The Friends Who Shape Your Future | A Good Friend | Full Experience

Let's do it again, let's do it again, let's do it again. Hey, welcome to CCV, would you join us? Let's praise the Lord, come on. Come on, yeah. Come on. Come on. Come on. Sing. Yeah. Yeah. No, you ain't worth it. It's found its way back home. You pick me up. You turn me around. You place my feet on solid ground. I thank the Master. I thank the Savior. Because you healed my heart. You changed my name. Forever free. I'm not the same. I thank the Master. I thank the Savior. Sing. I thank the Master. If I was another woman, I ain't free. I ain't free. I ain't free. If I was another woman, I ain't free. I ain't free.

I ain't free. If I was another woman, I ain't free. Yes, I ain't free. I ain't free. If I was another woman, I ain't free. Yes, I ain't free. Yeah. He picks me up. Turn me around. Placed my feet on solid ground. I thank the Master. I thank the Savior. Because He healed my heart. Changed my name. Forever free. I'm not the same. I thank the Master. I thank the Savior. Sing. I thank God. Yeah. Oh. I thank God. Yeah. Oh. I thank God. Yeah. Man, Merry Christmas. We're so glad that you guys could join us today. My name is Nathan.

This is Jess. We got a super fun service today because we got the junior hires with us. Can we give them a super warm welcome? Yeah. As we start focusing our hearts and minds on Jesus in worship today, I've got a scripture to read for us. This is from Romans 15. May the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you the same attitude of mind towards each other that Christ Jesus had, so that with one mind and one voice you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. That's what we're going to do here in a minute. We're going to sing with one voice glorifying our God. And as part of that, I'd love for us to take a minute, meet the people around you to say hi, and then we'll sing a Christmas song. Let's do it. ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Joy to the world, the Lord is Come Let earth receive her King Let every heart prepare Him room And heaven and nature sing And heaven and nature sing Yeah! Let's give our God praise, sing joy to the world Joy to the world, the Savior is Let men their songs embrace While fields and floods, rocks, hills and plains Repeat the sound of joy, repeat the sound of joy Repeat, repeat the sound of joy Yeah!

Let heaven and nature sing Oh, heaven and nature sing Let heaven and nature sing He rules the world with truth and grace And makes our nations prove The glory of His righteous grace And wonders of His love And wonders, wonders of His love And wonders, wonders of His love Yeah! Grateful for Your love tonight You alone are worthy, God All my words fall short I've got nothing to How could I express All my gratitude I could sing these songs As I offer You Every song I stand In truth and faith Let me hear you sing So I put my faith In You, yeah, yeah, yeah It's all that I have, yeah Hallelujah, hallelujah I know it's not much But I've nothing else before Him Except for a heart sing Hallelujah Hallelujah

I've got wonders for you I've got just what you need In my heart's sense of mind I will worship You And You alone So I throw up my hands And praise You again and again It's all that I have is Hallelujah, hallelujah And I know it's not much But I've nothing else before Him Except for a heart singing Hallelujah ♪ Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah ♪ ♪ Come on my soul, don't you get tired of me ♪ ♪ Listen to your song, you've got a light in it ♪ ♪ Shine in those arms, the Lord, yeah, come on ♪ ♪ Come on my soul, don't you get tired of me ♪ ♪ Listen to your song, you've got a light in it ♪ ♪ Shine in those arms, get up and praise the Lord, oh come on ♪ ♪ Oh come on, come on my soul, don't you get tired of me ♪ ♪ Listen to your song, you've got a light in it ♪ ♪ Shine in those arms, get up and praise the Lord, oh come on ♪ ♪ Oh oh oh, throw your hands and praise Him again and again ♪ ♪ So that I might?! Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah ♪ ♪ Because I know He's my first, but I've nothing else to feel four again ♪ ♪ So today, set my heart singing hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah ♪ Come on with every voice! ♪ Oh, I throw up my hands and praise You again and again ♪ ♪ Because all that I have is a hallelujah, hallelujah ♪

♪ And I know it's not much, but I'm nothing else before a king ♪ ♪ Except for a heart singing hallelujah, hallelujah ♪ We give You praise! Amen, thank you so much for declaring that in this place with us. You guys can have a seat. Well, if I haven't had the chance to meet you yet, my name is Rachel, and I serve as one of the pastors here. And this weekend, my oldest daughter is turning 20. Yes, I gave birth when I was seven. Just kidding. Don't do the math. I promise, I'm old enough. But on my kids' birthdays, I get super nostalgic just to think back on the day that they came into this world. And that day for Katie was really, really hard. My pregnancy was tough just already. Like, I was super sick. I was on bed rest for six weeks with her. And the day they took me off bed rest, I actually, my water broke, and I was in labor for 31 hours. I know, it was crazy. Ending in an emergency C-section, which was absolutely not what I expected for that day. I had no idea that that's how that would end. But for those of you that are parents, you probably fully understand this, that when you're holding that sweet little bundle of joy in your arms, that all the pain, all the suffering that you went through just completely fades away because you cannot fathom loving that little thing more than you already do. And birthdays are so incredible because they're about celebrating life, that we get to celebrate the life that is brought to this world and all that

