Pete McKenzie
Hey, man, good to see you guys. Bill would say most of you guys, but I like to see you all. While we’re going through this series, it’s it’s basic foundational stuff. But you know, just about every coach I had, and certainly my college coach would always say the team that makes the fewest mistakes wins. And you make the fewest mistakes when you’re strong in the basics. I learned that in baseball when my coach, I’ve been playing first base in high school, he recruited me as a first baseman at Auburn. But the problem is we couldn’t play as freshmen and I wouldn’t have gotten to play much anyway. And we had a freshman team. And then in my sophomore year, when I went to the varsity team, we had an all sec senior first baseman, he said, I don’t need you at first base, but we got an opening at second, I want to try it second base. So he took me into the Fieldhouse, while the other guys were out playing pepper and getting warmed up. And he drew these footprints on the board. And he said, Pete, when a ball is going to be hit at you at second base, your feet are here when the pitcher throws now when the ball comes just foot goes here, and this foot goes here and your gloves on the ground and you watch that ball into your glove and and I’m sitting there thinking I’m coach I’ve been playing since I was nine years old, what is all this footprints on the board stuff. But what he was doing, he’s teaching me the basics from the ground up, he was teaching me the basics. Then he taught us how to run the basis, he taught us how to button. He taught us all the basic aspects in the outfield hit and cut off man we went situation place where you draw on the blackboard, okay, where there’s a man on first and second balls hit up to left center gap, what do you do? And so we knew what to do. We knew what our job was. And you know, every winning team has three things in common. One, they have a common objective. And I remember our coats, countless together behind the home plate next to the screen. And this is one of our first practices as we were going into that year. And he says he looked around, he said, we got all we need right here to win this SEC championship. And we believed him. And he taught us how to play the game. We were a bunch of average ball players, we had one all American pitcher. And but most of us we were just average guys, but we learned how to play the game, we learned the basics, we didn’t make a lot of mistakes. My senior year, we went to the College World Series, we rode the back of that all all American pitcher. But we believed in each other. The second thing is after a common objective is everybody knows their job. So when he took us through all those situations ever guy knew his job at his position. And I remember him coming out to second base. And he said to me one day said, Pete, you can’t play shortstop for Scottie or third base, or Greg or centerfield for Rick, you play second base, you do your job, you let them do their job, you just get your job done. And that kind of set me free. I don’t know why. But I felt that was a real freedom that he just said, do your job, let them do their job. It’d be like if I said to you today, now you got a job to do for Christ, do your job. If your wife doesn’t do her job, don’t let it bother you. It will but try not to let it bother you. If someone else is not doing their job, don’t get all wrapped up in it, do your job. And help them do their job. And you know what their job is. And so help them do it. And that was a lesson he taught me too. But that’s another message. So what we’re talking about today is link yourself together with men who are like minded men who are doing want to go the same place you want to go. And that’s the first thing about we talk in fellowship and friendship. And that’s a horizontal spoke in the wheel, where you have fellowship and witnessing. Next week, we’ll talk about the Great Commission and witnessing and evangelism and how that plays into this whole deal. But the wheel basically, in these five goals, basically are the basics of the Christian life. If you’re going to live a Christian life and you’re going to be let’s just put it in baseball terms or sport, sports terms. If you’re going to be a winner. You’re going to have to do these things. If you’re going to accomplish all God has for you in this life, you’re going to have to be strong in these things.
