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[00:11]
A
Where I live in Montana, there is so much wilderness. In fact, the joke during the pandemic was, in Montana, people have been practicing social distancing since 1889. And during tourist season, especially in the summer, when there's a huge influx of people coming into the national parks, people can get in trouble in the backcountry in lots of different ways. There's a lot of survival skills you need to know pertaining to fire and water and shelter and food and navigation. But one of the most crucial and often overlooked survival skills has nothing to do with equipments or tents or GPS units or navigation. Has everything to do with. With people. They say anytime you go into the back country, there needs to be multiple different people who know where you're going, when you're going in, when you're expecting to come out, so that if you don't show up, there's someone looking for you. Which is an important and haunting question far beyond just camping and hopefully not taking selfies with buffaloes. We see you, but the question is, who in life is looking for you and will know where you're not supposed to be and is willing to talk to you about it? Welcome to the finale of Is that in the Bible? We welcome you at Fresh Life Church, all of our partner churches, those of you who are watching online, we have the deepest gratitude for Wonder Project for allowing us to come into the world of House of David and to put us at this moment in the courtyard of Gibeah, Saul's capital city of his kingdom, where so much of the action of the show happens, where so much. Where the. The cheering for David the giant slayer breaks out, where. Where you see Saul descending into envy. Just so much of the story takes place and we're so grateful to be here. If you have a Bible, we're going to be in 1st. 1st Samuel 18. And the title of our message is why can't we be friends? Why can't we be. We're going to ask that question, why can't we be friends? One of the most powerful friendships certainly in history, but definitely in the pages of Scripture, is David and Jonathan's. Their friendship is absolute goals. And it shows us the important need that each of us have for friendship. Because just like we need food and we need water and we need warmth, we also need the protection and the safety and the encouragement that comes from friendship. It's been said that one of the reasons God chose to give us the New Testament in Greek is because it's such a precise language where we only have the one word love. In English, it's limiting because you might say you love your favorite sports team, you love sushi, you love Jesus, and you love your mom. And hopefully you don't love all of those things with the exact same kind of love. So in Greek, we have, of course, a divine love. We'll talk about more in a moment. But we have three human loves. Storge, which is familial love. We have Eros, which is the song of Solomon. Erotic love, a man, his wife, a wife for her husband. But then we also have the least understood, most often neglected, but to our own peril, the crucial love of Phileo. Phileo is brotherly love. Phileo is friendship, love. And that's precisely what we're about to see in this clip from the first episode of season two. This happens directly to after David has slain Goliath. And we see Phileo forming between David and Jonathan.
[04:23]
B
Are you all right?
[04:27]
C
Now you wear the colors of my family's house.
[04:29]
B
Well, I hope I will live up to them.
[04:35]
C
What you have done here will never be forgotten. Not by Israel, not by me.
[04:50]
B
Jonathan, is there something you would like to ask him about? Samuel,
[05:01]
C
You are part of my house and my brothers.
[05:18]
A
What we see in this powerful clip the Bible can confirm. First Samuel, Chapter 18 says that after David had finished talking with Saul, he met Jonathan, the king's son. There was an immediate bond between them, for Jonathan loved David. From that day on, Saul kept David with him and wouldn't let him return home. And Jonathan made a solemn pact with David because he loved him as he loved himself. Jonathan sealed the pact by taking off his robe and giving it to David together with his tunic, his sword, his bow and his belt. It's crucial that we allow this picture of what God intends for our brotherly love, our sisterly love, our friendship love, to look like where we love God with our heart, our soul, our minds, our strength. But then we love our neighbor as ourselves. We allow, we allow Jonathan and David's friendship. I love that it says Jonathan loved David as he loved himself. David loved Jonathan like he loved his own soul. We need to let this image color and inform our imagination, our picture that we shoot for when we approach human friendship as something that we indeed should aim for. Why? Because in our day, friendship itself is in jeopardy. Yeah, that's right. Researcher Dan Cox identified what he has called and has famously taken hold of for language around this problem, as he called it a friendship recession. You would hear about an economic recession. No, he says we are dealing with a social friendship Recession, it's been taking place since the 1990s. And he says over the past three decades, the number of close friends the average American has has plummeted. He says it seems to be true for every age group, for every gender, for every income level, for every race, for every marital status. Everyone, here's the quote. Seems to be spending more time alone. As he's studied the landscape, he says it's affecting everybody, right? But then he. And I'm gonna save this for the very end. He says there's one notable exception. There was one category in his research that seemed to buck the trend and have this one group in America that seems to have more friends. This problem. In the Atlantic, there was an article as they described this 21st century as it's evolving. They called it the antisocial century. The antisocial century that we're living in a time these last 30 years where fewer people are hanging out with each other. And he says that it's now at a place where men will spend seven hours in front of the TV for every one hour they spend hanging out with somebody outside of their home. And the typical female who owns a pet will spend more time actively engaged with with her pet than she spends in face to face contact with friends who are of her own species. We have to ask the question, hey, if this is what's happening, we're having fewer and fewer social interactions. You know, we can go through a drive through banking, atm, we can have doordash bring food to us. We don't have to go out, we don't have to be in restaurants when we check out at the grocery store. We can go through the little thing that we don't have to even talk to. Like, you can literally build a life where you never really ever talk to people, where you don't let people in, where you just do everything by yourself. And this has disastrous effects on the human body. Research shows that social isolation can weaken the immune system and make someone more likely to suffer from ailments like Alzheimer's, high blood pressure, sleep disruptions, heart disease, diabetes, and even cancer. And we famously, in the newspapers have heard about loneliness being as bad on the human body as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. I mean, think about it. Being isolated is itself a form of punishment for people in prison who can't even handle the general population. The worst punishment you can have inside a prison, inside of our incarceration is to be put in solitary confinement. And some of us, we're choosing to live that way willingly. Fortunately, there is a cure for every need we have on this planet, God is. We get thirsty, there's water. We get hungry, there's food. And guess what? We are lonely. And God has given us friendship. God has chosen to invent such a thing to solve this problem. There's no need for any of us to be isolated. And you would say, yeah, that's nice for you to say, Levi, but it's hard. Friendship is hard. You don't think David and Jonathan knew that?
