Sunday 01 • 26 • 20

Thanks, Matt. As he prayed, we are in the process of sending out a daughter church, Reconciliation, and they are one session into launch team training. If you are interested at all, you're not too late. You can still get on board that and participate. Matt, you'll be there this week, right? He'll be there. There's a number of folks from our church who are investigating going with that. If you're at all interested, we encourage you to come. The training's on Thursday night. If you want more information about that or just want to talk to one of the leadership about it, I'd be happy to talk to you after our service.

As we've done together, we're going to read God's word out loud. Today's sermon has a number of passages, so we're going to read this out line by line. We're not going to read all the scripture references, though. Are you ready? Find your bulletin or look on the wall behind me. Three, two, one, go.

I was distressed for you, my brother Jonathan. Very pleasant have you been to me. Your love to me was extraordinary, surpassing the love of women. — 2 Samuel 1:26

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've heard my father, I have made known to you. — John 15:15

A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother. — Proverbs 18:24

A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity. — Proverbs 17:17

Many a man proclaims his own steadfast love, but a faithful man who can find. — Proverbs 20:6

Faithful are the wounds of a friend. Profuse are the kisses of an enemy. — Proverbs 27:12

Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another. — Proverbs 27:17

Do not forsake your friend and your father's friend, and do not go to your brother's house in the day of your calamity. Better is a neighbor who is near than a brother who is far away. — Proverbs 27:10

Let your foot be seldom in your neighbor's house, lest he have his fill of you and hate you. — Proverbs 25:17

Before I jump into today's sermon, I want to give a qualification on something that I said last week as an application of our sermon. I've been preaching through this series on being single in the church, and last week's sermon was about us being family and the household of God and the primacy of that. By way of application, I made the point that it's really important for us to express affection for one another. I said, hey, it'd be great if our church was more of a hugging church. I think that those are great things, but I wanted to qualify that. Sometimes I say things in too broad a brush, and I just wanted to nuance that a little bit.

I want to particularly be careful of that in showing affection between genders, particularly for women in our congregation. I just want to be sensitive that there's a type of touch which is friendly and kind, and there's a type of touch which is inappropriate. We need to be really careful—not fearful, but careful, loving, respectful. No one should feel threatened or feel like this is too much or inappropriate. I just want there to be good boundaries and also good warmth in our congregation. So I just wanted to nuance that.

Let me pray for our sermon this morning. Lord, I pray that the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts would be pleasing and acceptable in your sight. You are our rock and our fortress and our redeemer. We pray these things in your name. Amen.

Romance and Intimacy

Last year, a new romantic comedy came out starring Rebel Wilson called "Isn't It Romantic?" But this rom com was actually a satire—a parody of rom coms. Rebel Wilson plays a woman named Natalie who is cynical, living in New York, and calls romance and romantic comedies, quote, "unhealthy, unrealistic, and toxic, especially for women." But then she wakes up to find herself living in a rom com world. Everything looks like it's been filtered through an Instagram filter. She wakes up in her apartment that was really small, and now it's suddenly five sizes too big. She wakes up in full hair and makeup. There's music everywhere all the time. She's walking down the street and handsome men who look like Liam Hemsworth can't take their eyes off her. People in the street are far too friendly. There are even two choreographed dance musical numbers that she finds herself stuck in.

She describes this new rom com world as "The Matrix for lonely women." But the movie is satirically making a point that maybe romance isn't the answer to our need for intimacy. The hole in Natalie's life is not filled by having perfect hair or dance tunes. It's the need for someone to know her and love her. It's the need for intimacy, and romantic comedies don't really answer that.

We're in a six-week series called "Single Like Jesus" on being single, on being single in the church. We're exploring these six myths of being single. Here's where we've been so far.

We've said, myth number one, being single is weird. Myth number two, being single requires some superpower or special calling. Myth number three, last week, being single means no family. And today, we're looking at this one: being single means no intimacy.

I want to examine that myth because in today's world, it has become sort of an unquestioned assumption that to be single biblically—so being celibate, honoring God in those ways—means that intimacy is absent in your life. That those are opposites, those are mutually exclusive, and I think that is very wrong.

So here's my outline for you this morning if you take notes. Number one, rethinking the answers to loneliness. Number two, the other f word. Number three, the marks of true friendship.