And there’s no shortcut. You either going to do this or not. And there’s there’s no backdoor way to do this. It’s going to take a lot of commitment, it’s going to take a lot of time, it’s going to take a lot of discipline, you’re gonna have to deny yourself certain things to accomplish it. But you’ve got to decide, and I’ve got to decide if we’re going to do our job. do our job is becoming men of God. Jesus making Jesus Lord of our life, making God’s word, the final authority in our life, becoming a man of prayer. Now that’s that vertical spoken the will you become an A man of prayer. And that’s your relationship with God has to do with the word and prayer. And then that horizontal spoke in the wheel is well fellowship and witnessing that has to do with people, your horizontal relationships. And it’s all wrapped up in the Lordship of Christ in the hood in the room around the wheel is obedience to all these things. We’re going to talk about friendship and fellowship. And the quote that I learned a long time ago, this is always stuck with me as you’ll never be the man of God you could be or should be. If you’re not surrounded by a bunch of man or God, without the godly friendship of other men. In other words, iron sharpens iron is one man sharpens another. It says in Proverbs, and I’m not as sharp as I could be, if I wasn’t a friend of Ron’s neuron sharpens me, I get around Ron and say, Boy, I wish I was as bold as him, I wish I had the same passion he has. But if I’m going to have that I got to hang out with Ron, you got to pick your friends carefully. And the reason you have to be careful is because whoever they are, you’re going to be and wherever they’re going, that’s where you’re going. So you find like minded men and men that love Christ more than you do, and you hang on their screen, don’t don’t let him shake you off. You’ve heard that a few times. But it’s really true, you find those guys, I remember growing up when I was a became more of a center every year that went by, into my junior high in high school years. And it really bothered me that I didn’t know what to do about it during those days. But I’d get around guys, it seemed to really know Christ, it seemed to really live the life. And I wanted to I felt good in their presence. And I thought this is better than not my teammates on the baseball team and all the stuff we say and get into. I like being with these guys. I just knew there was something different about them, but I couldn’t figure out what it was and what I was missing. So I started learning about friendship, most of the trouble you and I’ve got into when we were young is because of the friends we had. or most of your friends got in trouble because a you work can work either way. And so you have to pick your friends carefully in the Christian life, you have to get mentors, coaches, and that you may or may not have an official relationship with them as my mentor. But for instance, in my life, I’ve had mentors all along. And every stage of life I’ve had guys that took me under their wing that model for me that took an interest in me that helped me grow. It taught me the basics helped me memorize scripture learned taught me how to have a quiet time. And that’s but the thing that I think has been missing in the body of Christ. We haven’t missed so much church, we have plenty of churches, and they’re planting new churches all the time. But what we miss in church is the fellowship. You can come and sit in this group right here on Friday mornings, and you may see some friends and pat each other on the back and maybe give each other near tug. And I probably should go over the air tug again, because I’m tugging some of you guys ears and you’re looking at me like I got a problem. But my dad used to do that he used to grab me on the leg right here. And he did shake it and make me squirm around on the front seat of the car. And so let me show you how the horse eats corn. And then he had tug on my ear and he’d reach over and grab my ear and tug on it. And as I finally one day I said Come on, Dad, I’m getting tired of that. ceratitis he said, Don’t you know what that means? I said Was it me? He said it means I love you when I do that. I remember my son coming up to me one day, and I told him the same thing about ear tugs. And I remember him coming up to me one day and say, Dad, I think I need to talk. I think some of you guys come in here and get your hug in your tub because this is the only place you’re going to find it all week long. Because we’re not big into that and oh man code says no Huggy. But if you don’t like hugging that, my guess is you’re gonna hate heaven. One of my favorite pictures of Heaven is Jesus hugging the guys. He comes through the gate.