[10:31]
C
Hello.
[10:32]
A
He puts a red robe, the colors of Saul. There's that tension of. Do you want me to tell you what, Samuel?
[10:37]
C
Like.
[10:38]
A
Like there's this tension, this obvious tension. They had it hard in their friendship, too. There was a lot up against them. David had been told by God he's going to sit on the throne. That should have come to John. And you don't think they could have let that cause all the obstacles, all the reasons why friendship is. Is so hard. They had their excuses as well, and yet they chose to do the hard yards. It's not easy. It takes work. It takes. It takes thick skin. It takes growing in insecurity and in comfort level. And it takes being out, putting yourself out there and being vulnerable. And I love. One of the things I love as the show progresses across the seasons is you're just seeing this work. You're seeing. It doesn't happen in a day, but it can happen if you work at it daily. And so what I want to now do is show you a clip from episode five of the second season of House of David to watch them put the time in to get to a place where they have something to be desired in their friendship.
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B
Good.
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C
There's the lion. Can I ask you something? What does it feel like to be anointed like Joshua Samson, where my father was?
[12:13]
B
Yes, your father is anointed.
[12:16]
C
No, you don't have to explain. Speak the truth to me. What does it feel like?
[12:29]
B
Powerful. Like fire or a rushing wind. I become more of something. Everything I feel is amplified. Passion, joy, even rage. It frightens me. I fear I may lose control. I cannot speak of eternity, except maybe, you know, no one understands. I don't understand. Sometimes I feel that to be anointed is to be alone.
[13:25]
C
You're not alone, David.
[13:34]
B
I'm sorry the throne won't pass to you as it should have.
[13:47]
A
To have a friend like that is to be rich in all the ways that truly count. It was CS Lewis who. Who said, describing his group of friends, that he was a part of. He had this group. They actually had A name for themselves. I love that. And I think all of us fans of House of David, we should go by Giant Slayers because, like we're following the king and we're following the one who actually slayed the giant Jesus and we can do that through him. So it's just my, like, throw in the hat in the ring as a, as a thought there and I'm gonna get the tattoo immediately. But CS Lewis had a group of friends called the Inklings because they were all authors, they all wrote, so they called themselves the Inklings. And they would get together at a pub in Oxford and they would talk and they would enjoy each other's company and friendship and laugh and talk and describing what he got from it, he said, and I quote, friendship is the greatest of worldly goods. Certainly to me it is the chief happiness of life. What an incredible thing that he could describe the camaraderie he got, the friendship he got as one of the chief pleasures. Just, just such a joy that he got to walk in. And that's definitely what we see play out on screen, depicted so well through this show and exemplified in the Bible. That's why I think regardless of all the reasons and excuses why it's easy to not that we should fight for actual face to face friendships. And what I want to do is I want to give you six benefits. These are things that will be lacking in your life and make your life worse. That you will not have people looking for you should you go lost. And you're not where you're supposed to be if you don't have them. Six benefits to friendship. Number one, navigation. Navigation, like getting where you need to go. If we're completely honest in life, things can be murky. We can feel like I'm not quite so sure. And we need to not trust our own objectivity because if we're real in life, we can all be blind to our own blind spots. And one of my favorite things about David and Jonathan is, and we see this in the last couple minutes of the show, we see Jonathan at a place where he's going to fire arrows. He's going to shoot arrows as a way of telling David the coast is clear or the coast is not clear. Think about this. Whether David can stay or whether David should go, he's going to help him navigate. Should you be inside Gibeah or should you get out of Dodge? He's going to shoot the arrows far or shoot the arrows close. Listen, we all are going to face decisions in life. We're like, should I have this job. Should I stay in this relationship? Should I continue? And we're going to feel strongly, we're going to have kicked up emotional reactions, but we need friends to go, hold on, hold on, hold on. Let's shoot the air far, let's shoot. Meaning they're going to help you decipher what God's will is. It's called wise counsel. And Proverbs 11 says, where there is no counsel, the people fall. But in the multitude of counselors, there is safety. And for you to figure out whether you should run from a situation or embrace it, sit down at the table or head for the hills, remain where you are or take evasive action. David can't trust even his own emotional state at this point, so he has the steadiness of Jonathan to decipher the arrows for him. And so my question is, who's leading you? Whose advice are you taking? Because if you listen to the wrong voices, you'll end up in the wrong places. Just ask the children of Israel, who ended up wandering and wasting away in the wilderness, as you can see depicted in the new project that Wonder Projects is working on. The old stories, Moses. They get out of Egypt, head towards the promised land, but they end up dying 38 years spinning in circles. Why they listened to the 10 spies who gave a negative report and not the two spies, Joshua and Caleb, who had the different spirit in them. And so, for navigation, you need friends. Secondly, celebration. Celebration is one of the great gifts of friendship. In fact, it's been said, and I can't remember the quote, but that when you have a friend in your life, it cuts your sorrows in half, but ends up doubling life's joys? And isn't it true that to have a good restaurant or to see a good movie, and it's not nearly as good as when you can laugh with someone about the great movie or you can talk about man, wasn't that food so good? Wasn't that tres leches cake so amazing? Right? When you get to talk to someone about the experience, it doubles the joy. But when it's a hard thing, but you get to look at someone