Rethinking the Answers to Loneliness

Now it is no secret—this has been in lots of news outlets—saying we are in an age of unprecedented loneliness, that people feel lonely in staggering numbers right now. In fact, the global health company Cigna did a huge statistical study, and they looked at the issues of loneliness in our country as a health risk. And here's some of the data they collected.

They said forty-six percent of Americans report they are sometimes or always feeling alone or left out. Twenty-seven percent of Americans rarely or never feel as though there are people who really understand them. Forty-three percent of Americans sometimes or always feel that their relationships are not meaningful or that they are isolated from others. Twenty percent report that they rarely or never feel close to people or feel like there's no one they can talk to.

They found that Americans who live with others are less likely to feel lonely, but that is not true if you're a single parent. The numbers are much higher for those who are single parents. Only around half of Americans have meaningful interpersonal social interactions such as an extended conversation with a friend or spending quality time with others on a daily basis.

They found that generation Z—which is a number of you in this room, ages 18 through 22—describes itself as the loneliest generation and claims to be in worse mental health as a result. And they found that social media is no predictor. The numbers for those who are heavy social media users and those who never use social media are almost the same with regard to loneliness.

So intimacy, if that is the antidote to loneliness, where do we get it? Where does that come from?

Now, the wrong answers. And the first one you'll probably anticipate because I'm a Christian preacher—right?—is hookup culture. Sex. We live in a hookup culture, which means it's actually very easy to have sex with someone that you barely know or have just met. There are apps on your iPhone to help you do that. But it is a huge error to confuse that with intimacy.

Think about this: sexual union is designed by God to deepen intimacy, to express intimacy in a covenant relationship under God. That's what he designed it for. That's what it's for. And this is why generations before us—and this comes from older translations of the Bible—describe the word "knowing" someone as a euphemism for sex. There was something that expressed intimacy but didn't give it. It didn't produce it. It's possible then to have lots of sex and no intimacy.

But you expected I was going to say that, right? Like, this is the church. That's the Christian answer. That's what I'm supposed to say. But here's the churchy answer to this, and this is also a problem. I talked about this a little bit last week: the idea of the Christian soulmate.

Christian Mingle, in their about section on their website, advertises their website this way: "Christian Mingle is the ideal place for Christian men and women to find friends, dates, and even soul mates." Or maybe you have heard or said these things to other people: "God has someone special for you just out there waiting for you to discover who that is. Make sure you wait for the one. Don't settle."

All of that is some kind of weird mashup between romantic comedies and Calvinism. That is nowhere in the Bible, as I said last week. Nowhere in the Bible are we promised there is a soulmate for every person.

I want to take that another step today. I want you to understand how that does damage because what that communicates, if you've ever heard that or assumed that, is that you are incomplete without the other person who is going to make you whole. Somehow, there's one other person in the world who can say, "You complete me," right, and make you whole, a whole person. And we end up—that's not in the Bible. That sounds good. It's not true. And that is way too much freight to put on any relationship. Those are crippling pressures that you put on a relationship.

Now where does that come from? Here's where I think that comes from: Genesis one and two.

That marriage is somehow the answer to loneliness, that being single is the cause of loneliness. But here's the question: is that true? Is that true biblically? The answer is no. Not really. The Bible doesn't ever say marriage is the answer to loneliness or that being single is the cause of loneliness.

Perhaps you're thinking, "Wait a second. Didn't God say it's not good for man to be alone before the fall, before the creation of Eve?" And of course, yes, he did. But he was stating a fact. He was not talking about how Adam felt. Adam enjoyed perfect fellowship, perfect face-to-face communion with God in a place of incredible comfort. Apart from God telling him, Adam had no idea that there could be another, that there was something deficient or lacking. It was God's idea, not Adam's. God is the one who said, "I'm going to create another."

See, maybe God's statement here is not surprising. After all, God created human beings in his image. I heard a counselor, Adam Young, say this recently: "We are made in the image of a community—a God who is three in one. We're made in that kind of relationship." So God is saying, yes, it is not good for Adam to be alone. But it doesn't follow that marriage is the answer for all loneliness or that singleness is the cause of it. Marriage can be part of an answer, but no soul mate is promised to fill that gap. And no soul mate can fill that space.

