Hey, listen, in all of our campuses, you can be seated this morning and, uh, man, if five you, any of the five campuses, wanna welcome you today. And man, I'm so glad that you're with us right here at Lincoln Road. Man. Let me welcome you. Would you guys help me welcome all of our campuses?

We'll just kind of give them a hand today and, yeah, listen, let me, lemme kind of take you back a little bit because sometimes it helps to understand, uh, just some of the vision or the why behind what we do. And really, before I became the lead pastor, we made a decision as a church, uh, that we would have a teaching team. And it just meant we really believed that the church is bigger than one personality. It meant that we believed that there's different people that have different gifts, and that we could kind of put together more of a, basically like a diet of teaching when you have different folks that have different gifts in this. And so we began to put that together.

Now, for my people here at Lincoln Road, you, you have heard Greg teach before, but this is Greg's first time to teach to our whole church. And so I want to introduce you to him. I don't wanna tell you, man, he's been a blessing to our team. And, uh, Greg came on about eight months ago with us. Uh, he's from right here in the pine belt.

He grew up in Percy and his wife Heather, and they, Greg actually went to our church in college, which is kind of crazy to think about. But, uh, from there he is been at several other great churches, and he's led there. He served there, uh, he came here from Austin, Texas. Okay, so I'm Craig from Hattiesburg. This is Greg from Texas.

Okay? And, um, so man, he's he's been such a blessing to our team. And I'm gonna tell you something. You know, Greg's got three boys. They're all middle school and high school.

And man, he's got a passion for God's word. And I don't know if you've ever done this where you, you know, you read something, you go, man, I'm, I'm not sure what's going on there. Greg's the guy on our team that we kinda look to, uh, because man, he just has such a heart for Scripture and he loves to teach. He loves to teach. And so here's what I'll do for us.

I wanna pray for us. I'm gonna pray for Greg, and then I'm gonna get to do something that you do most every week. I'm gonna go sit on the front row and I'm just gonna open up my app and follow today's message. That's what I wanna say to you, man. Thank you for letting us have a team of teachers each week that bring God's word.

So let's pray together and then we'll keep going this morning. God, I thank you so much for Sunday mornings. I thank you for a moment where despite all the different noise and all the distractions of the week, uh, there's a time that we come together and say that God, we trust in you above every other voice, above all the different noise that God, it's your voice and it's your heart that we want. And so, God, as we open up your word and, and we begin to talk about friendship, uh, father, I thank you for the friends you've put in my life, the ones that have been bold enough to be honest with me, the ones that have been faithful, that have encouraged me, uh, the ones that have been seasons of life ahead of me, that have given me a picture of what I really desire for my life to look like. Uh, God, I thank you for just for my friend Greg.

God, I thank you for bringing him to our church. God, I thank you for his passion, for your word and for this season in our church. So God, use him today. Father, speak to us. It's in your name we pray.

Amen. Amen. Well, good morning. Uh, how we doing everybody? All right.

We'll see how to all of our campuses that are watching this morning. So we're in a series called Built to Last, and we're looking at relationships. Uh, last week was on seeking Jesus first, that he is the, he's the main one. He's the one that we center all of our life around. And whenever we do, we tend to, uh, we tend to flourish when that happens.

Next week is on marriage. So I wanna be sure and, uh, be here for that. Uh, this week is on a topic I think that covers all relationships and it's friendship. And what I'm gonna argue this morning and kind of contend for for the next several minutes is that we're made for friendship. It's not just a nice to have or just an option, but it's something that God has actually made you and hardwired into your system is this longing for friendship.

And I wanna show you this, uh, a bit this morning. So Genesis chapter one is when God made all things God speaks, uh, from, you know, there, there's nothing in existence. God speaks all things into existence. He makes the heavens and makes the earth, and makes plants, and makes animals, and makes whitetailed deer and makes large mouth baths. Amen.

All the things. And God makes this declaration over it. And, uh, God, this is Genesis 1 31. God saw everything that he had made, and behold it was very good and very good. And in this context means perfect.

Everything is perfect. There's rhythm, there's harmony, there's no sin yet. There's no chaos, there's no darkness, there's no brokenness right now, the fall, uh, has not happened. And so God declares everything to be very good. Then Genesis chapter two, we get sort of more the kind of the, the details of how God makes us as humans.