and go, man, that was tough. You go, yeah, it cuts the sorrow in half. And perhaps that's why Scripture says, this is Romans 12:15, to rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep. I like what Ralph Waldo Emerson said about friendship when he said, it's one of the best blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them, isn't it? Awesome. When you get together with someone, the kind of friendship that David and Jonathan have where you can kind of pick it up no matter where it left off or how long it's been, but immediately you can tell some of those old stories. My favorite is when you laugh until you cry. I think we should count true wealth by how many people you can laugh until you cry with. And when you get into those. And by the way they call that crafting cry, laughing where you laugh so hard you cry. It just feels like such a glorious release to someone. You can let your hair down with someone that you can be stupid with, someone you don't need to pretend and posture it, but you can just be like, this is me. This is really who I am. That's a real joy celebration. The third is formation. Formation is like a glacier moving through a valley, shaping the terrain. Or think like from Napa, the wine growing region of California, how they put trellis up to guide and direct where the vines are going to go. We all need formation. And if we don't have that trellis, if it's not guided and shaped where it's going to grow, it will just end up being a mushy bush. And so will you if you don't have the right kind of friends in life to guide in your formation. Scripture is clear. Life change happens in relationships. Did not God say, after creating the world and using the word good, good, good, good, everything he made was good until what he came to man's solitary confinement and then went, ooh, Houston, we got a problem. It is not good for man to be alone. And his cure was relationships. Proverbs 27:17 says, as iron sharpens iron, so a man sharpens the countenance of his friend. Check this out. You cannot sharpen a knife edge alone. I don't care where you wave it, I don't care what you do with it. You need, you need that steel, you need that you, you need the other thing to scrape again. Friendship at times is going to rub you what feels like the wrong way. If you don't remember back in middle school, you'd have a slumber party and then you'd have reverse slumber party, then you have a slumber party, and then you hate each other for about a week, right? You don't want to see each other anyway. You can get so sick of each other. Why you're scraping the edges, but that's how you're shaped. And if you just go, forget it. I'll just do Uber Eats and be alone and get in my Waymo and ride to where I'm going all alone. I don't even need a driver. I. I'll just have a robot. Alexa, let me tell you something. No one's going to challenge you. No one's going to force you. No one's going to. No one's going to. No one's going to get you out of your shell. It's going to make you know, hey, we need to get out of the sweatpants. We're going out. We need to go to church. We need to pray. Listen, you will not become honed. You will not be sharp. You will stay the same and not be formed. People in your life, even that irritate you, are there to help deal with the rough spots. And so we need formation number four, intervention. Intervention is when people in our lives love us enough to say the hard things, because friends stab us in the front, not the back. In fact, I think about how the Bible says, this is Paul to Peter to the church of Galatia. Paul says, I had to pull Peter to the side. And this is Peter the apostle Peter. Paul said he was wrong, he was to be blamed, and I needed to let him know because he couldn't grow if I didn't let him know. And so I'm going to tell him, peter, you're doing it wrong. You're being a hypocrite. Proverbs 20. Proverbs 27:6 says, Faithful are the wounds of a friend, but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful. And so who in your life have you given permission? Hey, if you see something holding me back, will you let me know? Will you tell me? Will you call me out? And I want to do the same for you. It's called accountability. And then the fifth benefit is collaboration. Collaboration is that sweet synergy. I think about the team that God has assembled for us to be even putting this project together as Wonder Project and as Fresh Life Team as well as Open Network Team. We're all serving together. And just the sweetness that comes from that. And so many different people all doing their different respective parts with excellence. It's happening at your church right now. You have the team. It's not just a pastor and the worship leaders, people running sound. It's people serving kids serving in parking, getting the coffee ready, cleaning the room, designing things, working behind the scenes, Excel spreadsheets. Someone got insurance so the building was safe to have people. I mean, all the different things. The reality is teamwork makes the dream work. Romans is the manifesto of the New Testament. Romans, the theological Beethoven's Fifth of.
[23:54]
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Of.
[23:54]
A
Of the Bible. And yet Romans chapter 16 gives us a lot more names than just Paul, the one who wrote it. Or we think about Paul. He mentions 19 men and 10 women that helped him pull off all he did. When you think about Romans, you need to also be thinking about Phoebe and Priscilla and Aquila and Epenetus and Junia, Aristobulus. And on and on and on it goes. And your life will never accomplish what God wants to do through your life by yourself. You can't become who you were meant to be or do what God's called you to do if you're doing it alone. One of my favorite lines from the Lord of the Rings is when Frodo says, I'm going to Mordor. And Samwise Gamgee says, of course you are, and I'm going with you. Of course you are, and I'm going with you. Without friendship, without the kind of David Jonathan friendship, the ring would have never made it to Mordor. Actually, we would never have anything about Middle Earth at all. Because did you know that J.R. tolkien, author of the Lord of the Rings, was also part of the Inklings, that group of friends that CS Lewis was a part of? And after CS Lewis died, JR Tolkien said this. The unpayable debt that I owe to CS Lewis was not just influence, as it is ordinarily understood, but sheer encouragement. He was for long, my only audience. Only from him did I ever get the idea that my stuff about the Ring could be more than a private hobby. But for his interest and unceasing eagerness for more, I never should have brought the Lord of the Rings to a conclusion. Think about that. He would come to see us. What do you think about this? In their Inklings group? And he would say, no, don't give up. Keep going. Yes, you grew onto something, he said. Had it not been for that, I never would have written. Mind blown to think about how different the world would be without that friendship. And then lastly, invigoration. Invigoration. Now, I didn't just pick this word because it rhymes, but also because it's the perfect word. It's defined as to give strength to. To give energy to, or to make strong. You need friends because there's times when you're going to feel weak and you need a friend