And I’m sure that he hugged his disciples in the day had that kind of relationship. That’s what a father and a friend say hug. They talk. They encourage each other. They build each other up. Jesus said, you know, when it comes to all that, and he looked at his disciples, in course, everybody was trying to recruit Jesus, politicians, zealots. Everybody wanted him on their team. They saw his charisma, his power, the people that followed him. They all wanted him on their team. And then they killed him. But at one point, they wanted him on their team, and he would resist them all. And when he resisted all all the things they asked him to do, they finally said, we’ll be our king. He says, My kingdom is not of this world. What is your plan? Remember what he said? He looked at Matthew, the tax gather. He said, See that cat tax gather over there? Yeah, we hate his guts. He’s a stinking traitor. He will make words for the Romans. Well, maybe that’s true, but he’s a plan. And then here comes Peter and James and john, these roughneck fishermen, profane, drinking, gambling, fighting. And he said, See those fishermen over there? Yeah, whether the plan and then these guys couldn’t believe it. They said, the Pharisees must be the plan. He says those guys are not the plan. These guys over there the roughneck guys, the guys that are profane the guys that are not recruitable to any other group, I’m recruiting them, and then even recruited a traitor, Judas. And when he recruited him, he knew what he would do. He knew what the future held. They recruited him anyway because he was going to be a friend, and a friend in the sense that he was going to help him accomplish what he had come to get done. And so you’re the plan in the plan is that you would love each other, that he’s loved you a new commandment I give to you love each other. And that’s a third thing and a winning team. First is a share a common objective, the second they all know their job. And third, they love each other. I remember watching being a golf fan, I watch the Ryder Cup and the Ryder Cup. And golf is where they’re taking the 10 best American golfers and they have a captain of the team who doesn’t play but coaches and puts guys together and matches them up with the with the other and they take the 10 best golfers from the UK, from England and Scotland and Ireland. And they play each other every other year. And they have different formats for play. They have match play, and they have singles play and some other counterplay. But it’s a big deal. And the British have been beating us mostly in the last 20 years, we’ve lost more than we’ve won in the Ryder Cup. I remember a few years ago after the cup was over. They were interviewing the players and having a press conference and things and they interviewed Nick Falco and he said we helped each other if anything would help. We did it for each other. There’s where our bonding came from. In Graham Graeme McDowell said, I played terrible, but we won. That’s what team is all about picking up each other, having each other’s back, getting to share it with others is what it’s all about. Sergio Garcia said, getting to know the other players at a deeper level than we have a chance to on a regular tour is a great part of the Ryder Cup. Well, a great part of influencers is you got an opportunity to be in a small group with guys, for instance, a forum group, not at 6am or 8am, or 12am, Jesus had a 12am group. But we do in a forum group because he took those 12 and in fact, he narrowed it down to three that were his James and Peter and john that were his inside guys. There’s a guy that he took up on the Mount of Transfiguration with the other guys he took him to the seminary with him. And there are two other times I’m sure he did that, that we don’t have record off. But he had three guys that he really pulled in close to himself, they got to know each other. They got to know him. They had an intimate personal bonding relationship with Him. And that’s the whole point. That’s what this is a face to face group you see that guy and some of you guys have been coming for years and then I’ll be talking to one guy and another guy walk up and I go How long have you been here? He’s eight years How long you been here? I’ve been coming about three or four years. You guys ever met now? I don’t know his name. I’ll introduce them to each other. You can come to this group for months if not yours. And not really no the guys over here always sit over here and the guys over here always sit over here so I don’t have to guess where you’re going to sit.
We’re creatures of habit and we get comfortable in certain places and we tried before saying Okay, are you guys gonna sit over here and are you guys gonna sit over here and it worked for one week. So this is a face to face group but what what really changes your life when you’re growing in any aspect uncertainly spiritually is where you get in small groups, which we call Heart to Heart groups. This is where you tell your story. This is where you get to talk about things you don’t talk about regularly and men don’t men have are experts at superficial relationships. I remember the guy that was telling the story that he and his wife had a couple that were good friends and they were divorcing. And so he was going to play golf with a guy that was divorcing. And so they went out and played golf, and he came home and his wife said, well, how’s he doing? He’s doing good. He shot 82. Now, I mean, what do you How’s he doing with his divorce? What do you mean? Why is he doing? Well? Are they gonna get it or not? He says, I don’t know. He says why she failed and she have no idea. She says you spent four hours with him and you don’t know these things. He said, Well, what am I gonna do? He’s up there putting for the prize. And I go Hey, how’s your divorce going? Which might not be a bad strategy if you’re losing I remember playing golf with guys when would show up near put our two sim with another to summon with and they’re cutting and doing all the stuff guys do and get about the six hole and I go, what do you do? And I say I’m a pastor? No. They were hitting