Consider it another way: if marriage were the answer to loneliness, why is there no marriage in heaven?

Here's the summary: marriage is not the fix to loneliness, and singleness is not the cause of loneliness. Rather, the Bible gives us something that is probably so simple that you may want to throw a chair at me this morning. Here's the other f word: friendship. It's so basic. So obvious. But in Second Samuel 1:26, we read how David mourned the death of his close friend Jonathan.

David and Jonathan's Friendship

Now these two should never have been friends. Humanly speaking, they should have been mortal enemies. David was next in line to the throne; Jonathan was the son of the king. Both men were on a direct collision course for that throne room. And yet, over their lifetime, David describes Jonathan in such intimate friendship terms. Here we read David mourning over Jonathan's death:

I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan. Very pleasant have you been to me. Your love to me was extraordinary, surpassing even the love of women. — 2 Samuel 1:26

Now let's be honest. Hearing those words, many people roll their eyes. Today, it seems almost impossible for somebody to read those words out loud without assuming that David and Jonathan were enjoying a sexual relationship. But that is neither necessary nor is it even likely. That tells us more about where our culture is.

If you read through First and Second Samuel, you'll discover that David's relationships at this point—he had three wives—and his relationships with women were far from simple. They were very complicated. And by comparison, he found his friendship with Jonathan something easy, something that was delightful and actually not hard for him by comparison.

See, our culture just assumes that intimacy and sex are pretty much the same thing. We've collapsed those into one. And so we can't conceive that there's such a thing as intimacy of friendship without something sexual going on between David and Jonathan. We don't have this category anymore of deep friendship between two people of the same gender.

Rosaria Butterfield calls that homosociality. C.S. Lewis, who was an Oxford professor, wrote a book about love and relationships called The Four Loves, and he said this:

Those who cannot conceive of friendship as a substantive love but only a disguise or elaboration of romantic love betray the fact that they have probably never had a friend.

You hear that? Part of our problem in imagining this has been the eclipsing of friendship. We may not have ever experienced it.

In recent years, social media has turned "friend" from a noun to a verb, and in doing so has greatly degraded the word. A friend—we friend someone when we add them to our list of contacts. The average person on Facebook has 237 friends. But how many of those people do they talk to regularly? How many of those people do they really see?

Those people get to see the airbrushed versions, but they don't really see kitchen table you. We've downgraded that. And by turning it from noun to verb, we've lost something really significant. The advertising companies know this. They know we're lonely. They're making lots of money off of that. Revenue coming from advertising on social media was over $107 billion last year. They are making money on our loneliness.

The stats on men, especially middle-aged men and friendship, are just downright discouraging. There have been numerous studies showing how hard it is for men to make friends and keep friends. Bromance movies like Superbad and I Love You, Man show how hard it is for two men to get near to each other emotionally without being worried about being considered a couple. So what do we do? We go it alone.

I think there's equal pressure on women. I think society, especially Raleigh, North Carolina, has put so much pressure on women to have it all and do it all that instead of getting one another near one another in friendship, a lot of times there's a tremendous amount of competition and comparison between women, which is poison for friendship.

Even sixty years ago, C.S. Lewis could see that:

Friendship has become something quite marginal, not a main course in life's banquet, but a diversion, something that fills up the chinks of one's time.

And he concluded: "Few value it because few experience it."

Now I've got to say this—guilty as charged. For years planting a church in Philadelphia, in my thirties, I thought friendship was icing on the cake. I'm like, this is extra. I've got a job to do. I've got a family. I've got kids. Friendship would be nice, but it's not essential. Do you find yourself in that category? This is extra. It'd be nice if I could have it, but it's not essential.

And I think the sad thing is that many people find churches to be some of the places where they are the most lonely, where they don't find friendship. Friendship, it seems, is dispensable. But that is so different from what we see in this book.

Jesus and Paul on Friendship

Jesus did life for three years with a group of twelve men. They spent lots of time together. In particular, there are three of them that were particularly close to Jesus. One of whom, John, describes himself as the disciple that Jesus loved, the beloved disciple, because he had such a sense of closeness with Jesus.

A lot of people look at the apostle Paul and think of him as the lone ranger apostle or Rambo of the apostles. But if you read Romans, the last chapter of the book of Romans, it is filled with all these very personal greetings with people who were close friends of his. This was not the lone ranger.