to come alongside and give strength to and encourage you. This is what the Bible calls bearing one another's burdens and so fulfilling the law of Christ. I think about How Job, chapter 2, verse 13 tells us that when Job's whole life fell apart overnight, lost his children, his net worth decimated his health, his friends came to him and sat with him in silence for seven days. Then they started talking. And you know, we could say, say less, right? Because they didn't have much to have, but I love that they just knew to just sit with him for a week, just to sit with them. When my daughter died back in 2012, we had friends who would just come and sit there. Not need to say anything, not trying to do anything, just to be there with us. And their presence spoke volumes. You will need people to be strong when you feel weak. Martin Luther said that solitude produces melancholy. When we are alone, the worst and saddest things will come to mind. Isolation compounds a sorrow left to ourselves. We will always interpret things in a worse light. It's called a heavenly perspective. That's what Martin Luther's saying. And I think that's what moves me so much. It's not just they have a bromance and yeah, we both love war and we, you know, we have. Yeah, Kingdom of. You know. No, no, listen. Their friendship is about more than just their friendship. They both had an eternal perspective. And in their low moments, they could encourage each other. Hey, come on. What about God? And I think that's what I love so much about this final clip where we see David and Jonathan both invoking God's presence and his name and covenant right before him as the final movement of their friendship story plays out.
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B
That was terrible.
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C
You distracted me.
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A
I'll go fetch it.
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C
No, no, no. It's too far. I'll fetch it myself. I need to walk. Here, take this back to the armory. Thank you. Re. Isn't safe. Ordered the guards east of here to be removed. Clear you a path of Rama. Samuel thought that's where you might go.
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B
Yes. I'm sorry.
[29:27]
C
I tried. My father will not relent. I fear this will be the last time we will see each other. Well, I did bring you a gift. For the poet.
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Jonathan. I will always love you and serve you.
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I must ask something of you is kind of thing. I told this to no one. But sorrow is with child.
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You're going to be a father. And you want to name him David? I will allow that.
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C
No. But I do ask for kindness, mercy when you come into your kingdom. My father said I was a fool. Not as long as you lived. My throne will never be established. And in his madness and in his jealousy, he speaks the truth. And it is a truth that will apply to you.
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B
Jonathan.
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David. Kings Consolidate their rule. They do things they said they would never do. I've seen this with my own eyes so far. To me, promise me you will never harm my family. Still protect them when I. If I cannot,
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B
I vow. I vow I will show your family kindness forever.
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Thou again. That you will never cut off your loyalty to my house. Even when all your enemies lay at
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B
your feet, you will never be one of them. This is a covenant between us.
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C
Then may the house of David endure forever. May your reign never end.
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B
John. Yeah. I did not ask for this,
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John.
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I never wanted any of this.
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You would be the better king.
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No, no.
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God does not make mistakes like that.
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I told you at the beginning of the sermon that there is one exception to the research about friendship being in crisis all across our country. And that one finding has everything to do with what we just saw on screen. And that is that David and Jonathan's friendship was not just about each other. It was both about their common love in God's power, in God's reign, in God's place in their life. Dan Cox said that on average, Americans who attend church regularly tend to have more friends than those who attend rarely or not at all. You see, because phileo and storge and even Eros are not enough. The fourth love in the four words for love in the Greek is agape, and that's the John 3:16 love. That's the God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son so that whoever would believe in him would not perish but have everlasting life. And when you have that love firmly in place in your life, it opens you up to actually approach the other loves, but not need them to do in your heart what they never can. Jonathan and David had that agape love, and so their filet O bloomed out of that. And so, Father, we do pray and ask that you would do that for us. The sermon on friends. We don't end with saying, well, let's go out and just try and find some friends. Now we first stop to consider where are we at with our agape love for you? That Jonathan and David both were able to love each other and weather the storms of their friendship because you, your relationship with them, between them and you, mattered more than anything else. And so then they were able to, out of the overflow, approach each other. Would you do that for us, God? And if anybody is watching today who doesn't have that relationship with you is here. We pray you would do that in our hearts. So then we then could look to our neighbors as ourselves first, having loved you with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength. And so if that's you I'm describing, and you would say, man, I. I got all these needs in my life. But as we're praying, I would just admit that I don't have that first relationship with God. Jesus loves you so much, he came to this world to die for you. Rising from the dead on the third day, he's willing to come into your heart, forgive you of your sins, and then begin to help you sort out your human relationships. But you'll never be right with other people till you're first right with him. And so if that's you I'm describing, and you would say, I'm ready to give my life to Jesus, I want you to pray this prayer with me right there in your church, right there, watching online. Just say this to God. Say, dear God, I'm sorry for my sins. Please forgive me. Thank you for sending Jesus to die for me and to rise from the dead. I give you my life. Thank you for salvation. Now help me, God, to open my life up to friendship with your people. In Jesus name.