they bring and who God created them to be. And as I was thinking about this weekend and her birthday and even communion, I couldn't help but realize that both birthdays and communion involve pain. They both involve sacrifice, one for life and one for death. And when we take communion, we are remembering that sacrifice that Christ made. And in 1 Corinthians 11, Jesus is talking to his disciples, and he's telling them, do this in remembrance of me. And what he's referring to is when they take the bread and the juice that are symbols of his body and blood shed on the cross for the forgiveness of our sins, they are remembering that sacrifice. But when we take communion together, we're also celebrating the life that that brings to us. That because he chose the cross, that we have life, we have peace, we have hope, and we have joy because of what he did. And what I love about God is that he knows it's super easy for us to forget sometimes. And so he gives us things like communion and even birthdays to regularly just pause, remember, and celebrate the life that we have because of him. So in these next few minutes, as we take communion together, I just wanna encourage you to celebrate everything that he's brought you through. Celebrate where you were before and where you are now because of his son's sacrifice. And if you're newer to faith, just take a couple minutes and open your heart and mind and ask God, how can I fully surrender? What would that look like for me to surrender so that I can have this life

because of the sacrifice of your son? Will you pray with me? God, we thank you for what you did. We thank you for the sacrifice of sending your son to the cross for each one of us. God, we pray that we don't miss the life that you have for each one of us because of that. Thank you for our families, thank you for birthdays, thank you for the reminder to continue to remember you and that sacrifice and how that affects us. We love you, it's in your name we pray, amen. ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Well, before we jump into the message, I've been so excited this week to just share with you a miracle that God's doing in our midst. If you were with us a few weeks ago, you know that we took on this challenge with one of our missions partners, Convoy of Hope. It's called One Day to Feed the World. We learned a few weeks ago that,

some of us maybe for the first time, that there is a hunger and poverty crisis that is really happening across the world, but also in the United States. There's 92 million working poor in the United States, and many of the poor across the world, and even in the United States, are single family households. A lot of them single moms trying to care for kids and just don't have enough food to put on the table. And so we felt called as a church to lean in on this and to partner with one of our best partners, Convoy of Hope. So you know that we took on this challenge for all of us to prayerfully consider giving one day of our yearly salary, just one day. And so many of you did that. I wanna thank you for that. I heard a lot of stories about kids and students that got involved as well. One dad texted me and said, my kids, they ran off to their rooms, and when they heard about this initiative, they wanted to participate. And I think he has a few kids and some of them students, and they came back, and they came back with $200 they wanted to give. And I was like, that just, man, that does from my heart. My two younger girls both work minimum wage jobs, and they came home and said, dad, we wanna give one day of our wage.

And you just need to know, Jamie and I gave as well. We will never ask you to do something we won't do ourselves. And what we got excited about with Convoy of Hope is. Not only just everything they're doing across the world to try to alleviate childhood hunger and poverty, but they have a big initiative right now where they are building a manufacturing facility that will manufacture food that will be distributed not only here in the United States, but around the world. It's incredible. It's about an $18 million project that when it's done, get this, this manufacturing facility will produce one billion meals a year. Think about what that could do to just alleviate poverty. So when Hal was here, this wasn't intentional. In passing, I just asked him, hey, I know it's $18 million. How close are you to raising that money to fund that manufacturing facility? He said, we're short about $2.1 million. And I thought in my mind, I think I shared this with our church, that would be awesome if we could cover that gap. And I don't know if we can, but that'd be awesome. And so after the weekend, just three days after your giving, on Tuesday, our team sent me the initial number that you gave, and guess what the initial number was?

Exactly almost $2.1 million. Can you believe that? Like that's a cool God wink. I call that a God wink. God says, I see you, but that's not actually what you gave. More kept coming in. And CCB, you are such a generous church. You're in Ephesians 3.20 church where God continues to do immeasurably more than we'd ever ask or imagine. So are you ready to hear the total number you gave that is all going to eliminate hunger and poverty in our world today? Here's the total number that you gave. Not 2.1, not 3.1. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And let me remind you,

