God’s Design for Friendship | Mo Huggins | Twin Rivers Church

Go with me to john chapter 15 starting at the 12th verse And the word of god says This is my commandment. This is jesus speaking that you love one another as I have loved you Greater love has no one than this That someone laid down his life for his friends You are my friends if you do what I command you 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 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 I want to talk to you for a few moments today on god-designed Friendships god-designed friendships, let's pray jesus. Thank you so much for this day. Thank you for your presence That's already in the room I pray that you'd give us ears to hear and hearts to receive what you would say in jesus name. Amen friends, uh friendship is one of the most Interesting things in our world and in our life In fact, I would say friendship is one of those things humanity does god adjacent It's one of those things we know god blesses us with we we know god gives to us But oftentimes we don't do it the way that god has designed it In fact, god said it's not good for people to be alone But we tend to try to walk this thing alone me myself and I and it doesn't mean that you don't have friends But I would suggest we oftentimes don't have friendship the way god has designed it We are the most connected Unconnected generation ever we are high tech and low touch We've got people we can share memes with but not many people we can share our heart with Here's one of the reasons why I believe that is true It's because we have a low theological perspective of what god thinks about friendship In fact, I would say our building box for friendship is not based on scripture But based on what we think We are basing it on worldly standards instead of god's standards

So one of the examples I would say is the number one reason most people are friends is from a place of convenience our kids go to the same school together or you live in the same neighborhood or you think the same way that I think the Unfortunate thing about convenience being your building block is you never build anything from depth from a place of convenience Scripture says that covenant is the way that we should approach friendship Meaning that in the highest of highs and the lowest of lows we have committed to walk through life together Another one that we we build friendship off that is based on worldly standards and not biblical standards is chemistry Now hear me chemistry is a good thing and you should have chemistry But if chemistry is your main building block, you may not have the best friends I want you to roll back to your high school years and remember some of the Best people you had chemistry with caused you to get into the most trouble Chemistry is not necessarily the best building block Here's what scripture says is the foundation for friendship Is christ that no matter if y'all look the same if y'all come from the same neighborhood the same socio-economic Status that in christ you can have unity and connectivity in ephesians He says in fact christ tore down the wall of hostility that separated us and in christ There are two people have become one. What am I trying to tell you friends? Is that you can't build friendship the way the world builds friendship if you want it god's way And in fact, I would say that the biggest one is so much of our world's friendships are transactional What can I get out of it? If you if you do this, then I do that unfortunately god's unfortunately god's design for friendship is not transactional but Transformational that god's design for friendship is to help you become better than you were before Our biblical passage this morning friends is jesus near the tail end of his ministry jesus getting ready to transition Out of this time of walking with his disciples. He is getting ready to die on a cross for our sins and and Establish his covenant and his testament and before he goes to that He lays out in the scriptures god's design for friendship and here's where he starts this design Here's what you need to understand that jesus is the example And the standard of a God-designed friend that if you are thinking about friendship at all that you've got to look first to jesus that he

Models and he walks out what it looks like to be a god-designed friend If you notice john chapter 15 verse 12 Here's what it says that this is my command that you love one another as I have loved You here's a little secret friends that jesus is designed for friendship. It's not flippant It's not surfacy that jesus designed for friendship Matters more than fleeting moments and he wants you to follow his example and that friendship is rooted in a place of love Here's what I would say to you and this is probably strong if you are married who you choose as friends Is the third most important decision that you make? Jesus Who you marry and then who your friends are if you are single who your friends are are the second most important decision? that you make And if you don't hear anything else I say today, here's what I want you to understand Is that god-designed? friendships Are to help you become more like jesus That the ultimate purpose of god's designed friendships is so that you look more talk more act more Like jesus that you are not just in friendship to have a cool time No God uses friendship to form you to shape you to prepare you to develop you into the person that he wants you to be into the image of christ now, I know you're hearing you're saying Listen, I don't know about my friends. They they're not helping me do that Let me just give you what the scripture teaches us about friendship and here here's my goal for today Is that you go home and you evaluate? Number one your current friendships number two where you need to make new friendships and then number three What kind of friend are you? Here's the first thing about god-designed friendships that I think is important for us to understand is that god-designed friendships are costly I I know You know, we we don't like that that side of it, but notice what jesus says in the text He says greater love has no one than this than to lay down his life for his friends