Summary6 min read

Podcast Summary: Fresh Life Church – “Why Can't We Be Friends”

Host: Pastor Levi Lusko
Date: August 10, 2026

Main Theme

This episode, the finale of the “Is That in the Bible?” series, explores the vital role of friendship in the Christian life, using the biblical relationship between David and Jonathan to illustrate how deep, godly friendships are essential for spiritual and emotional survival. Pastor Levi unpacks the necessity, dynamics, and spiritual dimensions of “phileo”—the Greek word for friendship love—contrasting it with other types of love and challenging the modern “friendship recession.” The conversation weaves together scriptural insights, modern research, and memorable cultural references to help listeners understand why meaningful friendships matter and how they mirror God’s design.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Survival Skill We Overlook: Friendship

Opening Analogy (00:11): Pastor Levi sets the scene with an analogy from Montana’s wilderness: “One of the most crucial and often overlooked survival skills has nothing to do with equipment...it has everything to do with people.”
The parallel: Just as you need someone to know your whereabouts in the wild, you need friends in life to know you, look out for you, and check in on you.

2. Biblical Friendship: David & Jonathan

Scripture Foundation (05:17): The friendship of David and Jonathan (1 Samuel 18) is held up as a model: “There was an immediate bond between them, for Jonathan loved David. From that day on, Saul kept David with him and wouldn’t let him return home.”
Key Moment (05:17): Jonathan seals his friendship with David by gifting him his royal robe and weapons, symbolizing surrender and covenant loyalty.
Pastor Levi encourages the church to let this story set the standard for friendship: “David loved Jonathan like he loved his own soul…we need to let this image color and inform our imagination.”

3. The Friendship Recession & Its Dangers

Current Crisis (07:40): Quoting researcher Dan Cox—“We are dealing with a social friendship recession...the number of close friends the average American has has plummeted.”
Notable Quote (08:57): “Everyone, it seems, is spending more time alone.”
Cites Atlantic’s term: the “antisocial century”; data includes sobering stats about men’s and women’s social habits.
Consequences: Isolation harms physical health “as bad on the human body as smoking 15 cigarettes a day” (09:48).

4. The Cure: God’s Gift of Friendship

Friendship, like food and water, is God’s designed answer for loneliness (10:19): “There’s no need for any of us to be isolated. And you would say, yeah, that’s nice for you to say...but friendship is hard.”
David and Jonathan’s friendship wasn’t smooth or simple; it required “the hard yards”—work, vulnerability, and patience (10:45).

5. Six Benefits of Godly Friendship

Pastor Levi presents six ways friendship fulfills God’s design and enriches our lives:

a. Navigation (15:31)

Friends help us make decisions and discern God’s will when we can’t trust our perspective.
“If you listen to the wrong voices, you’ll end up in the wrong places.” — Levi Lusko

b. Celebration (17:47)

Friends double our joys and halve our sorrows. Reference to Romans 12:15—“Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep.”
Memorable Quote: "It's one of the best blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them." — Ralph Waldo Emerson (18:28)

c. Formation (19:51)

Relationships shape character like a trellis shapes grapevines.
Proverbs 27:17: “As iron sharpens iron, so a man sharpens the countenance of his friend.”
“People in your life, even that irritate you, are there to help deal with the rough spots.” — Levi Lusko

d. Intervention (21:20)

True friends confront us with hard truths (“Friends stab us in the front, not the back”).
Proverbs 27:6: “Faithful are the wounds of a friend, but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful.”

e. Collaboration (22:29)

Great achievements require teamwork; references church teams and collaborations that make ministry possible.
J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis’ friendship—without Lewis’ encouragement, Tolkien may have “never brought the Lord of the Rings to a conclusion” (24:30).

f. Invigoration (25:59)

Friends bring strength and energy in tough times; “bearing one another’s burdens” (Galatians 6:2).
Personal Moment: Levi recalls those who comforted him after his daughter’s passing: “Their presence spoke volumes” (27:05).

6. Deep Dive: David & Jonathan’s Covenant

Emotional Scene (29:22–32:24): The climactic dramatization of Jonathan and David’s farewell—Jonathan asks David to spare his family when David becomes king, and David swears loyalty.
- “Jonathan, I will always love you and serve you.” — David (29:52)
- “Promise me you will never harm my family...I vow I will show your family kindness forever.” — David (31:13)
- Jonathan’s humility: “God does not make mistakes like that.” (32:17)
Levi highlights that true friendship isn’t just about the friends—it’s rooted in a shared love for God and a vision beyond themselves.

7. The Church Exception: Why Some Defy the Friendship Crisis

Key Research Finding (32:24): “Americans who attend church regularly tend to have more friends than those who attend rarely or not at all.”
Agape (God’s love) unlocks the ability to love others deeply and sacrificially, providing the foundation for all other loves (32:56).

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

“Who in life is looking for you and will know where you’re not supposed to be and is willing to talk to you about it?” — Levi Lusko (01:33)
“You can literally build a life where you never really ever talk to people, where you don’t let people in, where you just do everything by yourself.” — Levi Lusko (09:01)
“Friends stab us in the front, not the back.” — Levi Lusko (21:36)
“The unpayable debt that I owe to C.S. Lewis was not just influence…but sheer encouragement. But for his interest and unceasing eagerness for more, I never should have brought the Lord of the Rings to a conclusion.” — J.R.R. Tolkien (24:30)
“Without friendship, without the kind of David Jonathan friendship, the ring would have never made it to Mordor.” — Levi Lusko (24:12)
“Solitude produces melancholy. When we are alone, the worst and saddest things will come to mind.” — Martin Luther (27:45)
“You’ll never be right with other people till you’re first right with Him.” — Levi Lusko (33:24)

Timestamps for Important Segments

| Timestamp | Segment | |-------------|--------------------------------------------------------| | 00:11 | Wilderness analogy; survival skill of friendship | | 05:17 | The story of David & Jonathan’s friendship | | 07:40 | The “friendship recession” and social isolation | | 10:19 | God’s design for friendship; its challenges | | 15:31 | Six benefits of friendship: Navigation | | 17:47 | Celebration and joy in friendships | | 19:51 | Formation—how friends shape us | | 21:20 | Intervention—friends and accountability | | 22:29 | Collaboration in faith and life | | 25:59 | Invigoration—friends encourage in dark times | | 29:22–32:24 | Dramatic reading: David & Jonathan’s farewell covenant | | 32:24 | “Churchgoers have more friends”—spiritual foundation | | 33:24 | Prayer and invitation to relationship with God |

Tone & Style

Pastor Levi’s style is engaging, relatable, and scripturally anchored. He blends humor (references to giant slayers, tattoos, and Lord of the Rings), real-life vulnerability (sharing about his daughter’s loss), and encouragement with a challenge, urging listeners to fight the drift toward isolation.