not one dime of that stays here at CCB. All of that goes outside of our doors to help the poor. And I want you to know that God says something very specifically in scripture. He says those that want to care for and bless the poor, he will bless. And I'm praying God blesses many of you as you just sacrificially gave. I know many of you did. And I want to remind you that as a church, you know, there's so many things we want to take on to impact our city and our state. We've got all these projects and we're sending money outside our doors. And I just believe with all my heart that as we are a conduit for God to use us to send resources elsewhere, God will always take care of our needs. And I pray that you know that in your life as well. So from the bottom of my heart, thank you for your generosity. Can we one more time thank God for what he's doing in our church? Isn't that amazing? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we're in this series called A Good Friend. This is week two. And I want you to know that

we plan all of our series out about a year in advance. So all of 2026 is planned already. Do you want to know how we're going to start the year, January, 2026? We are going to walk through the very first book of the Bible, Genesis, the very beginning. And right when we wrap that series up, we're going to go to the very last book in the Bible, Revelation, and we're going to talk about getting you prepared for the end times. Anybody get excited about that? Yeah, I get excited about that. Can I be just a little transparent? There's some series I'm like, yes! And there's other series I'm like, I guess that's okay. And this is going to be a little, little transparent. But as we plan 2025 out, as we're getting toward the end of the year and we're going to do this series on friendships, I was thinking to myself, do we really want to do that? I actually thought about changing it and I was praying to God one day about that. And the only way I can describe it is God just struck my heart. He pierced me and convicted me in a way that was so strong. And what I felt like God told me is he said, Ashley, don't you dare, because this series on friendships

will be, for someone at CCV, the most important series of the whole entire year, especially those at our church. You've had a rough year and you need to change the trajectory of your life. You need a better year next year because this year was a tough year. And if this year was a tough year and you want a better year next year, let me tell you something. I want you to write this down. You show me your friends. I will show you your future. You show me today the people you spend the most time with and I will show you the trajectory of your life and which way it's headed. Now, that's not just a cute saying. That is an actual spiritual truth. In scripture, a man named Solomon, who is the wisest man who's ever lived, he wrote this in Proverbs. And he said the same thing in just a different way. Listen to what he said. Proverbs 13, verse 20. Walk with the wise and say it out loud. For a companion, that's a Hebrew word for a fool, a friend of fools suffers harm. If you will hang and live your life with wise, godly people, you will become that too. But when you hang out with fools, your life suffers harm.

And the word harm there in the Hebrew is not just physical harm, it's emotional harm. Some of you, your mental health today, the reason it is where it's at is because of the people that you hang with. And you don't even realize it. You show me your friends, I will show you your future. Can I say it a little bit differently, but I think a little more powerfully? And this is gonna be the big idea for the message today. It's impossible to live the right life with the wrong friends. It's impossible to live the right life with the wrong friends. And again, what I want you to do is for just a minute, I want you right now to think about your closest friends. Whether it's one, two, three, five of your closest friends, just put their names in your mind. And I wanna give you a minute to do this, this is really important. Think about, not your spouse, if you're married, not your boyfriend or girlfriend, I want you to think about your three to five closest friends, just put them in your mind right now, the people you spend the most time with. When you think about your closest friends, and you think about the direction of their life, how they operate sexually, what they do relationally, the things that come out of their mouth, how they treat people around them,

their marriage, how their kids operate. When you think about how they handle their finances, their follow through, what they do, their character integrity, let me just ask you, do you like where they're headed? Because I wanna tell you plainly today, that is exactly where your life is headed as well. Now this is not just Scripture saying this, science now backs this up. I love when science catches up with what Scripture says, because it's constantly doing that. But even scientifically, sociologists and leadership experts forever have been telling us this, you are the average of your five closest friends. Right now, you are the average of your five closest friends. Do you like where you're at? The biggest study that's been done that proves this scientifically, is a study that's called the Farmingham Study. Now it was a study that was done over 20 years. Think about this, they followed 5,029 people over 20 years to observe. One of the things they observed is how their friendships and people they hung out with affected them. Can I tell you a few things they found? Listen to this, they found that if you have a friend that gains, like a close friend that gains weight, your odds of gaining weight as well go up 57%. So the next time your friend orders a triple cheeseburger,

be like, slow your roll bro, that's affecting me too. They found this, they found that if you have a close friend that becomes a heavy drinker, your odds of becoming a heavy drinker go up 50 to 70%. If it's drug use, your odds go up 600%. This is the saddest, maybe one of the saddest stats to me. If you have a close friend, you're married, they're married. If you have a close friend, not because of abuse or an affair, just decides to walk away from their marriage, your odds of walking away from your marriage go up 75%. This is the oddest one to me, but your odds of dying in your sleep go up 800% if you have a close friend that convinces you to get a cat. All right, I made that one up, I made that one up, but it could be true, who knows? A study may come out someday, I don't know, but all the other stats are exactly true. Hey, you show me your friends, I'll show you your future. And it's impossible to have the right life with the wrong friends. And here's what some of you are thinking right now, not me, I'm stronger than that, I'm a strong person. My friends don't affect me like that, I'm a big deal. And I would just push back on you, if you think that you're so strong, your friends don't impact you in that way, I would call bull on that, and I think you would too if you evaluated your life. Doesn't your life up to this point show you that's wrong?

