Friend Ship
Pastor Steven
'Ships: A series on being with people • Sermon • Submitted
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· 9 viewssuperiority, pride, bitterness, unforgiveness
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Pursuing Relationships that Transform
Intro: Super Friends
“It is grace, nothing but grace, that we are allowed to live in community with Christian bretheren.” DB “It is burden, nothing but trouble, that we have to live in community with Christian bretheren.”
The Shape of Friendship:
How friends influence us
Frog in a pot & meat in a marinade
Their Attitude toward life as well as mine are contagious
Proverbs 13:20 22:24-25 James 4:4 Exo 33:11
20 Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm.
Contagious attitude
Attitude is contagious, you often have a big part in setting or changing the attitude of others you are around
24 Make no friendship with a man given to anger, nor go with a wrathful man, 25 lest you learn his ways and entangle yourself in a snare.
4 You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.
11 Thus the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend. When Moses turned again into the camp, his assistant Joshua the son of Nun, a young man, would not depart from the tent.
The Basis of Friendship: Identity in Christ
Tick or Island
Our two biggest potential problems in friendship are needing each other too much (a tick) and not needing each other enough. (Island.)
Identity: Who I think I am and where I get worth has huge implications on friendship.
We all have Tick & Island like tendencies If I think I need a friendship with that person in order for my life to be worthwhile or for me to worth, I am a tick and will suck them dry in my friendship.
If I get my worth by being an island who gains worth and identity because I think I can handle everything on my own I will be isolated and Satan will pick me off, whether through my own pride or falling into sin because I have no one to help me fight it.
Tick I will rely on the others around me for all I need for sustenance and life and hope and meaning and purpose and acclaim and life being worth living.
Or I gain it by complete freedom from you
On the other hand Tick I will have a list of things I need you for or
Island by denying that I need help from anyone else.
Do you feel that people always let you down? That may be because you are looking to them to give you what God has already offered you in Jesus Christ,
or Island you are looking to yourself for God’s acceptance by rejecting or competing with others. For a tick it is often Fear of man issues, I’m not sure that I am completely accepted by God based on Jesus work so I need to gain acceptance from this person. For an island Or it is distrust of man issues. I’ve so removed myself from other people that I can’t accept help or warning or love because I have what it takes within myself to solve all my problems and God will be satisfied with me because of that. This leaves behind a trail of broken, frustrated, strained, paranoid, distrusting and hurt friendships with people whom I tried to take from them what only God could give me, or only rely on myself and hope they do the same. This is how our friendships self destruct.
“ If I am seeking to get my Identity from you, I will watch you too closely, listen to you too intently and need you too fundamentally… And because I am watching you too closely, I will become acutely aware of your weaknesses and failures. I will become overly critical, frustrated, disappointed, hopeless and angry. I will be angry not that you are a sinner, but because you have failed to deliver the one thing I seek from you: identity.” Paul Tripp & Tim Lane
Filling a deep vertical trench by chucking a whole bunch of horizontal relationships into it.
What is the Answer?
Living into this fact: God has called us his friends
12 “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command you. 15 No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. 16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. 17 These things I command you, so that you will love one another.
23 and the Scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”—and he was called a friend of God.
So the choice is yours, Frog, Meat, Tick, Island or a Friend of God.
So the key, the answer to being a good friend and having good friendships is based in knowing who you are in Christ. I must know who I am in Christ, what He has done for me and how that transforms me, that will keep me stable, secure, accepted and at peace with God, so I don’t depend on others or myself for my identity and worth. because I already have it from Jesus..
Would you rather have one best friend that you only spent 8 days a year with or 8 surface level friends that you could see every day?
What is the craziest (legal) thing you have ever seen a friend do?
What are the qualities of a good friend?
What are the ways that your friends have influenced you for the better?
What ways have you been influenced by friends for the worse?
What happens when we expect too much of a friend (or expect them to do what only Jesus can)?
Do you find it more tempting to be a tick or an island? Why?
How does trusting Jesus help bring stability and joy to your friendships?