Here is what he is communicating to us. Is that friendship? Oftentimes cost you something Me and my wife we just celebrated 10 years of marriage this year y'all We made it to the double digits and i'm excited about this journey But I remember early on but while we were engaged it seemed like everybody was getting engaged at the same time And y'all I had to rspp no to some of these because weddings are expensive Especially if you in the wedding, I got one. Amen right here. He knows right weddings are expensive He probably had four daughters weddings are expensive Expensive You know what they do is you got to pay for the suit you got to pay for the flight You got to pay for the hotel and then it adds up It costs you The truth of the matter is friendship Oftentimes will cost you something. I remember hearing a story about these two friends that that met in college One was named bubba. One was named mark. Bubba was from deep south Alabama mark was from sierra leone africa and and they met at college in in a small college in missouri and They were roommates and it became the best of friends. Bubba was Afraid of flying but they were best friends and then they ended up going back to where they were from after college But they stayed in touch and mark in sierra leone was getting ready to get married And so he sent an invitation to bubba knowing that bubba's afraid of flying and so bubba probably wouldn't be there And here comes his wedding day and bubba from south alabama is walking in sierra leone To his wedding and mark is flabbergasted He couldn't believe that bubba showed up. He said bubba. I thought you were afraid of front. Why are you here? He said mark you're my friend I wouldn't miss this Here's the truth friends is that friendship? Will always cost you something That the real friendship here's what real friendship actually does real friendship has the tendency Of uprooting and getting rid of the selfishness and self-centeredness in our life You want to know how god begins to uproot that and we are naturally selfish. Okay, maybe not y'all

Let me talk about atlanta here in saint louis. Y'all sweetly saved, okay But in atlanta we are naturally selfish i'm not going to tell you which one of my kids but we did this little oriole Challenge with them right under my wife's uh plate. We had one oreo over my son's plate We had two oreos and under my plate, we had none. We opened my wife's plate, one, she ate it. We opened my son's plate, he has two. His eyes go big, he's so excited. He starts eating one, we open mine, and there's none, and he just looked at me and said, sorry for you. Ate the second one right in front of my face. Friends, we are naturally selfish, and one of the ways the Lord uproots that selfishness is to put us in friendship that requires us to think less about ourself and more about the other person. Philippians 2 and 3 tells us to do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility, think of others more than ourselves. How can I become more like Jesus if the song is always about me? How can I be like my Savior who came not to be served, but he came to serve others if I'm always the one being served? Here's what real God-designed friendships teach you, not what I can get, but what I can give. And if you need an example of that, friends, here's what the text teaches us, is that the cross is the perfect example of a friendship that cost you something, that Jesus didn't just claim to be our friend.

He went to a cross and died for our sins so that we could be in right relationship with him. I know you've heard of John 3, 16, for God so loved the world. First John 3 and 16 says, this is how we know love. By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us and we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. The truth is, friends, Jesus didn't just claim to be our friends. He proved it through his actions. Can I say something hard to you real quick? A friendship that costs you nothing will produce nothing in you. Can I ask you a hard question? Are your friendships costing you something? Your time, your energy? Now, you know, you gotta be careful of that because everybody have that one friend, when you see their name on the caller ID, you gotta pause, breathe, see if you got the emotional energy to have this conversation today. And if you can't laugh, you might be that friend. That's okay, they love you. They picked up. Here's the second truth about this, friends, is that God-designed friendships call you higher. They don't leave you where you are. Here's what Jesus says. You are my friends if you do what I command.