balls out of bounds in the water missing putts. So it’s good strategy if you want to win, if you need help. But guys are superficial we can meet together. But I remember bill telling me when he’s a corporate head and a member of a country club for seven or eight years, he played golf with the same guys. So my maiden name, I know their last name. And that’s what man can do. We can hang out together and never talk about anything that’s meaningful or important. We might talk sports and politics, but nothing personal nothing. As your walk with God as your relationship at home with your family and your kids and your close friends. How can we pray for you right now. It’s like your wife who’s praying for her if you’re not. If you have a wife or children and you’re not praying for them, who is people to get prayed for do better. People who pray together love each other more, that the family that prays together stays together, the marriage that prays together stays together. But we talked about that when we talked about prayer. It’s most needed thing but the most neglected and difficult thing because the devil knows when we start praying he’s done. He’ll do anything new keep us from praying. He’ll do anything and do from keeping you and me and Heart to Heart groups with other man telling our stories, getting to know each other. The one through life together dealing with stuff I just had. Greg Tell me in the back back there, a friend of his who’s 34 year old son just committed suicide. America is the leading suicide country and well among wealthy countries in the world. We got men blowing their brains out every day, jumping off a bridge is as golden the Royal gorge last couple of summers ago. And I don’t know if you’ve ever been to royal gorge in Colorado, but I don’t like heights and they have a brace suspension bridge all the way across. It’s about 1000 feet down at a train that runs along the bottom of it. And I was in the middle of the bridge, believe me walking across. But here’s the week before they told me a guy just jumped off the bridge. The fence on either side was just about this high, anybody could jump over. And they’ve had a lot of people do that. guys get to the place in their life where they just have the enemy just has his way with them. They get depressed, they get discouraged. They look in horizontally instead of vertically. They lose their hope they get into despair, they’re taking drugs. And they life isn’t worth living. It’s too hard. It’s too painful. It’s too difficult. And if you ask that guy and he asked the average guy who’s your best friend, they don’t have a best friend. Men don’t have best friends. They have guys that are acquaintances they have guys at work they they may go to lunch with or hang out with or do something play golf with. But they can’t say their best friend that they someone they could call it three o’clock in the morning. They’d be there no matter what.
guys just don’t do that. But we’re going to be different. You’re going to be different. We don’t have to be that way we can have we can get in heart to heart groups. We can tell our stories. We can do life together, we can pray for each other. And the guy in our prayer group had two really important meetings yesterday. So he texts us in the morning and said pray for me this morning. I’m meeting here and I’m going to meet with these people and this afternoon is very important meetings for what’s going on in my life and business. So we all got a chance to pray for him yesterday and today we’ll have lunch and we’ll download what happened in those meetings. We’ll get to hear what’s happening and going on. But you know, guys are reticent to open up and share and be vulnerable and transparent even with their own wives, because you want them to respect you, you want them to honor you, you want them to love you. But if you knew what I was thinking, if you knew what I was doing, then you wouldn’t love me. And that’s where we come to Jesus, Jesus. And there’s a song we’re going to hear a little later, what a friend we have in Jesus. Jesus told his disciples and john,
john 15. Now this is my commandment, love one another. Just as I have loved, you know, Greater love has no one than this, and one who would lay his life down for his friends. Now, when we start talking about best friends and friends in general, we’re talking about people who sacrifice for the good of others. They bear up under suffering, for other sake, they sacrifice for them. And Jesus was talking in terms I’m sure in his own mind when he said this, of how he was going to lay his life down for these guys. Can you imagine lay in your, in his, he said, anybody might die for a righteous man. But no one’s going to die for a center for a scalloway for a guy full of shenanigans and all the things that we pull in life. But do you might die? Probably not. But you might die for a good man. But you’re not going to die for that guy. And Jesus was going to die for that guy. He was going to die for those who didn’t deserve it. That’s what grace is. He was going to die for guys that should be dying themselves. But he died in their place. That’d be me and you. You are my friends if you do what I command you. So he’s talking about friends here? And how do you know if you’re Jesus his friend. You obey Him. Say that on the rim of the wheel is obedience to all these things. The word and prayer and fellowship and witnessing Jesus is Lord of your life is a hub. But the rim of the wheel is obedience. And Jesus says, If you love me, you will obey me, you will do what I say. And it won’t be a burden. My my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. It’s not going to be a big heavy burden if you love me. But the Christian life is a heavy burden if you don’t, if you’re halfway committed, if you’re more worldly than you are spiritually if your carnal Christian or lazy Christian, it’s going to be a burden to discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness. But if you really love Jesus, and what is that love rooted in? How do you know if you love him? Well, you know if you love him, but if you obey Him in how do you get