I'll just give you my life, every single time something's good happen is in my life, like if I'm on a good trajectory, I have the right people around me. And the flip side, all the worst mistakes I've ever made, when I have gotten. Big trouble, okay, and I have. It has always happened, how many of you know, you usually don't get in trouble alone? You know what I'm talking about? You had some other people around you. In my life, I mean, this is funny, when I was in elementary school, you ask my mom, some of you won't believe this, it is 100% true, I was one of the worst kids in our entire elementary school. I was a horrible, in fact, going out of second grade, the third grade teachers got together when I was exiting second grade, and they had a conference to decide which of them had to take Ashley in their class. Ask my mom, it's a true story. They're like drawing the short straws, and this should be encouragement to some of you parents right now that have like a nightmare young child, right? Like there might be hope for them still. I had such a godly mom that my mom saw what was happening, and this is exactly what was happening. The reason I was a horrific kid, I had the wrong friends.

And what she did, and this was a savage parenting move, she forced me to change my friendships. She would no longer let me hang out with those kids anymore, and I was livid. In fact, mom, if you're watching this, she knows this. I've already told her sorry. This is the one time I looked my mom in the face and I said these words, I hate you. I said that to my mom, because I was so mad she was making me change my friends. And I wanna tell you, to this day, that is one of the greatest parenting moves my mom has ever made to change the trajectory of my life. It changed me. It's impossible, it's impossible to live the right life with the wrong friends. Now, we get this with like kids or younger people, but somehow, we like ignore this truth as adults. We think, well, that doesn't apply to me, and it absolutely applies to you. So what I wanna do today, and I've been praying all week about this, is I wanna challenge you, because some of you here today, as straight as I can say it, you don't have the right friends. And you either know that, or God's gonna reveal it to you today. And what I love that Mark taught us last week, is Mark taught us we gotta take initiative

to find the right friends. And so I wanna lean in on that today, and I wanna look at the life of David, specifically a man after God's own heart, and why was he a man after God's own heart? Because he had three different types of friends that surrounded him. And you need these three types of friends as well. So I'm gonna unpack these three types of friends. You need a Samuel, you need a Jonathan, and you need a Nathan. And as we walk through these today, I wanna ask you to just honestly evaluate, do I have these types of friends? If you're taking notes today, number one, you need a Samuel. You need friends that call you to God's purposes, not just the world's pleasures. In Scripture, when you read about the life of David, it says that one day there's a man named Samuel that came to David's house to meet with his dad, and Samuel knew that one of David's brothers, maybe him, he didn't know who it was, he just went to David's dad and said, one of your sons God has a purpose for. And so he said, show me your sons. Here's what's crazy, David had seven other brothers, and David's dad showed Samuel all the other seven brothers, but never even thought to bring David in. Why?

Because he was the runt, he was a nobody, he was a shepherd, which was the lowest job you could have in that society at that time. So when Samuel came in and David's dad presented these other seven brothers, Samuel goes, nope, nope, no, no. And then finally, Samuel says this. Then he asked Jesse, David's dad, is this it? Are there no more sons? And watch David's dad's response. Well, yes, there's the runt. Like there's the runt, the nobody, but he's out tending the sheep, which means, again, he's a shepherd, he's a nobody. And here's what someone here knows. You were told growing up that you were gonna be a nobody too. Like you were told by a parent or a coach or a teacher that hey, your life probably isn't gonna amount to anything. And what I love about this story of David having a Samuel in his life is when Samuel walked in the room and David finally walked in the room and they, listen, Samuel saw something in David that no one else saw. He saw God's purpose for his life. And you need the same thing. In fact, I get a little emotional when I think about that because I can't tell you the number of times that I've had a friend or friends in my life who've called out things inside of me

that they saw God's purposes, that I'm just being honest, I didn't see myself. In fact, I can say with all confidence, I would not be preaching on this stage to you, leading our church right now. if it wouldn't have been for friends that called out God's purposes in my life. Do you understand, I never saw myself as a preacher. I never saw myself leading a church. And as I began, the opportunity presented itself for me, I was like, I don't think that's me. And I had some godly friends who are still on this staff today who pulled me aside and said, we see that in you. And I'm just telling you, I didn't see it in myself. And I promise you that if you don't have godly friends around you, you may miss someone calling out something that God sees in you, your purpose. In fact, later on, I had a seven-year-old man that became a really good friend of mine. He sat me down for lunch one time and he said, I've listened to a lot of preachers and I'm just telling you, this is God's purpose. I can't tell you what that did to breathe purpose inside of me. Do you have people like that in your life? What blows me away sometimes is that in our friendships, all of our conversations aren't about God's purposes, they're about the world's pleasures. You know what we talk about in our friendships a lot? We talk about, well, what clothes are you wearing?