And so, uh, Genesis two 15 says that the Lord God took the man, put him in the garden of Eden to work it and to keep it again. There's no sin right now. There's no deception, there's no betrayal, there's no lies, there's no evil, there's no corruption yet. And again, everything is very good. And then God makes this sort of new declaration over the man.

And he says this two 18, the Lord God said, it is not good. It's not good. So everything was very good that God had made, but it was not good. That man should be alone. I'll make a helper fit for him.

So how, how can this be though? Um, how can it be that everything is perfect, the world's teaming with dear and bass and there's no sin, and God declares that it's not good, something is not good. And instead man was alone. Now what's even more shocking is that what man has with him, who does the man have with him? He has God himself.

So God makes the world and makes humanity, makes man, and says it's not good. Everything is good, except this one thing is that man was alone. I don't miss this. He's not saying that what wasn't good was that he was single. It's not that he says it's wrong to be single.

It's not sin to be single. I know the word sin is in single, but it's single, not single. Okay, that's not the point here, okay? That's a whole different sermon. The point is, he's alone.

He's in isolation. He has no one around him. Even though he has God himself with him, he has no one that's like him, that's just like him to have these deep connections with. Now, eventually, of course, the God, uh, God brings the woman to him, but the the issue is Mary. But, but the point is, it's not just marriage, it's far deeper than marriage.

It's that God made us and God wired us for these deep relationships that we call friendship. And I would argue this, that friendship, it kind of transcends all relationships. The greatest marriages are actually great friendships, is when spouses are actually great friends. That's what makes a great marriage. Um, the goal of even, even parenting, the, the end goal for if you have kids, it is friendship.

I have three sons. My goal is for them to, you know, to grow up, have a good job, be good citizens, and then we just kind of hang out. We go play golf that I win and they pay for sounds amazing to me. I'm just gonna be friends with them. So what you're, what you're aiming at in your marriage, in your parenting is actually good friendship.

So friendship kind of cuts through all these relationships. And God made us for this. It's hardwired into your system to long for deep friendships and connection with people. It's why God designed you. And so what God is saying to the man is, look of all I've made you, not just for me though, that's massively important, but I've made you for these deep connections with other people who are like you.

And we get to call these things friendships. And I can tell you that you long for this friendships, they just enrich our lives in these unique ways. They give us purpose, they give us meaning. They, they lift us up in this sense. And you long for this, I can prove this.

I think, I think social media has shown us how much we long for friendships. So I was around, let me remember this. I was around when, uh, Facebook and Twitter and this thing called MySpace, which like the dark web, when it was like starting, okay, no one knew what to do with it, okay? The question that was, you know, was there was what are you doing? And so we didn't know about, you know, when you post something, it's like, what happens?

Do I post something and then do I get murdered? Do I get robbed? Like, what happens whenever you write something on like a website somewhere? There was no sense of someone interacting with it. There was no expectation that somebody would, you know, like this thing or thumbs up or comment, let alone yell at me about something that I've, that I've posted.

But now that's all changed. Now what what studies have shown us is that not only do we expect someone, whenever we post something to interact with it, we demand it. And if no one responds to us, it, it does not sit well with us. If you write something and you post something, some photo, some description, some link you put, and no one responds, it, it doesn't sit well with you, does it? It's like, why did my salad get 2000 likes?

I mean, look how carefully edited the salad was. It looks so amazing. Or my kids started school and no one commented. What is wrong with these people? You see what happens?

We expect someone to respond to us. Now we can go into all the issues behind that and critique all that. And many have, I would just like to say, I think that it points to something far deeper about our humanity. It's that we long for deep connection and friendships. And when you have this, it just enriches our lives in these unique ways.

All of us want this. I mean, everyone wants a place where, you know, everyone knows your name and our troubles are all the same and they're always glad you came. If you got that, you are old. Okay, we are old, okay? But what it shows like cheers and Seinfeld and friends and the office lift up for us friendships.

These deep relationships that last, that stick, that over time they endure. You're made for this and you, and you long for it. So what does God say about this? How do we go about this? How do we cultivate these things?

Now lemme just warn you here. Um, many of you will hear this and go, man, my friends are terrible. They need this. I'm gonna send this to them once I get done here. Okay, that may need to happen.