to a place where you want to obey Him, because you want to do something for that person that loves you so much, and is sacrificed so much we love our mothers, most of us. Most of us had mothers, I don’t know about fathers, but mothers who sacrifice for us, they bore us and birth, they nurtured us that their breath, there was a bonding that was going on there that it was a chemistry. And so we want to honor them when we get a chance. And I look at sometimes notes that our children wrote us on Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, especially to Susan on Mother’s Day. And they just say an amazing things in those notes. Because of why, because of the parents, they had some of us had parents that were worth celebrating a mother’s day and Father’s Day, but not so much others. But we always have a father we can celebrate a father in heaven, who sent his son who said, I’m gonna call you servants or slaves anymore. I’m gonna call you friends. No longer do I call you slaves. So the slave does not know what his masters doing. Now, you may have acquaintances in here and people that you know, but you don’t know what they’re doing. You don’t know what’s going on in their life, that person that drove by you because you weren’t good driving fast enough and flip to off, which happened to me one time that I shared with you. And I was about to return the salute. And the Lord put his hand on my hand and said you don’t know what’s going on in that woman’s life. You don’t know what her marriage is like you don’t know what she’s struggling with. You don’t know why she’s so angry at a stranger cause you slowed her down.
And so that’s the thing that Jesus is saying here. I no longer call you slave. A slave doesn’t know what his masters doing. And Jesus says I’m revealing to you I’m sharing with you. And that’s what we do in our forum groups. We share our lives with each other. We say whatever shared here stays here. You we can trust each other With with Sharon, our most greatest weakness in the struggles that we’re having, most men don’t have that. And I can tell you right now I can guarantee you that men in these kind of groups are not going to commit suicide. They’ve got guys to be there to pick them up when they stumble and fall to pat them on the back when they lose. And that’s what one of the golfers said, because he had blown it at the end. And in the Firestone Country Club tournament, prior to the Ryder Cup, and he had the thing one and he blew it at the end. And someone asked him, How do you feel about that? How do you feel about being on a team with guys that you let down? He said, I can tell you never been on a team to ask that question. He said, yeah, it was one of the lowest moments in my career when I lost at Firestone. But when I failed here, I had guys to pick me up pat me on the back encouraged me not get down on me. He said, that’s all I didn’t have anybody to do that when I lost when I was just playing for myself. But playing with a team and playing with a captain and 11 guys on the team that are dependent on me to do my job. When I let them down, that crushed me. But they picked me up, they patted me on the back, they told me that one end of the world, I was part of the team, they weren’t down on me. So don’t get down on yourself. And we need to have that every now and then we had need to have that little zinger, that little word from the Lord that just changed everything in my day, that thing I read in the Bible that quote I read from that person in that book, maybe it’s a devotional book. But we need that pat on the back, we need that word of encouragement, we need to be reminded of who we are and why we’re here and where we’re going and who’s going to get us there. We need someone to get our eyes up and quit looking at if I look at myself, I get depressed. If I look at you, I get distressed. If I look at myself, I’m always blessed. Well, that’s not true. If I look at Christ, I’m always blessed. I’ll see and if any of you look and grace out after that, but there are people that look at themselves and feel blessed. I’m not going to name names. I no longer call you slaves. Slave doesn’t know what his masters doing. But I have called you friends. For all things that I have heard from my father I have made known to you. I’m laying the whole thing out. And then the movie, the series The chosen. These guys were going well. Nicodemus is what is your plan? What are you doing? Why are you here? You’re the Messiah. He goes, I’m gonna introduce them to a new kingdom. I came to establish the new kingdom on earth. It’s a kingdom not of natural, but it’s supernatural power. I’ve come to explain that and make it known. And of course, the disciples struggle the whole time Jesus even open to his death and resurrection, they struggled with faith. It took Pentecost where they came to the Holy Spirit. I’ve got a guy I’ve been sharing Christ with and and I said, read this gospel of john, first chapter. And we’ll talk. So I saw him later. And he said, Well, let me say, Did you read the first chapter? And he goes, Yeah, he said, Now let me get this straight. If I believe in Jesus, I’m going to heaven, right? I said, Well, if you truly believe in Jesus, that Scripture says, you will go to heaven, that you’ll be saved, you’ll be forgiven for all your sin. He says, Well, how do I live it out then. And I said, you can’t live it out until you have it in. You got to be in Christ. Before you can live for Christ, you have to be a man of Christ before you can be a man of God. You have to be a man of God before you can do God’s work. So we’re going to have another conversation today and pray for Jeffrey because I’m going to share the gospel with him this morning. But you got guys you’re doing the same thing with and say, I get a chance to come in with a bunch of guys like you and say, Hey, join me in prayer. And so I’ve not dismayed. In one this my buddy and his wife praying as he went into those meetings yesterday, he had guys praying, and I got guys praying for him. So he had a bunch of people praying for him going into that meeting. When’s the last big meeting you went to?