And in John 15:15, we read something that's just shocking:

I don't call you servants because a servant doesn't know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends because all I've known from the Father, I've made known to you.

Let's pause and remember who we're talking about when we talk about Jesus. Jesus—the one who we confess in our confessions that he is very God of very God, light from light. The one who scripture tells us upholds everything in the universe by his powerful word. Jesus who's pictured for us in the book of Revelation as a rider on a white horse with a sword coming out of his mouth and justice in his hands. That Jesus has the right to tell all of us exactly what to do.

And yet Jesus calls us friends. Intimacy. He's saying, look, this is friendship. This is intimacy. It's being deeply known and deeply loved.

He even puts more flesh on this. He takes it up a notch. In that same passage, two verses before, he says: "Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends."

You have a lot of pseudo friends. We have a lot of friends who are great on good days, who kind of know some stuff about you, but they'll let you down if everything's on the line. But listen, you have a super friend who was closer than a brother. When Jesus was put on trial, all of his friends abandoned him.

They all rejected him. He told them that they were going to. He wasn't surprised. He didn't even seem all that upset about it. Why was he so forsaken by his friends? So that you would never ever be forsaken by him. That is the kind of friend that he is to you. He will never leave you. He is a true friend, the perfect friend.

C.S. Lewis says this is how two friends become friends. They may not have a lot in common, but they bump into each other and go, "What? You too? I thought I was the only one." And they find they have that in common. This is what you have in common with Jesus.

You know what you have in common with the Lord Jesus? The things you worry about. Because those are his concerns. Your future—he thinks about that. You are always on his mind. Your sin—he has paid for it all. He's bled for it. He cares about your future. He thinks about you. He understands you. He loves you. You are not alone. He's here right now. He is with us by the power of his spirit.

If you don't know the Lord Jesus Christ, would you start your friendship with him today? Can I invite you to that?

Brothers and sisters, do you know this friend? We give a lot of lip service to Jesus. We give a lot of nods like, "It's great he died on the cross." But do you know he is this kind of friend? I am asking you a question. Do you know he's this kind of friend? Do you know it? Is he this kind of friend to you? Yes. But Jesus is not enough. And I know it may sound like bizarro world to hear a pastor say that Jesus is not enough. But he's not. We also need friends. He has designed us for in the flesh, skin and bone, coffee drinking together friends. He's made us like this.

The Marks of Christian Friendship

I want to look at the marks of Christian friendship. Remember Adam? I talked about it earlier. He was alone in the garden before Eve was created. In his book Intimate Allies, Dan Allender, a Christian counselor and psychologist, makes this observation. He says, when God said, "It is not good for Adam to be alone," and he made Eve, he was demonstrating something profound. You and I are made for relationships. We're made for relationships.

Here's how Allender says it, much better than I could. So I'm going to quote him. He says, "God does not exclusively fill the human heart. He made humankind to need more than himself. The staggering humility of God to make something that was not fully satisfied in him alone is incomprehensible." Amen.

The implication is not, therefore, that marriage is what's in view. No, it's much more fundamental than that. It's much more basic than that. Relationship is what's in view. Relationships are what's in view. You were designed pre-fall for skin and bones relationships with other people. You need friendships. It is not an extra.

So let me be very explicit about the application of this. Your spouse, if you are married, yes, should be your best friend. That's something to really strive for, but not your only friend. Not your only friend. There's something I see in the South, particularly among men, where this is a fatal problem. Many men are only emotionally connected to a wife and nobody else. And as I said earlier, that puts a tremendous amount of pressure on a marriage. One person cannot be your everything. That is really unbiblical and it's really unfair. You need friends.

The book of Proverbs shows us we cannot live wisely in this world without friends. So it shows us the marks of Christian friendship. And I'm going to walk through six of these. Very brief, but I want to lay these out before you. Proverbs is good for this.

First, friendship is voluntary.

A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother. — Proverbs 18:24

Family is not voluntary. You never got to choose the people who are your brothers, sisters, mom, dad, aunts, uncles. Right? But friends—one of the things that is so glorious about friendship is that it is voluntary. It is chosen. It's not obligation. It is choice.