But the point is, you being this kind of friend, not just your friends hearing this and them being better friends to you, but you being a better friend, you growing in your friendships. Okay? Lemme show you a few things this morning about this. Lemme show you the path to friendship, how it starts, the practice, how you grow this, and then the power. How you actually have energy behind your friendships to actually endure in these, uh, in these things.

So the path of practice and the power. Yes, all three begin with PI worked very hard, uh, on that for you. So number one is the path to it. So what I wanna ask here is how does it happen? How does a friendship start?

And I wanna just be honest with you. Th there is some mystery behind this. And, and there's a little bit of just a, a sense of me if like I'm being unhelpful in this, but there is some mystery behind how friendships start. And I wanna show you this. And so if you compare friendship to say dating and romantic relationships and marriage, there are, there are some overlaps as I've already I've already said.

Um, but there are also some massive differences. So let's just talk about how, how formal and exclusive a dating romantic relationship is. Think about how it starts. You go on a date, it's on the calendar, okay? You get dressed up and you go out somewhere.

Um, you at some point you say to them, will you date me check yes or no? And if it's yes, then things get more exclusive and more expensive and they begin to escalate and get very, very awkward for the rest of us to kinda watch this. Okay? That's how it happens though. Then you ask them to marry you, and then there's a ceremony and there's a tux and there's a dress and there's a cake, and you sign off on stuff and then you're married forever.

Sorry, it's a bleak view of marriage I get, but just work with me, okay? It's very exclusive, it's very formal that we are together and we sign off on documents and we're legal now. Okay? Friendship though is nothing like that. You don't talk about the friendships, it's like fight club.

You don't even talk about it in some ways. There, there's a sense in which it surprises you. There is no cake, there is no ceremony. You don't sign off on. There is no check, yes or no to be my friend.

That's not how friendships work. In some sense. You look up and you just discover that you friends with this person. It's like, do we just become best friends? Yep.

That's how it happens. You just look up and you're friends with someone. This is how friendships develop. And again, I think it's unhelpful because I can't tell you here are the steps to go make friends, because in a lot of ways, you just discover this. So, CS Lewis, uh, years ago wrote an article, an essay on friendship called On Friendship, very catchy title.

Uh, but Lewis talks about how friendships start and he compares them with, with what he calls lovers or like romantic lover, dating and, and marriage. And here's what Lewis says. He says, lovers, this is at first, okay? Lovers are normally face to face absorbed in each other, okay? It's about the person you're absorbed in.

The person is what Lewis says. But friends, friends are not like that. Friends are side by side, absorbed in some common interest, not in each other, okay? But absorbed in some common interest. I love this.

The typical expression of opening friendship would be something like, what you two, I thought I was the only one. And that's how friendship starts. Lewis says, you too, wait. You like that thing? I'm not the only nerd in the world that likes this weird niche hobby or this, you know, thing that you read like this movie or this show or this.

You're into that too. That's how friendships tend to start. It's something out there that draws you into one another. I have two friends, uh, back in Texas. They've been friends for I think 39 years or something crazy like that.

They're the weird friends that move cities together. Like they take their whole family and they uproot to different cities to, it's happened three times in their lifetime. Um, you know how they became great friends? I'd love to tell you that it was months of fasting and praying and asking God for friendships that it was this really awesome Bible study. That it was this mission trip that changed their life forever.

Which all that can happen. You know what? It was Mario Kart. I mean, it's an awesome game, but it was hours upon hours upon hours in a dorm room at Texas a and m playing Mario karts. And these two guys that had no background, had no interest in each other.

They look up and 38 years later, their friends, their, their, their children are best friends now. And it began with Mario Kart in a dorm room. That's Lewis's point that you tend to discover these things. They just tend to happen to you. Um, so you can't force this.

You can't somehow, you know, there's no recipe to create friendships. They just tend to happen in this sense. And that's Lewis something out there. Lewis says it draws you in. So with dating and marriage, it's usually I want them, I wanna run after them in friendship.

It's, I wanna run after that and then I look around and find someone who's running after that with me. And we become friends almost by surprise is how it often happens. Now, why, why point this out? Well, it's kind of fun for one, but two, um, I think many of us, if you, if you don't have great friendships or if you have a hard time making friends, maybe you're newer here. I moved back here after a while and I, I understand moving, moving context that that's a, a big si big deal for us.

But it might be because you take the dating marriage approach to friendship. And so you say things like this, I wanna be friends with them, and you run toward them. Now can that work? Yes. Has that worked?