And had guys praying for you? Who’s the last guy that prayed for your marriage? Who’s the last guy that prayed for your finances, in your health? Whereas the guys that are doing that with for you and with you and you for them? See, that’s what makes life worth living. ie when you’re in love, it makes life worth living. someone thinks you’re valuable. someone thinks you’re lovable, someone thinks you’re fun to be with and it builds your self esteem. Same thing with the guys, when you get to know each other and love each other and encourage each other and you have brothers, you have friends, you have guys that watch your back. You can fake caring, but you can’t fake showing up. And these guys are showing up. And every guy needs that. And you’re gonna limp along in the Christian life if you don’t have it. And what God has given us here is a treasure. It’s a it’s a diamond hidden in the rough. It’s something you cannot pay money for in half. It’s fellowship, it’s a fellowship of the body of Christ, it’s God’s given us the structure, the plan is God who’s given it to us. He raised up for him, one, just something we thought of is something God put on our heart. So this is how you’re going to be able to reach me and you cannot reach on Friday morning and Wednesday morning, because there are guys in four m groups that will never come to this meeting. But they’re in a forum group. Some of them live in Minnesota, some of them live in North Carolina, some of them live in places. And in Costa Rica. We got guys in all those places and more that are on zoom, and they’re having forum groups on zoom, I got guys in Alabama, they’re fixing to crank up zoom, and zoom therefore in group. So God’s given us something that most 99% 99.9% of men in our country just don’t have. And they’re blowing their brains out. They’re breaking up their marriages, they’re struggling as fathers, they’re struggling at work. They’re under unbelievable stress and pressure. And they have no one to come along and put an arm around them. Some of us didn’t have dads that did that. You may have never heard your dad say, I love you, son, but you write one letter from God to you, and you’ll hear soon. I love you. Son, I love you. That’s what you hear from God. That’s his message to me. And always I asked the guy just the other day I said if you wrote a if God wrote you a letter today, dear Brian, if he wrote you a letter today, and no one knew as well as he knows you, what would he say? In the first words out of his mouth as he said he would tell me love me. And that’s exactly what God does. I’ve seen scores and scores of men at retreats in different venues. And then just in talking to guys say, I want you to write two letters, write a letter to God write a letter from God to you, because I know what they’re going to hear from God. Because I told him I said, I can tell you that God loves you and that’s good theology. And you may believe it. But when God tells you he loves you that’ll change your life and God always and that’s why prayer and journaling and being around other guys who love you anyway. Who know your stuff and they still love you. And that’s what men are missing today. So what a friend we have in Jesus all our cares and Grace dubare I want you to hear Alan Jackson sing this this is my favorite renditions of that guys. Can we play that?
Unknown Speaker
Whoa. Friend we have Angie Oh Larson’s in Greece today Whoa. Thank God we often for home Oh god needless pain we because we do not. Breathe thank God and pray. We try to empty user trouble and we shouldn’t be discouraged. To get to the Lord and pray we find friends or face. sorrows g every we today Get into the Lord in prayer.