Where'd you get those? Oh, that's awesome, I'm gonna go there too. What makeup are you wearing? What house are you gonna buy? What vacations are you gonna take? What whiskey are you sipping right now? Ooh, that's really good. Don't pretend like you don't have those conversations. Come on, you know? It's like, we talk about all these things in life and listen, none of those are really bad, but that's not what you're living your life for, is it? Do you remember what Jesus said in Matthew 16? He said, what good is it for someone to gain the whole world yet forfeit their soul? You know you can live your whole life and miss God's purpose for you. And here's what I know. God has a purpose for every single one of you, but what if you miss it? You gotta have people around you that call it out, and so you need a Samuel. You need friends that call you to God's purposes, not just the world's pleasures. Here's the second type of friend you need. You don't need just a Samuel. You need a Jonathan. You need friends who strengthen your faith in hard times, not weaken it. How many of you know there will be days

where you will be so down, so beaten down, so worn out, so like broken, that you'll wanna throw in the towel? This happened in David's life. I mean, he's a man of God's own heart. Remember, Samuel says, you're gonna be king, and David ends up killing Goliath, and then later, he starts having all these victories, but the current king, Saul, gets jealous and decides he wants to kill David. That's a bad day when you find that out, right? So let's pick up the story in 1 Samuel 23. It says, while David was at Horesh in the desert of Ziph, he's in a desert period in his life, he learned that Saul had come out to take his life. That's a low day. But watch, David had, his best friend's name was Jonathan, and watch what Jonathan does. It says in the very next verse, when Saul's son Jonathan went to David at Horesh, he went, I love that, he didn't send a Hallmark card, he didn't FaceTime him, he took the journey, which is a really long journey to Horesh, and it says, and he helped him find strength, strength in what? Before I tell you what Jonathan helped David find strength in, I wanna ask you, what do your friends, when you're at like your lowest of low, what do your friends help you find strength in? Like, what do they say?

You know what I hear a lot? I hear friends say something like this. Oh, you're low, your mental health is like really struggling, you just had that breakup, you just found out your spouse is doing something that's crazy, your kids are running wild, you just lost a job, bankruptcy. You know what I hear a lot? Let's go to the bar and get some drinks. Let's go dancing. Let's go to Vegas, baby. Woo, you know, that's what I hear a lot. In fact, I heard someone once, and this was all in, they really, I mean, they didn't mean any harm by this, they were really just trying to help. There was a girl, she was talking about her friend that was at her lowest of low. She said, you know what I did? I mailed her a bottle of tequila. Some of you are thinking, that's a good friend. That's a good friend right there, you know what I mean? And again, nothing wrong, like, just having a sip of tequila, I mean. But could you imagine this verse, reading it this way? And Saul's son, Jonathan, went to David of Horesh and helped him find strength in tequila. Hey, David, let's take some shots, man. This is gonna be so much better for you. Why is that a bad move? Because you can drink all the tequila in the world

and medicate your pain, and you can wake up the next day and it's still there, in fact, it's probably worse. What do you need to get past your pain or your low points? You need someone that strengthens your faith. So watch what Jonathan did. It says, Jonathan went to David in Horesh and helped him find strength, and say it out loud, in what? In God. where you find your strength? Do you have friends that are strengthening your faith, not letting you spiral out of control, turning you to something this world offers that only medicates you instead of solves the issue? Man, we are so ignorant sometimes to the things we turn to to try to solve our problems. And I don't care how spiritually mature you think you are, every single one of us here today will hit a low point where we better have someone around us that strengthens our faith. I'm so thankful for the people that have done this for me. I've had so many times, man, where I've hit a low. In fact, it was just a few years ago that I hit a real low in ministry. I'm just being honest. I hit a point where I was so physically exhausted. I was working too much. I was, good intentions, but man, I'm just pouring in all these hours. I'm preaching. When I'm preaching, I'm wondering,

is anybody getting this? Is anybody listening? Is anybody understanding this? And then at that same time, I was taking arrows from different groups of people, some of them I considered friends, and how many of you know an arrow from a friend is worth about 100 arrows from somebody you don't know? And I got to a point where I was hanging out with a friend and I just kind of said, out of pity for myself, I said, I'm not sure it's worth it anymore. Like, I don't know if I should even keep doing this. And this friend was so kind. He, in a very gentle way, began to comfort me, but then he turned and he started like preaching at me. And he was coming at me and he was like, worth it? You're gonna talk about, is this worth it, what you're doing? He starts rattling off all these people's lives that have been changed in our church, marriages that have been saved, kids that are transformed, people that are just being saved everywhere. And he says, he's calling out things inside me. He goes, you're anointed by God. Like, God has called you for this season and he's surrounded you with really good people, by the way, that can help. And then he said this, he said, do you understand you're leading