Absolutely. But often it's very, can be very forced, can be very mechanical and it doesn't end up in a great friendship. Instead, what often happens is you run after something else and God puts somebody around you. That's how you become friends. And so many of us might take the approach of I want to just kind of be friends with that person.

So you run toward them. And here's, here's what Lewis said. This is even more than helpful. This is great. It's going really well.

Lewis says this, the very condition of having friends is that we want something, we should want something else besides friends. That's so helpful, right? So here's what Lewis means. If someone says, Hey, do you like this? And you're like, I don't care.

I just want friends. Lewis says, you won't have any friends. Okay? Now again, I, the, the, I think this is not helpful. Lemme tell you one thing that might be helpful for you, okay?

If you're like, I don't have friends, I wanna, I wanna build great friendships, what do I do? I would just say this one more phrase, interested people are interesting. So be interested in things. Be curious. Ask good questions.

Be into stuff. That's how friendships can develop. Dive into your passions and see who God puts around you. That's the path. Again, this is how it starts.

Somewhat mysterious, somewhat surprises us. So pray that God would surprise you with great friendships. Okay? Now number two is how do you grow them? Once they start?

There are some things you can do to actually cultivate and and grow your friendships. And I wanna cover, uh, both of these. So yes, they uh, surprise us at times, but what can you do to actually cultivate and grow great, uh, friendships? Now what we're guarding against here, hopefully is consumer friendship. What is consumer friendship?

It's just your connections. It's some of you have a guy for everything. You have a gal for everything. You just make a call when you have a need on for something and someone shows up with something for you. That's called your network.

And it's good to have those. But you need deep friendships, not just lots of people that you know, lots of connections, lots of acquaintances, lots of just, I make a call and this thing shows up. Here's what Proverbs warns us against. A man of many companions may come to ruin just big network wide circles. You know everybody in a way that benefits you.

They're your resources and it's good to have those. But there is a friend that sticks closer than a brother. You need that kind of friend. And more importantly, you need to be that kind of friend. The, the one that sticks closer.

Even in someone's own relatives, you stick with them. You need those kinds of friends. Uh, again, Proverbs tells us this, that faithful are the wounds of a friend. See, your friends can say hard things to you. Your network won't do that.

Your just your connections. They won't say hard truthful things about your marriage or your money or your time or any of those things. But friends speak into your life and they wound you at times. You need someone that wounds you who's not afraid of you, who's not tied to you somehow financially, who can just look at you and go, I think you're wrong here. And that wounds you.

But what does Proverbs say that's faithful for you? That's God's grace to rescue you from yourself. You need friends that do that. And you need to be a friend that does this. So two things about friendship.

I think two elements of this, there are far more than this, but we don't have time, uh, for all of it. Um, is that they are constant and they are honest. One is, friends are constant. You wanna be a great friend, be constant in someone's life. Proverbs 1717, a friend loves at all times.

It's not just there at all times, but they love at all times. So your friends, lemme just tell you this, your friends are gonna go through all kinds of seasons. Seasons of change and transition and conflict and awkwardness and weirdness, okay? Sometimes things are just gonna happen between you and someone didn't call, someone didn't communicate. Something was said that you heard in a certain way.

And now things are weird between you. And the temptation is to just eject and just back off and say, I'm out, I'm done. Can I just ask you to not do that? Would you stay in the friendship and love at all times through all the seasons and all the awkwardness and all the pain and all the conflict and all of this, the weirdness between you friends stay. 'Cause here's what's gonna happen.

You're gonna have those seasons eventually. It's gonna be weird with you eventually. And you're gonna want that friend to stick with you and stay. And again, the friend loves at all times. You endure, you forgive, you walk through hard seasons.

You are constant. That's the great friend that you need to be in your life and the ones you need in your life. So friends are constant, but second, they're honest. So what I mean here is you let them see your weaker, the the darker sides of you. Your friends need to see that to where you are vulnerable and you are open with them, that you're honest and you confess and you share and you let them, let them kind of carry the burden that you're carrying.

That's what friendships do. Friendships actually they in a sense, they take the armor off and they let them see one another. And you see, you see the pain, you see weakness, you're honest with them. Um, the apostle Paul does this sometimes. So Paul, when if you read the, uh, the Apostle Paul like Philippians or Colossians, Paul can be hard to relate to sometimes because Paul, Paul seems like, you know, he's like Thor with his hair flowing and cape flapping and a hammer to live his Christ to die, his gain.

