Forming Healthy Friendships - Part 2

Hello, everybody. Welcome to Pastor Rick's Daily Hope. This is the Bible teaching ministry of Rick Warren. Hey, we're so glad you're here with us today. We are continuing in a series called Talking About Stuff That Matters. Now, in this series, Rick looks into the scriptures and he's unpacking what it means to live in community, have real conversation about what matters most and face discouragement with courage and faith. It's honest, hopeful, so stay tuned. You won't want to miss a second. Okay, let's get right to it. Here's part two of a message called Forming Healthy Friendships. Number six, I should not have as my closest friend believers who sin sexually. Believers. Notice I didn't say unbelievers. I said believers who sin sexually. Why not everybody? Well, let me give you a principle. You might write this down. Here, it's on the screen. Never expect unbelievers to act like believers until they are. This is why I don't believe in trying to make laws to make non-Christians act like Christians or make unbelievers act like believers. Why? The Bible says they don't have the power to change. The whole book of Romans was written to say that until Christ is in my life, I don't have the power to change things in me. so to expect other people to act like people who have God's power in their life is getting the cart before the horse never act expect an unbeliever to act like a believer till they are I don't God doesn't and you shouldn't but here's what the Bible says look up here on the screen first Corinthians 5 9 to 11 Paul says you know when I told you not to associate with people who indulge in sexual sin. I wasn't talking about unbelievers who indulge in sexual sin because you'd have to leave this whole world to avoid all of them. Duh. What I meant was you're not to associate with anyone who claims to be a Christian and yet indulges in sexual sin or is greedy or abusive or gets drunk. Don't even eat with such people. Why? Because they're a bad witness because they are a bad representation of Christ. Any of those four things, he says, is not a good representation of Jesus. And if you call yourself Christian and you hang out with somebody else who claims to be a Christian but is acting in a non-Christlike way, he goes, that's a problem. So those are some people we're to stay away from. But the Bible also has a lot of positive advice on the kind of people you should choose as your closest friend. and Pastor Kurt is gonna come and talk about that. Welcome him. Well, I'm not sure if you caught it a moment ago, but Rick gave us all a homework assignment. Did you know he gave us a homework assignment? If you weren't paying attention in class, I'm gonna put the homework assignment back up on the screen. If we can put the picture of the circles back up on the screen. And if you have a phone, as that graph of the circles, take out your phone and take a picture of that. Take a picture of that, and that will remind you as you're scrolling through your photos or looking at your phone that Rick gave us an assignment, and that is to, at some point in the near future, to do some evaluating of our friendships and who's in what circle and do we like what we see because our friends have a great influence on us. Now, Rick has spent some time talking about the casual and the close, Listen, what I want to spend a little bit of time today is talking about who do we choose as those core friends. Rick mentioned the closer they are, the more influence they have on us. We've only got room for a handful of core friends, men and women friends who make a strong impact and have a close influence on our lives. The question is beg, okay, well, how do I decide? Who should be a core friend, especially if they're going to have some extra influence? Now again, there's all sorts of qualities, all sorts of important qualities that we should consider when we're picking our core friends. I'm going to focus on three that scripture seems to give a little bit extra attention to. So here are three qualities to look for in your core friends. First, choose friends who encourage me spiritually. Choose friends who encourage me spiritually. 1 Thessalonians 5.11 says this, encourage one another and build each other up. Now here's the thing. This verse isn't talking about compliments. There's a difference between compliments and encouragement. Compliments are nice, but they tend to be shallow. A compliment, oh, Kurt, your teeth look really shiny tonight, right? That's a compliment. Kurt, you look a little less bald than last time I saw you. Okay, thank you. That's nice. I'm glad you said that. But that's not encouragement. That's a compliment. Encouragement are things that go a little bit deeper, a little bit further below the surface. Encouragement matters a little bit more and carries more significance than a compliment. And God wants us to surround ourselves, our most core friends, with people who are a source of encouragement. Now the dictionary defines encouragement this way. The action of giving someone support, confidence, or hope. That's encouragement. The action of giving someone support, confidence, or hope. I like this other definition. It's a lesser known definition of encouragement. It's simply this, to fill the heart. Encouragement is to fill the heart. When you give somebody support, when you give somebody confidence, when you're a source of