Pete McKenzie
That is an Amen. Guys, you might not have a best friend, but you can be a best friend. You can be a friend to those who don’t have any friends. That’s what Christian missionary work is all about. That’s what Christian love is all about. You have the power if you know Jesus Christ. And you may be like that God is trying to live it out that doesn’t have it in. And that’s a frustrating development in a guy’s life, where he thinks he saved but he’s really not. And there are some guys that aren’t saved, and they’re still good friends, better friends, and some of us Christians are, they serve better, they sacrifice more, they give more than a lot of us guys who are Christians, it costs you something to be a friend, you’re gonna have to be vulnerable, you’re gonna have to learn to be transparent. You’re gonna have to be plugged in spiritually with Christ, you’re gonna have to sacrifice sometimes you’re gonna have to reach in your pocketbook sometimes. And help them out. You’re gonna have to humble yourself. And learn to be honest with them. Give them the not the kisses of an enemy, but the wounds of a friend, you’re gonna have to tell them the truth sometimes when they don’t want to hear it. Be the kind of guy that when your friends tell you the truth, based on what they think, then defend yourself and explain yourself and indicate yourself all the time listen to what they have to say. Because a good friend, and the wounds of a friend are priceless. They know you and the reason they’re sharing with you. And sometimes they don’t do it in the right way, you know, not all loving and gracious. Sometimes they’re irritated and upset and had enough for you. And they let you know it. So it’s a gift if they can do it with grace. But don’t make them have to do it with grace. Just listen to what they have to say and see if God’s saying something to you some some some error, you need to correct some direction you’re going in it needs to change some habits you have. But I find that if you’re not being rebuked, and we talk about this, if you’re not being rebuked, it’s not because people don’t think you need it. It’s because they don’t think you can take it. So we all need to be rebuked, we all go in the wrong direction. We all start having bad habits, we all start getting lazy. We just need guys to come along and challenge us stick their finger in our chair sometimes after they prayed and prayed for us, and then pray for us and these weaknesses. So it costs Jesus to be able to say that his disciples were his friends, not as you’re known by your friends. And so they called him donors. Well, that’s exactly what he was. I got that one, right. He’s a friend of sinners, guys like you and me. And he can make us friends. They’ll go out there and be a blessing go give them heaven. If you’re not in a forum group, get in one. You need it. It may be you have another group. And I’m talking about a group that talks about relevant things to spiritual life and growth and emotions and what the where you need help and where you need people lifting you up and praying for you. Because people who pray together, stay together, people who have prayed far do better. That’s just the way it works. What a friend, how easily discouraged. We are. And God wants to Kurt encourage you. He wants to pick you up and he wants to teach you how to pick others up. That’s why it works. And that’s why he does it. And we’ll all give Him the glory for being such a friend. Amen. Let’s pray.
Father, we just thank you for being our friend, we thank you for no longer and call the servants but friends, that you desire our friendship, you’ve paid a great price that we might have access to you as our friend. And I pray that we could repent of anything we’ve been doing that keeps us from being better friends with you and each other. Because we know that that’s the best thing we have to offer here. The reason we want to be men of the word and man make the Bible the final authority in our life is so we can be better friends. So we’ll know what friendship is. So you can rebuke and correct us and our life to become better friends more faithful friends, friends that will be there. Just like you are for sure always there. We can always turn to you. We can always turn to But we can always turn to you our best friend. And, Lord, we want you to be our best friend. Most men don’t have a best friend. But we want you to be our best friend. And I pray for every guy in here and everybody in the sound of my voice on streaming video and who might ever hear it later. I just pray that we would all have a best friend and Jesus and you would teach us how to be best friends with each other. A new commandment I give to you, you told us not as a world gives do I give to you, but I want you to love one another, even as I’ve loved you and by the ASR man will know that were your disciples because of the way we love one another. We asked for your blessing. We asked for you to answer these prayers for friendship and brotherhood. We desperately needed and you’ve given it to us. May we not blow it? My we take advantage of it. Each one of us do our job. We can’t do the other guy’s job but we can do our job and our job is to be best friends with you and each other in Jesus name And all God’s men said go get him heaven guys.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai