it to David, along with his tunic, and even his sword, his bow and his belt.
You can also read more about the vulnerability that existed between Jonathan and David throughout 1 Samuel 19 - 20 and 1 Samuel 23.
What is a covenant?
Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary: “A ‘covenant’ is an agreement enacted between two parties in which one or both make promises under oath to perform or refrain from certain actions stipulated in advance.” We would understand this to be a contract between two people where both make promises to fulfill their end of the deal.
Covenant between Jonathan and David
Old Testament 18:1-30: David in Saul’s Family and Court
Jonathan’s gift to David. The word for the robe that Jonathan gave to David often denotes a royal robe. Ugaritic texts refer to a special robe worn by the crown prince. If Israel had the same custom, Jonathan would be renouncing his claim to the throne by giving David that robe. He also gave to him his daily warrior’s garment and bow. The Israelite sword was carried in a sheath that hung from a belt. The bow was probably made of animal horn and sinews bonded with strips of wood. Jonathan’s gifts to David may very well represent his willingness to give up and transfer his particular position as heir apparent to the throne of Israel. He thus was expressing loyalty and possibly submission to David.
Jonathan, who is far superior to David right now, is being extremely vulnerable with his David and his future. Jonathan is basically showing David that he is okay with and will help fight for David to become the next king of Israel, a position that Jonathan was suppose to enter in!
The reason why Jonathan is able to be so vulnerable is because of the love that he has for his friend. He sees and understands that God wants David to be the next king and Jonathan is okay with surrendering his will and his ambitions because it will benefit his friend, David.
C.S. LEWIS QUOTE:
”To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”
RELATIONSHIP CYCLE GRAPH
In a recent article, author Millie Welsh, outlined how most relationships reach a choke point on whether or not they will reach a deeper level or just stay at the surface. This happened with Jonathan and David’s relationship even, and it will happen with every one of your relationships.
Welsh made a graph that looks like this:
Relationship starts at the SURFACE LEVEL; you GATHER INFORMATION about each other and become friends; then it reaches the choke point of VULNERABILITY. One person is vulnerable and the other person will either ACCEPT them or REJECT them.
If they are REJECTED, the relationship starts SHUTTING DOWN; the rejected person becomes IMPENETRABLE; and the relationship goes back to the SUPERFICIAL surface level.
If they are ACCEPTED, then the relationship takes on a whole new life of its own and ultimately God’s Kingdom grows and His love is expressed over and over again.
This happened between Jonathan and David. Jonathan saw something within David that drew him to David, where they were able to be committed to one another and vulnerable with one another and God’s love and kingdom were able to grow because of their friendship with each other.
Transition: The best example of establishing good #RelationshipGoals in our lives is found in Jonathan and David’s relationship because they show us that we were designed with relationships in mind. But they also show us that trust is the bedrock from which we can build any relationship off of.
POINT #3: INTENTIONALLY ESTABLISH #RELATIONSHIPGOALS
While Jonathan and David didn’t sit down and establish goals for their relationship per se; they did dedicate themselves to one another and establish their relationship between each other through a covenant.
What relationship goals did Jonathan and David have?
They loved each other (1 Sam. 18:1-2; 1 Sam. 1:26)
They fully accepted each other and welcomed each other into their inner circles (1 Sam. 18:3-4; 1 Sam. 23:15-18)
They took care of each other (1 Sam. 19:1-7; 1 Sam. 20:1-5; 1 Sam. 23:15-18)
They trusted each other ()
They were vulnerable with each other ()
APPLICATION:
Who is that for you? Do you see these relational characteristics in your relationships?
If you do; great! If not; why not?
Make the decision today to intentionally establish these goals into your relationships because
Transition: So, we have seen that you were designed with relationships in mind, that mutual trust is the bedrock for any relationship we have, and that we should be intentional with the relationships we have by establishing relationship goals for ourselves so that we can start building the type of relationships that we actually want to have.
We’ve seen Jonathan and David do this for each other. But, if you look outside of their relationship and take the entire Bible into view. You will see that this is exactly what God does for each and everyone of us.
God is the author of relationships and His Word begins with Him creating everything out of the overflow of his relationship.
From the very beginning, the Bible documents the story of a perfect relationship between God and his creation, Creation and our God, and Creation with Creation. Eventually, those relationship were ruined because of self-centeredness fueled by doubt (Gen. 1-3). From the garden, the Bible shows how God refuted to allow his relationship with his creation fade into ruin and embarked on a rescue mission for us, which he accomplished through his Son Jesus and his sacrifice so that we could enter back into a relationship with our Creator.
From there, the Bible gives us guidance and help in how to actually live out our relationship with God until it reaches its final conclusion when Jesus comes again to redeem and restore everything.
READ Proverbs 18:24
One who has unreliable friends soon comes to ruin,
but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.
Conclusion/Call-to-Action:
Take the next couple of minutes or talk about it with your small group; but establish some goals for your relationships right now.
Ask yourself:
How can I best love ________ ?
How can I deepen my relationship with _____________?
Do I need to change anything about me in order to rebuild or deepen that relationship with __________?
[PRAYER/BAND]