one of the fastest growing movements of Jesus in our country today? And he got done and I was just, I was like stunned and I looked at him and I was like, you could've gave me a bottle of tequila. But he gave me a dose of faith. I'm just telling you, when he got done, I was like, there's no room for whining. Let's change the world, right? Like, that's what we need is like friends that lift you up when you're down, but they strengthen your faith. And I just wonder if you have friends like that. If you don't, you're in trouble. And I'm not saying you're in trouble, I'm just saying, you're in trouble. If you don't, you're in trouble. Do you understand in the life of David, every single mistake David made in his life, his affair with Bathsheba, when he was judged by God because he got prideful, every mistake he made came after the death of his friend Jonathan. And what David, this is a mistake David made. When Jonathan died, I'm not sure he ever backfilled that friend that could strengthen his faith in hard times. I wanna speak really directly to someone here today. You used to have a Jonathan in your life, and now you don't. And if you don't backfill that role, you never know what's at stake.

Do you have a Jonathan? Let me tell you the third type of friend you need, and this may be the most important. You need a Nathan. You need friends who speak the hard truth boldly, that not stay silent passively, especially when you get wrapped up in sin. What I love about studying the life of David, and we're gonna study the whole entire life of David in the next fall of next year, is what I love about studying the life of David is number one, he was a man after God's own heart, and he also got wrapped up in sin. And I think that's very indicative sometimes of the Christian life. As Christians, we're not perfect, and you can love God and get wrapped up in sin. And vice versa, someone here today, you are wrapped up in sin, and you wonder if God loves you. And I'm here to tell you, God loves you deeply in the middle of your sin. He wants to call you out of it. And what I'm gonna say next is not to shame you, it's to show you that God brings friends oftentimes to call us up and out of our sin. This happened in the life of David. David, at one moment, has his eyes fixed on God, and in a moment, I'm telling you, it happens in a moment, he had his eyes fixed on a naked woman.

He's looking off the rooftop of his palace, he's looking down, because he should have been elsewhere at war, and he's there, he shouldn't have been there, he's looking down at a woman bathing, her name's Bathsheba, he calls her, he has an affair with her, and it gets worse, he decides to kill Bathsheba. husband and he tries to cover the whole thing up. You know what's crazy? There were people around David, friends, that knew about this and they said nothing. I mean, it's like, it's the king. You don't want to tick that guy off, right? And this is a good lesson for someone who's a leader here today. If you're a high-level leader, the higher you go in leadership, the less people around you will tell you the truth. You better have a Nathan in your life that will be boldly a truth teller for you. So thankfully for David, he had a Nathan. He had a friend named Nathan and here's what Nathan did. Nathan came to confront David and he does it in kind of an interesting way. You know what he does? He tells David a story. He says, David, I want to tell you a story. He says, there's two guys living in the same town. One of them's rich. He has more sheep than he can count and the other one is poor. He has one sheep, one little itty bitty sheep and he loves that sheep so much. He loves him as much as he loves his kids. But one day the rich man had a friend visiting out of town. He wanted to serve him lamb chops. So instead of killing one of his sheep to serve it up, he takes the poor man's one sheep, chops it up and serves it to his friend. And scripture says David boils up with anger at this point and he says, oh, bring that guy in. We're going to punish that guy. What a loser. What a jerk. And this is where the soundtrack changes in the movie because you know what Nathan says next? Watch this. Nathan says this in 2 Samuel 12. David, you are that man. David, you could have had any woman you wanted and yet you chose this poor man. You took his only wife and you killed him. And what happens next is David, because of a godly friend that confronted him, David, if you read Psalm 51 and Psalm 51 is written right after Nathan confronts David, David pours out his heart in repentance to God. He says, God, what I've done is wrong. I repent and David changed his life and praise God that God still used David. But what hangs in the balance if David doesn't have a Nathan? Let me ask you. Come on. When's the