For Those Who Haven’t Listened:

This episode is a heartfelt and practical guide to why friendship matters more than ever—and why, according to the Bible, you can’t fulfill your purpose in isolation. With memorable storytelling, research insights, and relatable illustrations, Pastor Levi Lusko lays out a roadmap for building friendships that refresh, challenge, and anchor your soul. The solution to the “friendship recession” isn’t just more socializing—it’s discovering the foundation of love in Christ that makes all friendship possible.

(End of summary)

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Transcript45 lines

[00:11]
A
Where I live in Montana, there is so much wilderness. In fact, the joke during the pandemic was, in Montana, people have been practicing social distancing since 1889. And during tourist season, especially in the summer, when there's a huge influx of people coming into the national parks, people can get in trouble in the backcountry in lots of different ways. There's a lot of survival skills you need to know pertaining to fire and water and shelter and food and navigation. But one of the most crucial and often overlooked survival skills has nothing to do with equipments or tents or GPS units or navigation. Has everything to do with. With people. They say anytime you go into the back country, there needs to be multiple different people who know where you're going, when you're going in, when you're expecting to come out, so that if you don't show up, there's someone looking for you. Which is an important and haunting question far beyond just camping and hopefully not taking selfies with buffaloes. We see you, but the question is, who in life is looking for you and will know where you're not supposed to be and is willing to talk to you about it? Welcome to the finale of Is that in the Bible? We welcome you at Fresh Life Church, all of our partner churches, those of you who are watching online, we have the deepest gratitude for Wonder Project for allowing us to come into the world of House of David and to put us at this moment in the courtyard of Gibeah, Saul's capital city of his kingdom, where so much of the action of the show happens, where so much. Where the. The cheering for David the giant slayer breaks out, where. Where you see Saul descending into envy. Just so much of the story takes place and we're so grateful to be here. If you have a Bible, we're going to be in 1st. 1st Samuel 18. And the title of our message is why can't we be friends? Why can't we be. We're going to ask that question, why can't we be friends? One of the most powerful friendships certainly in history, but definitely in the pages of Scripture, is David and Jonathan's. Their friendship is absolute goals. And it shows us the important need that each of us have for friendship. Because just like we need food and we need water and we need warmth, we also need the protection and the safety and the encouragement that comes from friendship. It's been said that one of the reasons God chose to give us the New Testament in Greek is because it's such a precise language where we only have the one word love. In English, it's limiting because you might say you love your favorite sports team, you love sushi, you love Jesus, and you love your mom. And hopefully you don't love all of those things with the exact same kind of love. So in Greek, we have, of course, a divine love. We'll talk about more in a moment. But we have three human loves. Storge, which is familial love. We have Eros, which is the song of Solomon. Erotic love, a man, his wife, a wife for her husband. But then we also have the least understood, most often neglected, but to our own peril, the crucial love of Phileo. Phileo is brotherly love. Phileo is friendship, love. And that's precisely what we're about to see in this clip from the first episode of season two. This happens directly to after David has slain Goliath. And we see Phileo forming between David and Jonathan.
[04:23]
B
Are you all right?
[04:27]
C
Now you wear the colors of my family's house.
[04:29]
B
Well, I hope I will live up to them.
[04:35]
C
What you have done here will never be forgotten. Not by Israel, not by me.
[04:50]
B
Jonathan, is there something you would like to ask him about? Samuel,
[05:01]
C
You are part of my house and my brothers.
[05:18]
A
What we see in this powerful clip the Bible can confirm. First Samuel, Chapter 18 says that after David had finished talking with Saul, he met Jonathan, the king's son. There was an immediate bond between them, for Jonathan loved David. From that day on, Saul kept David with him and wouldn't let him return home. And Jonathan made a solemn pact with David because he loved him as he loved himself. Jonathan sealed the pact by taking off his robe and giving it to David together with his tunic, his sword, his bow and his belt. It's crucial that we allow this picture of what God intends for our brotherly love, our sisterly love, our friendship love, to look like where we love God with our heart, our soul, our minds, our strength. But then we love our neighbor as ourselves. We allow, we allow Jonathan and David's friendship. I love that it says Jonathan loved David as he loved himself. David loved Jonathan like he loved his own soul. We need to let this image color and inform our imagination, our picture that we shoot for when we approach human friendship as something that we indeed should aim for. Why? Because in our day, friendship itself is in jeopardy. Yeah, that's right. Researcher Dan Cox identified what he has called and has famously taken hold of for language around this problem, as he called it a friendship recession. You would hear about an economic recession. No, he says we are dealing with a social friendship Recession, it's been taking place since the 1990s. And he says over the past three decades, the number of close friends the average American has has plummeted. He says it seems to be true for every age group, for every gender, for every income level, for every race, for every marital status. Everyone, here's the quote. Seems to be spending more time alone. As he's studied the landscape, he says it's affecting everybody, right? But then he. And I'm gonna save this for the very end. He says there's one notable exception. There was one category in his research that seemed to buck the trend and have this one group in America that seems to have more friends. This problem. In the Atlantic, there was an article as they described this 21st century as it's evolving. They called it the antisocial century. The antisocial century that we're living in a time these last 30 years where fewer people are hanging out with each other. And he says that it's now at a place where men will spend seven hours in front of the TV for every one hour they spend hanging out with somebody outside of their home. And the typical female who owns a pet will spend more time actively engaged with with her pet than she spends in face to face contact with friends who are of her own species. We have to ask the question, hey, if this is what's