hope, what you're doing is you are filling their heart. Now, a couple quick examples. When I was in high school and college, one of my core friends, we had this group of core friends, and like what happens in a lot of friendship circles, is there's always one that seems to kind of miss out on the information. This was back when you actually had to pick up a phone that was attached to a cord that was attached to the wall and make a phone call And so because of all the effort that went into being good friends back in the day this one friend would always get left out And for some reason, when he was left out, I was the person he would call. And there was almost this routine in our friendship where we would go out and do something, we would forget about our one friend, and I would get the phone call and it would go something like this. Bring, bring. Hello? Hey, Kurt. I heard you guys went to Disneyland last night. You didn't invite me. Real cool, chump. And he'd hang up. Click. Ring, ring. Hey, Kurt. I heard you guys went to the movies last night. Didn't invite me. Real cool, chump. Click. I mean, it's on. It was a routine. I was so afraid of it. I couldn't do anything without upsetting my friend for him not being included. Hey, Kurt. I heard you folded your underwear last night. Didn't invite me. Real cool. I mean, no matter what we did, if he wasn't included, it was this issue. And when I start thinking about encouragement and I had to make the decision, is my friend somebody who gives me support, confidence, and hope? Or is he a source of tension? As I evaluated my circle of friends, I had to make a decision that maybe that's not something I want in my core circle. He didn't fill my heart. One of my good friends right now, Eddie, lives in Atlanta. We hardly ever see each other. And yet every time, whether it's for coffee or an extended weekend together, when I'm in Atlanta or he's here on business, if I spend five minutes, 50 minutes, five hours with Eddie, I walk away and my heart is full. He just has a way of encouraging me and supporting me and breathing confidence into my life. Those are the kind of friends that God says you should have closest to you. So choose friends who encourage me spiritually. You see, part of feeling lonely, and as Pastor Rick so perfectly set up this whole topic, loneliness is a big, big struggle. In fact, current statistics say that 65% of 12 to 17-year-olds, 65%, experience loneliness on a regular basis. It's a big deal. And part of this loneliness that we feel is because our hearts aren't filled up. We feel lonely because we don't have the kind of friendships that fill our hearts. We have friendships that are full of some of these other negative things that Pastor Rick encouraged us to avoid. Here's a second quality in your core friends. It's to choose friends who consistently support me emotionally. Choose friends who consistently support me emotionally. I love this verse. Proverbs 17, 17 says this. A friend loves you all the time. Do me a favor and underline that. All the time. A friend loves you all the time like a brother born to help in trouble. Now it's been said that a true friend, and how you judge your true friends, is that a true friend walks in when everybody else walks out. That when you're going through trouble, you know your friends by the people who walk in your life versus the people who tend to walk out. So what does it look like to walk in to somebody's life? Here's what walking in means. You might want to just jot these down someplace. Walking in means saying, I'm here with you, not just I'm here for you. You notice the difference? I'm here with you. Not just, hey, if you need anything, I know you're going through a tough time. If you need anything, I'm here for you. When you say I'm here for you, you're putting all the burden on them to reach out to you in their moment of need. When you say I'm here with you, what you're saying is I'm gonna be proactive. I'm gonna walk this journey with you. I will be with you every step of the way and you look for ways to model that you're there with them. Walking in means listening. The best emotional support that you can give somebody is usually just to sit and be quiet. When people are going through a tough time, less words, more listening. Saying I'm here with you means I'm listening to what you have to say, and I'm willing to be with you in it. Walking in means serving your friends. Walking in means serving your friends, looking for ways to proactively be an emotional support, a physical support, whatever it is that they might need you to be. Third, choose friends who challenge me to think. Oh, this is the tough one. This is the tough one. If I can be honest for a minute, just the two of us, just me and you. I don't like this one. I don't like this one. God wants me to choose friends who challenge me to think. Proverbs 13.20 says, if you keep company with wise friends, you'll become wise. But if you make friends with foolish people, your life will fall to pieces. You see, I like to be friends with people who kind of think like I do. I like to be friends with people who have some of the same dumb beliefs, dumb opinions, strange worldview. I like people who are like me. And when somebody starts pushing up against that, I have a tendency to fight it. I don't want to be challenged. Come on, if you're really my friend, just kind of agree with me. Put up with me. I'm