C.S. Lewis points out the uniqueness of friend love. He says friendship is the least natural of the loves, the least instinctive, the least organic, biological, gregarious, even necessary. The species, biologically considered, has no need of it.

You know, marriage is not just close friendship with sex added, nor is close friendship marriage without sex. Marriage, by definition, is exclusive because it's covenantal. It's one man, one woman before the Lord for a life. That's the covenant. But one of the glories of friendship and why you need this if you are married in addition to a spouse is that you can have lots of friends that are close, and they're not mutually exclusive. I can be friends with you and with you. Right? And there's no competition. Friendship is voluntary and it's nonexclusive.

That's one of the best things about it. Second, friendship is not fleeting.

A friend loves at all times. A brother is born for adversity. — Proverbs 17:17

Many a man proclaims his own steadfast love, but a faithful man who can find. — Proverbs 26

When someone loves you good and bad, and they don't have to, they choose to, that person is a friend. A true friend is rock solid. You have lots of people who you know—if you're going through something hard, they say, "Hey, I'll pray for you, let me know if you need something." A friend is someone who shows up. A friend is someone who shows up unannounced on your doorstep and says, "I'm really sorry. Can I just be with you?" That's friendship. Being with.

A faithful friend who loves at all times, that person is rare. A faithful friend, who can find? The Beatles sing it: "I get by with a little help from my friends."

Third, friendship is honest.

Faithful are the wounds of a friend; profuse are the kisses of an enemy. — Proverbs 27:6

A faithful friend is going to provoke you. They're going to challenge you. You're not going to agree with everything they have to say, but you'll want to listen. We need that. All of us need that.

I quoted Ray Ortland last week. He says, "Our own family backgrounds have left every one of us a little bit weird." So you need an honest friend who's coming from the outside, who can hold up a mirror and say, "Help me see what I don't see." Because all of us have enormous blind spots. A friend can help you see what you don't see. A friend is someone who knows your soul, not someone who you just like to smoke meats with or have a few hobbies with, but someone who knows you. A friend is someone who knows the real you, who you tell your secrets to.

Biologically, you don't need a friend. Financially, you can survive without a friend. Nobody ever died for a lack of friendship. But as busy as we are, unless we make this a priority, this will always be at the bottom of the to-do list. You cannot become wise without a Christian friend speaking into your life. The wounds of a friend help you grow.

Fourth, friendship is mutual.

As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another. — Proverbs 27:17

It's not a way where one person's asking all the questions and the other person's giving all the answers. That's counseling. That's not friendship. Friendship is when two people are asking each other questions, giving each other feedback, pushing a little bit. "Hey, I just want to nudge you a little on this one. I don't agree with you."

Picture a knife. One way, friendship is like a rag polishing a knife. Two-way friendship, mutual, real friendship is like a file sharpening the knife. And there's tension. There's friction. When a friend challenges you, provokes you—it hurts. There's a difference between hurting a person and harming a person. A lot of us feel like, "Feeling loved, that's what I really want." But there's a difference between feeling loved and actually really being loved by another person. Hurting sometimes is actually a way of helping. Jesus came and spoke with clarity and truth, and He hurt some people. That's why they wanted to kill Him. He didn't harm anyone. A friend may cut you. A friend may wound you—all in the name of being a good friend. If you don't understand that, you're liable to cut off or blame people in your life who get close and say something you don't like because you don't have the maturity to receive it. But if you receive it, you'll grow in wisdom. It'll sharpen you.

Fifth, friendship is regular.

Better is a neighbor who is near than a brother who is far away. — Proverbs 27:10

Friendship has to be regular. It's got to be proximate. It's got to be close, not every once in a while. So those Facebook friends? Those are acquaintances. Friendship requires proximity and regular contact—a weekly walk, lunch every other week, a phone call a couple times a week. Not Facebook friends.

Regularity is going to require something from you. It will require sacrifice. It's going to mean if you're going to prioritize this, you're going to have somebody in your life like this, it's going to mean you don't get as much stuff done. It's going to mean you're going to get interrupted. It's going to be frustrating. But without regularity, you are not friends. You are acquaintances. You are friendly. We're good at friendly in Raleigh, right? The person who says, "Hey, we should get together sometime"—that is not a friend.

Friendship Is Not Too Regular

Friendship also, number six, finally, is not too regular. Proverbs twenty-five seventeen says this:

Let your foot be seldom in your neighbor's house, lest he have his fill of you and hate you. — Proverbs 25:17

Friends need time together, and they need time apart. Some of y'all are way too young to remember this, but Kenny Rogers used to sing, right? You got to know when to hold them. You got to know when to fold them. Right? Like, in heaven, one day, you will have thousands and thousands of people who don't get tired and weary or irritated. They never run out of time for being together and enjoying one another, but not now. Okay? Not now. There are times when your friends need a break. Enough is enough. Don't smother your friends. Like Ben Franklin used to say, guests and fish stink after three days. Don't wear them out.

Friendship vs. Community

I want to say this as a pastor to you in this process. Look, being a church or even part of a community group is no means for guaranteeing friendship. We don't write on our bulletin, come find all your friends here. Nobody is guaranteeing that in a community group. Last week's sermon, we talked about what it means to be a family. We live together in community groups and practice that as a church so we can practice being a family. Like supporting each other, caring for each other, praying for each other. Those are not necessarily guarantees of friendship. You may not find friends in your community group. That's okay. We know that. Friendship is a whole another level or step beyond what we're describing in being a family together.

And it is going to be really hard. We don't know how to do this. We're in a culture that doesn't know how to do this anymore. This is something that is going to be really challenging to pursue. But all of us, married and single, young and old, all of us need to take steps toward pursuing friendship because we need it.

The Fellowship of Friends

Susan sent me this past week, and I just—it fit so well even though I hate Lord of the Rings illustrations. So in his fantasy novel Fellowship of the Ring, J. R. R. Tolkien gives us this vibrant picture of friendship. There are these four hobbits, and one of them named Frodo is called to this really difficult task, a quest that is probably going to cost him years of his life and maybe his life. And he receives this and is like, okay, I'm committed. And he's prepared to go and do it, and his friends stop him, and they have this conversation.

But it doesn't seem I can trust anyone, said Frodo. Sam looked at him unhappily. It all depends on what you want, put in Mary. You can trust us to stick to you through thick and thin to the bitter end, and you can trust us to keep any secret of yours better than you can keep it yourself, but you cannot trust us to let you face trouble alone or go off without a word. We are your friends, Frodo.

Now, the reason I share that is I think that J. R. R. Tolkien wrote into these books his own experience. Tolkien was in a regular weekly gathering of friends with the guy who I've been quoting throughout the sermon on friendship, C. S. Lewis. They gathered to eat, they gathered to smoke pipes, they gathered to drink brown liquid together. And they shared a depth of friendship. There were four of them that were the kind of the main foursome of this group. And over years, Tolkien experienced friendship. And he wrote this into his novel. And here's a different way to view these books. Not as epic adventure, not as deliverance from all evil in the empire, but a story of the power of friendship, of how the power of these four together changed the world.

A Call to Action

You know, I think that this sermon is probably going to stir up a lot in this congregation. And I think that probably some of you are struggling right now because you're lonely and you don't have friends. You have a lot of acquaintances. You have a lot of people who know stuff about you or you've tried and it's just been a struggle. And so I want to encourage you this morning like this may leave you kind of feeling lonely. But I want you to take all of those feelings to the one who is your real friend, who sticks closer than a brother, and ask Him, Lord Jesus, You know me better than I know myself. Will You send me a friend? Will You help me learn what it means to be a friend? What are the ways I need to change and grow in what I understand my friendships have been like? How can I learn to become a friend? Lord, help me. And help me to step further into my friendship with You. Help me to take the longings that I have and also turn those toward you. He longs to fill your heart. He longs to draw near if you will but give him space.

Let's pray together. Father God, we come before you this morning and Lord, no matter where we find ourselves, married, single, young, old, lots of friends, very few friends. Lord, each of us have a deep ache. Lord, to be known and to be cherished and to be understood, for someone to look us in the eye and really care.

Father, we thank you that you draw near to us, that You have called us friends. Lord, we pray that You would help us to take a deep dive into that in our lives, to seek that out, to nurture that.

Lord, we also pray: would You provide for us friendship? Help us not to be demanding and greedy, but Lord, help us to go to You. Help us to look. Help us to care. Lord, help us to show up.

We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.