Oftentimes, people have read this the wrong way. They have read this understanding it as if I've got to earn friendship with Jesus by doing the right things. This is not what Jesus is saying in the text. In fact, what Jesus is saying is that your behavior reveals your proximity and your access. That you are not his friend because you claim to be, you're his friend because your behavior reveals you to be. I remember when I was working with this one lady and everybody at the company knew she was a liar. I mean, she was just a liar. And we liked her because she was funny. But I mean, she would say, I'm not a liar, I'm not a liar, I'm not a liar. And we're looking at her, you lying to us right now. Just because she claimed not to be one didn't make her not one. See, what God likes to do with friendship is allow friendship to align your behavior with his commandments. If you don't have a friend who could tell you that you're wrong, you don't have friends. If you haven't given people access to say, hey, you might not be heading in the right direction, you've missed it. Because we will fool ourselves if we're not careful. The book of James says, do not be hearers of God word, but be doers of his words. That your actions reveals your friendship with God.

And so my encouragement to you is that what God does with friendship is put people around you that help shape and frame your character and behavior so it produces God honoring obedience in your life. You need friends who don't just co-sign. And y'all, we all have that one friend. If we wanna do the wrong thing, we can call them and they'd be like, yeah, let's go. Right? That is not the one to call when you are not feeling your best. Listen, God has gifted me with words. And 99% of the time, those words are used for his glory, honor. If you dial the right number on the wrong day, you could get these words in a different way. And one day somebody dialed the wrong number, right number on the wrong day. And y'all, I went to clickety clacking on my phone and it was like poetry. I wrote what I thought was the best clap back in the world. I was excited to hit send. But before I hit send, I let my friend read it and he read it. And all he said to me is, this doesn't sound like the Mo that I know. Instantly the fog of anger and hostility was defeated. And now I have someone who pointed out the error in my ways and all I did instead of hitting send, I hit delete. It felt good to type, but I couldn't send that because it was outside of who God has called me to be. Can I ask you a hard question?

Do you have a friend who will pull the reins on you? Do you have friends that are helping you become more like Jesus and less like who you used to be? If your friends co-sign your foolishness, they will also co-sign your destruction. God has put barriers in your life. Here, here's what Proverbs calls them. Proverbs calls them iron and the scripture says that iron sharpens iron. It helps you to become better. And if you don't have another piece of iron helping to sharpen you, you won't become who God wants you to be. Can I tell you, the primary purpose of a friendship in this way, the way Jesus has described it here is that God designed friendships help close the gap between who you profess to be and who you're supposed to be. That the gap and notice when you first become a Christian, God calls you righteous immediately. But you know, you got some things that I ain't so righteous and the gap is like this. And what God will do is put people in your life so that the gap between what you profess and what you practice becomes so aligned that you look more like Jesus and less like who you used to be. You can't do that in isolation. You need God, Godly divine design friends to help you to become more like Jesus. And without that, I won't do what God called me to do. Can I ask you a hard question? Do your friends pull you closer to Christ or closer to compromise? Yeah. Sometimes we treat flippantly what God treats sacredly. Your friendships are sacred. They are a gift from God. And our job is to steward that. Well, I need to evaluate. Do I get closer to Christ when I hang out with them or does my tongue get looser

when I hang out with them? Do my standards get stronger when I hang out with them or do I move the barrier and the boundaries further when I hang out with them? See your destiny is in direct correlation with the people that you hang out with. You show me your friends and I'll show you your future. God designed your friends to help accelerate and develop your future into the into the image of Christ. Okay, let me give you the third one. God designed friendships have relational depth. Here's one of the things that I've noticed. We have thousands of followers, but very few friends and, and those followers, it's so wide, but it's this shallow. You share memes and jokes, but not pain and your heart. They don't know who you really are. And here, here's where it comes from. Again, St. Louis, not y'all. Well, maybe your neighbor, but you never, you right? We, we have a tendency of wanting people to like us. And so we give them a frame or an edited version of who we are and we present that because we hope that gets us double clicks and that hopes that gets us likes. And we hope that people want to hang out with us. Here's the problem with that is if they only know the edited version of you, they don't like you. They like that character that you presented. And here's why you feel lonely. Here's why you feel sad and, and you feel in a room full of people. feel disconnected and lonely, and in the retreat you can still feel lonely, it's because you have given them an edited version of yourself. And here's the challenge with an edited version. If they have an edited version of you, you don't have friends, you have an audience. You want to know why your soul is tired?