kind of half-baked and dumb-idead sometimes, and you should be okay with that. You know, Dumb and Dumber, great movie, great movie. Not a good recipe for healthy friendships, right? Dumb and Dumber doesn't make for healthy friendships. I need people in my life, you need people in your life who are willing, not in an argumentative, judgmental way, but friends who are willing to call you on your stuff. Iron sharpens iron. One of my very best core friends is actually the gentleman that co the book with me And if you were to say the three or four most important life issues Mark and I would agree 100% of the time on those three or four core life issues. Of the three or four million non-essential life issues, Mark and I would disagree about 99.9% of the time. We just see things differently. We've experienced our faith differently. We've raised our kids differently. The way he and his wife navigate things is different than the way my wife and I navigate things. He has two children that they're exact same age as our kids. The way they've raised their kids is different than the way we've raised our kids. And we have had over the years these passionate, wonderful, challenging, stretching, confusing conversations and moments and times where we get eye to eye and knee to knee and say, bro, here's what I think about that. Here's what I'm seeing. Here's where I differ. And the result has been wonderful. It's been wonderful. I'm a better dad because he's challenged me. I'm a better husband because he sees things differently about marriage than I do. I'm a better follower of Jesus because he has experienced his faith in some ways that are different than my journey and it's added this layer of richness and this layer of depth to my life. The easy thing in friendships is just to surround yourselves with like-minded people. Birds of a feather flock together. That's the easiest route to take. It's the road of least resistance. But if you want rich, meaningful, life-giving, heart-filling relationships, I would encourage you to take God's advice and choose friends who challenge you to think. Now that homework, that homework that Rick mentioned is something I'm going to ask you to do as we kind of move through some more parts of this message is this week, this week sometime, I'm going to ask you to take a look at that picture, maybe draw it out on a napkin or a piece of paper, write out those casual friends. Write out the close friends and in regards to these three things, take a look at who you put in your core friend category and ask yourself, do these people, do they encourage me spiritually? Do they support me emotionally? And do they challenge me to think? Thanks. Let me give you a sentence to write down to kind of summarize everything Kurt and I are trying to say. My best friends should bring out the best in me. My best friends should bring out the best in me. If they're not bringing out the best in you, they're not really your best friends. Somebody else should be your best friend. If your best friends aren't bringing out the best, they're not your best. So write that down. And when you're looking at your friendships and do an evaluation of that, think about that. Are these my best friends? Are they bringing out the best in me or not? Now, let's switch gears and talk about the opposite, and that is this. Here's another sentence you might wanna write down. To have great friends, I must be a great friend. You might write that one down. That's where we're going now in the next part of this message. To have great friends, I have to be a great friend. I can't expect people to be to me what I'm not being to them. And so whatever I want other people to do with me, I need to do with them. You will attract what you are. If you're a great friend, guess what? You will attract great friends. So that's a factor that we need to look at now. Let's look at eight building blocks on how to be a great friend according to the Bible, according to what God says. He's always going to be right. So let's just go through these eight. I'm gonna take some of them. Kurt's gonna take some of them. Number one, the building blocks of close relationships. Eight factors for forming friendships. Number one, be cheerful. Greet people with a smile. Now that may seem kind of obvious. But when you take a friend for granted, you often don't smile at him. There is an enormous power in a simple smile. A smile can change an atmosphere overnight, instantly. It can change a room. The shortest distance between two people is a smile. A smile is a universal language. It is known all around the world. If you smile at somebody else, guess what? They're gonna smile back at you. You don't have to know their language, but if you smile, they will smile. It is the one thing that's understood besides the international finger of disapproval. Everybody knows that one too. But this is a better one that everybody knows. And that is, if you smile at somebody, they're going to smile back. It's a universal language. The great thing about a smile, it costs nothing, but you can cheer up somebody who's having a tough time just by smiling at that clerk, at that grocery store stock person, at anybody you come across with walking down the street, you know, the post office person or whatever. Studies have shown that when you smile, you actually become cuter. Well, there you go. You don't have to lose that weight after all. Just start