I'm not certain I can always get there, but there are other times when Paul is more vulnerable. I wanna show you a place in two Timothy. This is toward the end of Paul's life. And he's riding to Timothy, the one that he's mentoring in the faith. He is his son.

In the faith is what Paul, uh, refers to him as. Notice how vulnerable Paul's being here. Listen to what he says. By the way, he's in prison. It's cold, it's dark, it's probably wet.

He's alone. And listen to how he shares his his soul with Timothy. Verse nine, do your best to come to me soon. If your friend says that you need to get there, get on the plane, get in the car, you need to get there. If they say, do your best to come to me soon.

And he tells this to Timothy, for Deus in love with this present world has deserted me. So Paul feels deserted and abandoned. He's gone to Thessalonica, Cress has gone to Galatia, Titus to Dalmatia. I love this. Luke alone is with me.

Get Mark. And Luke is like, come on bro, I'm here with you. Like, I guess Luke is a tough hang. I don't know, but get Mark please. The love of God.

Bring Mark here. All I have is Luke is what Paul says. He's very useful to me for ministry. TAUs have sent to Ephesus. I love this when you come, bring the cloak.

I left with carpets at TROs. Why don't oversize it? He's freezing cold. He feels lonely. You ever watch that show alone?

Paul's alone. He's cold, he's probably hungry, he's in prison and he feels useless. Why would he say bring uh, mark here? He's useful to me because Paul feels useless. He's stuck in a jail cell and can do nothing.

And he says, bring the cloak. 'Cause he's cold above. He says, uh, also the books. Get Harry Potter here, get Tolkien here. Get, I don't know what books he's talking about, but bring the books above all the parchments.

Why? He wants to read and write. He wants to do something for the kingdom and have some use for his life. But he has none right now. And he says, Alexander the coppersmith did me great harm.

The Lord will repay him according to his deeds. He's angry. You see how vulnerable Paul is? Paul's a human. Paul knows what suffering is like what loneliness, what being cold is like, what being, feeling useless is like.

But the main thing I wanna point out here is he tells this to Timothy. He, he lets him, he lets him in on where he is and he's vulnerable with him. This is what great friends do. Now, this is terrifying to us. 'Cause we don't wanna be seen.

'Cause if they see us, they might not like us. We think if they really knew what's inside of me, what's actually going on, they might not be my friend. We think that. And so what happens is we present this very carefully edited version of ourselves, even to our friends. But friendships cannot grow that way.

We're just terrified of being seen, aren't we? I mean, I feel this years ago, my wife, she, my wife, she made, uh, 24 chocolate chip cookies at my house and then she just left. So I have what's called a sweet tooth. Why don't we call it like, yeah, it's not going to my tooth. Okay, that's not what it's for.

We call it a sweet tooth. I have a sweet tooth. I have no limit. Okay? There is no limit when it comes to sweets for me.

I can just go, go all out with this. So she leaves the house, 24 cookies. There's three kids there and a dog. And me. She comes back after, I don't know, an hour or so and there are three and a half cookies left.

And she's going, what in the world? Like, what did y'all do? Why aren't the cookies? Who, who ate all of these? And I totally dismissed it.

I was like, I mean, I don't know. I, the kids had some and the dogs, you know, sniped a few. And I had some in reality though, and she can attest to this. I had 17 of them. I told you, okay, look, you don't know.

Look, before you judge me, you don't know how moist they were and how warm they were. They're just right there when I walked. Look, I'm the victim here is what I'm saying. Okay? It wasn't my fault, but I couldn't even say to my wife and she knew and what my kids could barely reach the, she knew it was me.

I couldn't say to her, yeah, I had 17 of them. I just couldn't say it. I again, she knew. 'Cause we don't like being seen, do we, we don't like being vulnerable in that way. Because if they, if they actually saw us, they might not like us and they might reject us.

And some people might. But your friends won't. Your friends won't. The friends that love you and who are constant in your life and who are there for you and they know you and they're committed to you, they won't leave you. That's what real friendship is like.

Now, can we just, can we just admit though that all of us are a mess? Can we just admit that and just stop pretending that, look, you've already been found out. It took Jesus dying a bloody gruesome death to save me and to save you. You've been found out. The cross found us out.