You've been performing. You want to know why you're so heavy and you're so, oh, I just don't know. It's because you've been wearing the mask for so long. And I want you to hear this because some of you, you're like, I've been told too many times that I'm too much and it's too much and I'm over, I talk too much and all that. You may be too much for other people, but you're just the right of much for somebody else and you need to focus on the people that God is bringing into your life. And as long as you're chasing those that only like the edited version of you, you'll never find those who will love and accept the version of you that God has created. You know, some of you, you, you stunt in life because God can't anoint who you pretend to be. He anoints who he created you to be. And as long as you're pretending, your friends won't know you and you won't have the anointing of God to do what he has called you to do. And so what Jesus says, notice what he says in the text. He says, I don't call you servants anymore because servants don't know what the master is doing. But everything I've heard from my father, I, I have made known to you. So that's why I call you friend. Here is how you know whether or not you are friends with someone. It is based on what you are able to share with them. And hear me South County, I know lean in real quick. I want you to understand this because some of you are like, pastor, I've shared and I've been hurt before. And that hurt has caused me to close up, to build a wall. Here's the problem with that. The wall you put up to keep those who hurt you out is also keeping out those God is sending to help heal you. The same avenue of vulnerability that caused you pain is the same avenue of vulnerability that God will bring your healing.

And what the hurt teaches you to do is not to close up forever. It teaches you discernment on who to open up to. Jesus says, notice what Jesus does. They become, they were strangers who became followers, who were fans of Jesus, who became friends of Jesus. That came through the level of intentional vulnerability and sharing that Jesus does with his disciples. You will never have deep friendship from shallow places. You don't need thousands of friends, but you do need a few friends who know you and you are free to share who you are with them. Can I ask you a question? Do you have friends that you can share the truth with? Do you have friends that you can tell your story with? James 5 and 16 says, therefore confess your sins to one another that you may be healed. Now, the primary purpose of this is when you find yourself in sin that confession, God is the one who forgives, but that accountability and healing and the burden, it comes through sharing with a friend. The broader implication of this verse is that the more I share with someone, the more healing that can happen in my world and in my life. Now, practically, if they tell everybody else's drama to you, that's probably not the person you need to share your story with, okay? And if you that person, we got prayer at the end, you'll be free, it's okay, right? Here's the point, wisdom says who I share with, not never to share. You need to be able to share your story with someone. It's a risk to share. There is a risk of getting hurt, but on the other side of that is the healing of friendship, the healing of being fully known and fully loved. God wants you to experience that and he wants you to know that. Here's a fourth and final thing though, friends, when it comes to a God-designed friendship is that God-designed friendships have missional purpose.

I know, you thought your friendship was just about you getting rid of that loneliness that you were experiencing. You thought friendship was just so I could have somebody to laugh with and go on the boat with and hang out with. No, no, friendship is deeper than that. That God has a missional purpose for your friendship. Y'all, I remember when I moved to Atlanta the first time. It was in 2013, and I was nervous. It was my first time being away from home post-college, and I was moving on my own, and I knew no one in Atlanta. And I had a mutual friend named Jordan who connected me to a friend named Joe that has become my best friend. And I got a little job, a youth pastor at a little church in Powder Springs, Georgia, and the youth ministry was in a little trailer. And we would gather together in that trailer, and me and Joe, we became friends, and we began to do ministry together. And I think, I wanna show, we got a picture of the trailer. Let me show you the trailer. That's me and Joe in the trailer. That's Joe, and we would lead worship. It was a small little youth group, and he would lead worship, and I would preach. Here's the problem, he can't sing, but it would work out. And y'all, we did the best we could together. Late nights, we would design the stage of that space. Let me show you what it looked like. We would design the stage, and we'd get air filters,