smiling. If you smile, you will be more attractive. Study after study after study. Say that when a person smiles, they instantly become more attractive. How'd that work? I don't think so. That wasn a smile that was a grin I think sourpuss Christians are an insult to the joy of God They look like they were baptized in vinegar you know Okay, and they just go, come on. I mean, they're just, they walk around with these long faces. They're an embarrassment to God. How many of you are happy? Can I see your hands? You're really happy, okay. How many of you are thrilled that you're saved and you're going to heaven? All right, okay, notify your face. You know, it only takes seven muscles to smile. It takes 42 to frown. If you're frowning, you're wasting a lot of energy. Now, notice what the Bible says. Proverbs 15, verse 30. A cheerful look brings joy to the heart. Now, here's an interesting thing about that verse. We think the opposite. A cheerful heart brings a smile to the face. but the Bible says the opposite. A cheerful heart brings a smile to the face, but this verse says a cheerful face, a cheerful look brings joy to the heart. Did you know that your facial muscles can change the mood of your heart? That when you don't feel happy, if you'll just start smiling, it will change your mood. I guarantee it. Study after scientific study have shown that when you actually start smiling, then it'll actually change your mood. I can't tell you how many times I've been driving to church to preach on Sunday morning, and I didn't feel like preaching. I just like to stay home and watch football. And I've already done that a few times, so how about now, somebody else? And what I do is I just start smiling. And I look at myself in the mirror. I just start smiling. Hey, that guy's happy. Look at that guy. By the time I get here, I'm ready to smile at all of you. We think your heart has to change before you smile. God says if you start smiling, it'll change your heart. Okay? So when you get up in the morning, just start forcing that smile in your face. Now, by the way, while you're at it, use friendly language. Look at this next verse. The Lord is pleased with what? Friendly words. Circle that. Did you know that any time you say a friendly word to anybody, it doesn't have to be some kind of witness. It's just a friendly word. God is pleased. The Lord is pleased with friendly words. Proverbs 15, 26. You know, the problem we have today is, you know, the world seems to be getting crankier and crankier. Would you agree with that? It just seems like everybody's in a cranky mood, and nobody wants to be a friend with a cranky person. I heard this week about a cranky, cantankerous guy who came into a flower shop, a florist, and he was all upset because they'd gotten the order wrong, and he said, you got my order wrong, you made a mistake, I ordered flowers for my friend's new housewarming, and you sent a bouquet that said, rest in peace. And he was just being cranky, and I turned to him, and I said, well, just think about somewhere there's a graveside that says, I hope you enjoy your new location. You got a problem? You think that's a problem? So just somebody's got a worse problem than you do. So just start off smiling. You'll make friends just by smiling. That was such an encouraging message from Pastor Rick. And now to encourage us more, here's Rick with a letter from one of our listeners. Friends, you are so essential to this ministry of Daily Hope. Your prayers, your support help us reach more and more people around the world. I was really blessed today when I read this note from Edward, and he talks about how he's learning from Daily Hope while he's working with inner city kids right here in America. He wrote this, Dear Pastor Rick, I'm a middle school teacher, and it's a real challenge every morning waking up and coming to my school to teach. I teach at a school where 100% of our students need financial help just to eat lunch. In other words, it's in a very poor section of a city. He says, I listened to your Daily Hope message during my break, and I usually give my students bits and pieces of it. Today, I told them to think about what they can do for others if they truly want to be happy. Pastor Rick, thank you for making your Daily Hope messages free. I'm able to keep listening to them until I really understand what you're teaching. Well, Edward, you are making a difference. I am so proud of you for working with those inner city students. You're giving them a message of hope and healing and help, and you're helping them to understand how that by giving their lives away to help other people, they bring new meaning and significance to their own lives. And I am praying, Edward, that today you'll be encouraged, not just today, but every day as you go to school, knowing that what you do is making a difference in students' lives for eternity. God bless you. Hey, if you've been blessed by this teaching, as I have, please share it with your friends and family members. You can do it right from our website, PastorRick.com. From there, it's easy. You click on the Listen tab and you'll find all of Rick's teachings and the Share buttons that enable you to send it to your friends or family by email or social media links. Be sure to join us next time as we look into God's Word for our daily hope. This program is sponsored by Pastor Rick's Daily Hope and your generous financial support.