last time that you had a godly friend that confronted you about something you were doing that was wrong? Like when's the last time that you had a godly friend say, hey, the way you're treating your spouse, the way you're acting with a boyfriend or girlfriend, that's not right. That's not what God wants. Hey, you're drinking too much. That substance you are abusing. The way you're treating your kids, that is not good. I'm just asking very honestly. Think of your mind. When's the last time you had a godly friend confront you? I am so thankful for the times that I've had godly friends do this in my life. I feel like they've transformed my life. I've had people confront me and like leadership things before of like, hey, that's not good. Can I be really transparent with one time I got confronted, how it changed me? I was in my 20s and some of you will have a hard time believing this. You watch me on stage. I used to have a really bad temper. In fact, I grew up with a dad who was a 5A football coach almost his whole entire life and my dad's temper would rage and I just kind of adopted that as like a normal style. My style is I could run pretty calm and collected but then something would happen or I get pushed to a point where I would snap and I would like blow up and it was bad. And I'll never forget being with one of my best friends. He grew up with me. He saw this all growing up and what happened is we went to a movie. We were watching a movie at a movie theater. I'll never forget we were at Arizona Mills Mall and we were watching this movie and the movie theater is like empty. There's no, you didn't choose your seats back then. It was like you sat anywhere and in the movie theater there was literally like 30 people in the movie theater. There's hundreds of open seats and we're watching a movie and the two of us sit down and for whatever reason two guys walk in the movie theater and they sat right behind us and what happened is we're just watching the movie and the guy behind me puts his feet on my chair and just starts rocking my chair back and forth. Now this, you've had this happen maybe before. It's like not a big deal. I wasn't like, I wasn't getting upset. I was like, well the guy just doesn't know. So I just gently turned around. I was like, hey man you're rocking my chair. I turned back around. You know what he does? He starts rocking it more, harder. Well now I'm boiling up. I turned back around and I said, hey you're still rocking my chair. He's like, what are you going to do about it? Now I could have been a bigger person and just gotten up and gone to one of the hundred hundred movies that I would have ever missed. of empty seats that were anywhere else,

because this guy's just obviously just trying to be a jerk. But instead, I sat there and just started boiling inside. I boiled up to a point when the movie ended, right when the movie ended, I turned around, looked at him and I said, you and me outside now. I'm gonna go to blows with this guy. So I'm literally out in the parking lot. You guys, I'm out in the parking lot. I'm like, come on, what you want, man? What you want, dog, huh? I don't even know how to fight. I'm like, I'm just gonna like do it, you know? I'm like, I will take you on. I'm fist raised in the parking lot. I'm getting ready to lose my witness as a follower of Jesus because a guy was rocking my chair. Some of you are like, well, you should have just decked him. By God's grace, a police car drives by and like breaks this whole thing up. And that's God's grace because I got back in my car and my face is red, I am so hot. I wanted to just go to blows. And my friend, my good friend looks at me and he says, I wanna tell you some hard truth. You have a temper just like your dad and if you don't change it, it is going to destroy your life. And I was mad at him for saying that to me. I'm like, you just saw what happened? He's like, you gotta get your temper under control. And that put me on a journey for God

to begin to transform my life so I could become the godly man he wanted me to be, not someone blowing my top all the time. Do you have friends like that? Friends that will maybe wound you sometimes where it hurts, but you needed it. You know what the book of Proverbs says, Proverbs 27? An open rebuke is better than hidden love. Wounds from a sincere friend are better than many kisses from an enemy. Wounds from a friend. If you won't surround yourself with some Nathans that tell you the truth, you're not just gonna avoid a fight sometime. You might lose everything you love around you. Watch this. We had moved out here to Phoenix. Family was back in California and Chris and his wife just moved here from Oregon. And when we moved here, we got plugged in at CCV right away. Early on, we plugged into a neighborhood group and Jeremiah and his wife, Courtney, were both in that neighborhood group. And shortly after we split off and it really became a neighborhood group of the two of us couples, Jeremiah and his wife and Janelle and me. There's family that you're born into and there's family that you choose. Jeremiah and Courtney are definitely part

of the family that we choose. And so, especially in Phoenix, we don't have any family that lives here. So we have really developed a close-knit group of friends that are that family for us and we get to be that family for them. Yeah, so one day I was working from home at the time and my wife was home with our two kids and my wife came into my office and she said she needed to talk and let me know that Courtney had called her on the phone and let her know that she had found out that Jeremiah had had an affair. Finding out that my wife knew, the feeling was different. There was times in the past where it was found out, but it was kind of just that, oh, I'm sorry. But this time you could hear that it was different. I got a call from Jeremiah and he was in the Midwest working at the time. And he let me know that he was on his way back. And I let him know that Courtney was at our house, that she was safe. And then seeing that she had moved out really made that realization known that this was gonna be a different time. And so it was that broken feeling, that feeling of, I don't know what to do. And I was able to just tell him on the phone, I understand what has happened, that when he got back to town, he and I were gonna talk.