and we'd put the air filters, and put black duct tape, and put the lights under it to make a cool design. But something happened in the friendship that as we worked together, God began to bless it, and he began to grow the student ministry. In fact, it began to grow so much that we outgrew the trailer, and they had to put us in another room, and there were some weeks that we had more people in our student ministry than were in the church, and it was an incredible experience in time. Me and Joe ended up going to different places, but we stayed friends, and y'all, on my journey, I began to be a lead pastor, and there were moments where on that journey, I was so discouraged about what's happening and what's going on, and Joe would remind me about the trailer, and he said, if God was faithful in a trailer, God will be faithful in this moment, and here's why you need God-designed friendship. You need people who will tell you in your moments of despair, I remember when God was with you back there, and if God was faithful back there, God will be faithful now. Today, I get to pastor thousands with my best friend who was not just a friend, he was a ministry partner. Here's what I'm trying to tell you, friends, that God uses your friendship not to cure only your loneliness, but to make your purpose stronger. God doesn't just put people together by accident.

He connects you to fulfill purpose. Paul meets Barnabas not by accident, but so that they would be the missionaries to take the gospel to the ends of the earth. Can I tell you, you've got a series coming up shortly called Now Playing, and there are people in your neighborhood, people in your social media circle, people that you do life with, you go to the ballgames with, who need Jesus, and what if God put you in their circle because you're the only one they would listen to to an invitation to come to church? Don't miss the moment of missional purpose, that this could be their one opportunity, their one moment to meet Jesus. And I wanna encourage you, at every location, you need to be right in your list of friends. Who doesn't know Jesus that needs to meet Jesus, that God has given me a sphere of influence? Because I can't just look at my friendship as just for something for me to laugh. I've gotta look at it that God has given me an assignment, a purpose, notice what Jesus says in verse 16, to bear fruit and for that fruit to remain. Here's what I imagine, that in eternity, you'll be hanging out, maybe with Paul, listening, like, Paul, why you say that? Maybe you go hang out with Joshua for a little bit, hang out with David, say, David, can you show me how big that stone was? But somebody's gonna run up to you in eternity

and say, I know you thought I wasn't listening, but thank you for being my friend. Thank you for telling me about Jesus, because I get to spend eternity here, because you were brave enough, bold enough, to not just see our friendship as flippant, but see it as sacred. See it as something that God wanted to use to make a difference in my life. So today, here's the final thing. I want you to understand that God designed friendships, yes they relieve you of your loneliness but it's purpose is to form you into Christ. So what's your next step today? As you think about your friendships, the buddy you hang out with and cook out with, the buddy you go hunting with, your friend that shares all the 50% off deals with, what's your next step there? Are you one of the ones that God is saying, you've been a little too selfish in your friendships and I need you to reflect my posture in friendship. Let it cost you something. Maybe you have been silent about issues in the life of your friends that you need to be bold enough to say that is not Christ-like and I love you too much to be silent about something that will send you away from God. Maybe your next step is to do the brave and vulnerable thing to share your heart, to move one of your friendships from a place of shallowness to a place of depth. Maybe instead of talking so much, you need to ask a few questions of a friend. Maybe for you, your next step is really say, God, how can you use me in friendship to make a difference? God, who do I need to invite to experience you in a real way? Who do I need to share the hope of Jesus with? Whatever your next step is, I pray that you'll take it. But maybe there's one here at West, maybe at South, at Jeffco online, at the correctional

facility, that your real next step is to finally say yes to the best friend in the world. To finally say, I've been running, but now I want to receive the friendship of Jesus. Wherever you are, my challenge to you is to take that next step.