happening, we're having fewer and fewer social interactions. You know, we can go through a drive through banking, atm, we can have doordash bring food to us. We don't have to go out, we don't have to be in restaurants when we check out at the grocery store. We can go through the little thing that we don't have to even talk to. Like, you can literally build a life where you never really ever talk to people, where you don't let people in, where you just do everything by yourself. And this has disastrous effects on the human body. Research shows that social isolation can weaken the immune system and make someone more likely to suffer from ailments like Alzheimer's, high blood pressure, sleep disruptions, heart disease, diabetes, and even cancer. And we famously, in the newspapers have heard about loneliness being as bad on the human body as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. I mean, think about it. Being isolated is itself a form of punishment for people in prison who can't even handle the general population. The worst punishment you can have inside a prison, inside of our incarceration is to be put in solitary confinement. And some of us, we're choosing to live that way willingly. Fortunately, there is a cure for every need we have on this planet, God is. We get thirsty, there's water. We get hungry, there's food. And guess what? We are lonely. And God has given us friendship. God has chosen to invent such a thing to solve this problem. There's no need for any of us to be isolated. And you would say, yeah, that's nice for you to say, Levi, but it's hard. Friendship is hard. You don't think David and Jonathan knew that?
[10:31]
C
Hello.
[10:32]
A
He puts a red robe, the colors of Saul. There's that tension of. Do you want me to tell you what, Samuel?
[10:37]
C
Like.
[10:38]
A
Like there's this tension, this obvious tension. They had it hard in their friendship, too. There was a lot up against them. David had been told by God he's going to sit on the throne. That should have come to John. And you don't think they could have let that cause all the obstacles, all the reasons why friendship is. Is so hard. They had their excuses as well, and yet they chose to do the hard yards. It's not easy. It takes work. It takes. It takes thick skin. It takes growing in insecurity and in comfort level. And it takes being out, putting yourself out there and being vulnerable. And I love. One of the things I love as the show progresses across the seasons is you're just seeing this work. You're seeing. It doesn't happen in a day, but it can happen if you work at it daily. And so what I want to now do is show you a clip from episode five of the second season of House of David to watch them put the time in to get to a place where they have something to be desired in their friendship.
[11:49]
B
Good.
[11:50]
C
There's the lion. Can I ask you something? What does it feel like to be anointed like Joshua Samson, where my father was?
[12:13]
B
Yes, your father is anointed.
[12:16]
C
No, you don't have to explain. Speak the truth to me. What does it feel like?
[12:29]
B
Powerful. Like fire or a rushing wind. I become more of something. Everything I feel is amplified. Passion, joy, even rage. It frightens me. I fear I may lose control. I cannot speak of eternity, except maybe, you know, no one understands. I don't understand. Sometimes I feel that to be anointed is to be alone.
[13:25]
C
You're not alone, David.
[13:34]
B
I'm sorry the throne won't pass to you as it should have.
[13:47]
A
To have a friend like that is to be rich in all the ways that truly count. It was CS Lewis who. Who said, describing his group of friends, that he was a part of. He had this group. They actually had A name for themselves. I love that. And I think all of us fans of House of David, we should go by Giant Slayers because, like we're following the king and we're following the one who actually slayed the giant Jesus and we can do that through him. So it's just my, like, throw in the hat in the ring as a, as a thought there and I'm gonna get the tattoo immediately. But CS Lewis had a group of friends called the Inklings because they were all authors, they all wrote, so they called themselves the Inklings. And they would get together at a pub in Oxford and they would talk and they would enjoy each other's company and friendship and laugh and talk and describing what he got from it, he said, and I quote, friendship is the greatest of worldly goods. Certainly to me it is the chief happiness of life. What an incredible thing that he could describe the camaraderie he got, the friendship he got as one of the chief pleasures. Just, just such a joy that he got to walk in. And that's definitely what we see play out on screen, depicted so well through this show and exemplified in the Bible. That's why I think regardless of all the reasons and excuses why it's easy to not that we should fight for actual face to face friendships. And what I want to do is I want to give you six benefits. These are things that will be lacking in your life and make your life worse. That you will not have people looking for you should you go lost. And you're not where you're supposed to be if you don't have them. Six benefits to friendship. Number one, navigation. Navigation, like getting where you need to go. If we're completely honest in life, things can be murky. We can feel like I'm not quite so sure. And we need to not trust our own objectivity because if we're real in life, we can all be blind to our own blind spots. And one of my favorite things about David and Jonathan is, and we see this in the last couple minutes of the show, we see Jonathan at a place where he's going to fire arrows. He's going to shoot arrows as a way of telling David the coast is clear or the coast is not clear. Think about this. Whether David can stay or whether David should go, he's going to help him navigate. Should you be inside Gibeah or should you get out of Dodge? He's going to shoot the arrows far or shoot the arrows close. Listen, we all are going to face decisions in life. We're like, should I have this job. Should I stay in this relationship? Should I continue? And we're going to feel strongly, we're going to have kicked up emotional reactions, but we need friends to go, hold on, hold on, hold on. Let's shoot the air far, let's shoot. Meaning they're going to help you decipher what God's will is. It's called wise counsel. And Proverbs 11 says, where there is no counsel, the people fall. But in the multitude of counselors, there is safety. And for you to figure out whether you should run from a situation or embrace it, sit down at the table or head for the hills, remain where you are or take evasive action. David can't trust even his own emotional state at this point, so he has the steadiness of Jonathan to decipher the arrows for him. And so my question is, who's leading you? Whose advice are you taking? Because if you listen to the wrong voices, you'll end up in the wrong places. Just ask the children of Israel, who ended up wandering and wasting away in the wilderness, as you