That kind of woke me up and gave me that thought process through those 22 hours of, this is your chance to make the best of it and come out stronger, or this is your chance to continue spiraling down the hole. Next morning, drove over to his house in surprise and he was broken. It didn't look like he'd probably slept since Courtney found out. He was just the true definition of lost. And as he and I sat there, I just explained to him that what he really needed to decide was who he was gonna be. I remember sitting there and just listening to what he had to say and having that moment of like, you don't get it or you don't understand what I'm going through. And we actually stopped talking for a period of time because I couldn't accept. that this person was right because he saw more in me than I saw in myself. And so that was kind of the moment that I realized that God was using him to challenge me to, you know, step up and be that person, but also have the confidence in myself that this was not, this wasn't defining who I was. This was just a moment in my story that could impact others and also just allow my marriage to flourish. I think that if we had not had that conversation and Jeremiah didn't respond the way that he did, that he was willing to own it and become the man that God wanted him to be, he would have no relationship with his kids. He would have no relationship with Courtney. He would probably not be living in Phoenix. He would probably be living somewhere in a money-focused world going from person to person for the rest of his life. The advice I would give people in that position that maybe need to have that tough conversation is speak straight. You know, pick up that phone, confront that person, have that conversation so

that they can hear what God needs to tell them. If I were to give someone advice on having a conversation like this with one of their friends, what I would say is don't think about how they might respond. Think about what hangs in the balance. Think about if you don't have that conversation with them, where might they end up? And if that's not a place you want for your friend, then you owe it to them to have the conversation. I want you to think what hangs in the balance in Jeremiah's life if he doesn't have a Chris in his life. I want to thank Jeremiah, by the way, for just his vulnerability in sharing that story, but he had a Nathan do you. Let me tell you the three friends you have to have in your life if you ever want to live the life God wants for you. And this would be something I'd encourage you to even take a picture of to just think about. What do you need? You need a Samuel. You need friends that call you towards God's purposes, not just the world's pleasures. You need a Jonathan. You need friends who help strengthen your faith in hard times when you're down, not weaken it. And what do you need? You need a Nathan. You need friends who speak the hard truth boldly. They will not stand by silently and passively when you're wrapped up in something you should not be. Look at that list. Do you have those friends in your life? Some of you might say, well, yeah, I have a couple people like that. No, no. Are those the people you spend the most time with? Well, no, it's not. I've got my fun friends. We go to the lake, we go drinking, we go golfing, we go hang out, we go party. And then every once in a while you have someone that's like this. But these aren't the friends you spend the majority of time with. Listen, you need every, you need all three of these all the time. Like these have to be your closest friends. Why? Because show me your friends, I will show you your future. And you know what the future looks like for some of you right now? The future looks like a lot of the same. A lot of the same struggling with your mental health, a lot of the same divorce, infidelity, a lot of the same substance abuse, a lot of the same watching your kids spiral out of control. See, you want to change the legacy of your life because you see what happened with your parents or your childhood, and yet you're not willing to change your friendships. You're playing with fire. You cannot change your future without changing your friends. So here's my challenge, and this is a big challenge, threefold. Number one is I want to ask you to evaluate your friends. The first job of leadership, and I want all of you to be leaders, is to define reality. What is your current reality? Like get together with God sometime in the next day. Get together with someone you love and just say, I want to evaluate my

friendships. Do I have, do I really, really have a Samuel, a Jonathan, and a Nathan? Number two, I want you to adjust your friendships. Some of you need to make some adjustments. You need to distance yourself from certain people and draw other people in. And if you don't know like where to find godly friends, take someone out to coffee or lunch that you respect. I mean, this is why you have the church, right? Get into a small group. You'll find friends there, I promise you. Hey, small groups are taking a break over Christmas sometimes. Start serving. You understand when you start serving in the church, you're exposed to people that become some of your closest friends. Adjust your friendships. And then lastly, I want you to become, I want you to become a friend like Samuel, Jonathan, and Nathan. Evaluate, adjust, and then you start becoming the friend that you need to be and you wanna be in other people's lives. Could you imagine a future where you're surrounded by the right people? Some of you today, listen, you're one friend away from God changing the trajectory of your life. Because remember, it's impossible. It's impossible to live the right life with the wrong friends. Do you need a change? God, I pray for every person here. I understand that changing friendships, that's a hard thing to do. There's some people that have had people around them that were kind of their ride or die and they've been in their life for a long time and yet, God, the honest evaluation with some people today is their friends are not taking them to the future they want for their lives, for their marriage, for their kids, for every aspect of their life.

Spiritually, God, they can't grow closer to you unless they have people around them that are moving in the same direction. So I pray for honest evaluation. I pray for adjustment and I pray for courage for all of us to become the friend we wanna be and the people around us. God, for someone that's wrapped up in sin here today, God, bring someone along that can gently but boldly confront them so you can move them to the future they need. We pray all this in Jesus' name and all this said, amen, amen. CCV, we'll see you next weekend.