So you should be freed up to not pretend and to just be honest and vulnerable. There is one savior and it's not me or you. So that's why we can be honest and, and take, take the muscles off as it were, and the armor off and show who we actually are to our friends. That grows great friendships. They see us in that.

And it cultivates great friendships for us. Now number three, and I'm done, is the power for friendship. Where do you get the power to be this kind of friend? 'Cause I think, and I've talked on friendship over the years a few times. And I think there are two emotions that usually crop up talking about friendship.

One is guilt and one is longing. There's guilt in that we, we regret not being great friends. We just regret some seasons of being closed off, of not calling, of not being available, of not being there. We kind of feel some guilt over that. And then we feel some, some longing in that.

We want these great friendships and we want to be these kind of friends. So we kind of have this sense that, ah, I'm, I'm not this, but I want this. And we all feel this tension, which is a, a good thing for us to feel. So where do you get the power and the energy and the courage and the grit to be friends like this? Well, you look to the true and better friend, there is a friendship that that empowers us, that gives us courage, that lifts us up.

Jesus talked about this in John 15. Listen to what Jesus says. Greater love has no one than this. That someone laid down his life for his friends. And I love this phrase, let this just stick in your mind and heart today.

You are my friends. Jesus is telling you disciples, you're my friends. If you do what I command you, no longer do I call you servants. But the servant does not know what his master doing. But I've called you friends for all that I've heard from the my Father I've made known to you.

This is what Jesus calls you. Not just a disciple, not just a follower, not just a learner, not just a student, not just a servant, not even a Christian. He calls you his friend. So you, you belong to him. He has bound himself to you in this way that will never end.

And you now have this friendship with him. This is what gives you the power and the courage. Think about how constant his friendship is, that he never leaves you. He's always with you. He never takes his hands, his eyes off of you.

You realize this, that Jesus never needs a break from you. I mean, we need a break from you. People need a break from me. Jesus never needs a break from you. Never.

Is he like, ah, you're a little much right now. Just gimme a second. He, he never says that. No, he's always with you. He knows everything about you, all the things that you want to hide.

He already knows all those things. And yet he still calls you his friend. Think about how vulnerable and how open he became for you, that he stretches his arms out and he lays down his life for you. He didn't just call you friends. He made a way for you to become his friend by dying for you.

And he does this willingly. I wanna add, look, the cross was not plan B, okay? It wasn't the backup plan. It, this was the plan for him to lay his life down for you to become like us and lay his life down for us. And now the author of Hebrews says that he can sympathize with us in all of our weakness, in all of our brokenness.

He knows what that's like. Listen to Hebrews four says, we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are yet without sin. Do you realize this? That in all of your struggle and all of your suffering, all of your pain, all of your confusion, all of your hurt and betrayal, that you can look directly at Jesus and say to him, what? You too.

That's what friendship is. You. You know what that's like. You've been betrayed like that. You've been hurt like that.

You've gone through pain like this. He knows exactly what it's like. You, you too. I thought I was the only one. And therefore, Hebrews four goes on and says, let us then with confidence.

You don't have to tiptoe around Jesus, by the way, with confidence. Draw near to the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. The way that you become a great friend is by friendship with him. You, you cultivate this friendship with him. You press into him.

You learn what he is like. You learn his ways. You find your security and your joy and your meaning in him. That's how you become a great friend. That's how you endure hard seasons.

How you're constant at all times. You love at all times. It's how you forgive. It's how you, uh, are open and vulnerable 'cause he's your greatest friend. So it's, it's not good for us to be alone.

So God gave us friendship. And so lean into your friendships, especially friendship with Jesus. Lean into that. Let's be these great friends. Let's thank God for the friends that he's given us.

So again, you're made for this. Let's pray together. Father, we ask for God the courage to be great friends. Father, I wanna pray for those who are longing for friends. Would you open up some new relationships for them?

And would you forge great friendships for them? Father, for those who just need to need to repent a little bit and become better friends and pick the phone up, and make the visit and respond and be open and had the conversations to be, to be great friends. God, you made us for this. Thank you that you have not left us by ourselves. You've given us people around us to that would lift us up.

And who would encourage us and who would become friends to us. God, help us to be the kind of friends that you long for us to be, that you made us to be. Jesus, you're our greatest friend. Help us to treasure you and to make much of you. We pray this in your great name.

Amen.