can see depicted in the new project that Wonder Projects is working on. The old stories, Moses. They get out of Egypt, head towards the promised land, but they end up dying 38 years spinning in circles. Why they listened to the 10 spies who gave a negative report and not the two spies, Joshua and Caleb, who had the different spirit in them. And so, for navigation, you need friends. Secondly, celebration. Celebration is one of the great gifts of friendship. In fact, it's been said, and I can't remember the quote, but that when you have a friend in your life, it cuts your sorrows in half, but ends up doubling life's joys? And isn't it true that to have a good restaurant or to see a good movie, and it's not nearly as good as when you can laugh with someone about the great movie or you can talk about man, wasn't that food so good? Wasn't that tres leches cake so amazing? Right? When you get to talk to someone about the experience, it doubles the joy. But when it's a hard thing, but you get to look at someone and go, man, that was tough. You go, yeah, it cuts the sorrow in half. And perhaps that's why Scripture says, this is Romans 12:15, to rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep. I like what Ralph Waldo Emerson said about friendship when he said, it's one of the best blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them, isn't it? Awesome. When you get together with someone, the kind of friendship that David and Jonathan have where you can kind of pick it up no matter where it left off or how long it's been, but immediately you can tell some of those old stories. My favorite is when you laugh until you cry. I think we should count true wealth by how many people you can laugh until you cry with. And when you get into those. And by the way they call that crafting cry, laughing where you laugh so hard you cry. It just feels like such a glorious release to someone. You can let your hair down with someone that you can be stupid with, someone you don't need to pretend and posture it, but you can just be like, this is me. This is really who I am. That's a real joy celebration. The third is formation. Formation is like a glacier moving through a valley, shaping the terrain. Or think like from Napa, the wine growing region of California, how they put trellis up to guide and direct where the vines are going to go. We all need formation. And if we don't have that trellis, if it's not guided and shaped where it's going to grow, it will just end up being a mushy bush. And so will you if you don't have the right kind of friends in life to guide in your formation. Scripture is clear. Life change happens in relationships. Did not God say, after creating the world and using the word good, good, good, good, everything he made was good until what he came to man's solitary confinement and then went, ooh, Houston, we got a problem. It is not good for man to be alone. And his cure was relationships. Proverbs 27:17 says, as iron sharpens iron, so a man sharpens the countenance of his friend. Check this out. You cannot sharpen a knife edge alone. I don't care where you wave it, I don't care what you do with it. You need, you need that steel, you need that you, you need the other thing to scrape again. Friendship at times is going to rub you what feels like the wrong way. If you don't remember back in middle school, you'd have a slumber party and then you'd have reverse slumber party, then you have a slumber party, and then you hate each other for about a week, right? You don't want to see each other anyway. You can get so sick of each other. Why you're scraping the edges, but that's how you're shaped. And if you just go, forget it. I'll just do Uber Eats and be alone and get in my Waymo and ride to where I'm going all alone. I don't even need a driver. I. I'll just have a robot. Alexa, let me tell you something. No one's going to challenge you. No one's going to force you. No one's going to. No one's going to. No one's going to get you out of your shell. It's going to make you know, hey, we need to get out of the sweatpants. We're going out. We need to go to church. We need to pray. Listen, you will not become honed. You will not be sharp. You will stay the same and not be formed. People in your life, even that irritate you, are there to help deal with the rough spots. And so we need formation number four, intervention. Intervention is when people in our lives love us enough to say the hard things, because friends stab us in the front, not the back. In fact, I think about how the Bible says, this is Paul to Peter to the church of Galatia. Paul says, I had to pull Peter to the side. And this is Peter the apostle Peter. Paul said he was wrong, he was to be blamed, and I needed to let him know because he couldn't grow if I didn't let him know. And so I'm going to tell him, peter, you're doing it wrong. You're being a hypocrite. Proverbs 20. Proverbs 27:6 says, Faithful are the wounds of a friend, but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful. And so who in your life have you given permission? Hey, if you see something holding me back, will you let me know? Will you tell me? Will you call me out? And I want to do the same for you. It's called accountability. And then the fifth benefit is collaboration. Collaboration is that sweet synergy. I think about the team that God has assembled for us to be even putting this project together as Wonder Project and as Fresh Life Team as well as Open Network Team. We're all serving together. And just the sweetness that comes from that. And so many different people all doing their different respective parts with excellence. It's happening at your church right now. You have the team. It's not just a pastor and the worship leaders, people running sound. It's people serving kids serving in parking, getting the coffee ready, cleaning the room, designing things, working behind the scenes, Excel spreadsheets. Someone got insurance so the building was safe to have people. I mean, all the different things. The reality is teamwork makes the dream work. Romans is the manifesto of the New Testament. Romans, the theological Beethoven's Fifth of.
[23:54]
C
Of.
[23:54]
A
Of the Bible. And yet Romans chapter 16 gives us a lot more names than just Paul, the one who wrote it. Or we think about Paul. He mentions 19 men and 10 women that helped him pull off all he did. When you think about Romans, you need to also be thinking about Phoebe and Priscilla and Aquila and Epenetus and Junia, Aristobulus. And on and on and on it goes. And your life will never accomplish what God wants to do through your life by yourself. You can't become who you were meant to be or do what God's called you to do if you're doing it alone. One of my favorite lines from the Lord of the Rings is when Frodo says, I'm going to Mordor. And Samwise Gamgee says, of course you are, and I'm going with you. Of course you are, and I'm going with you. Without friendship, without the kind of David Jonathan friendship, the ring would have never made it to Mordor. Actually, we would never have anything about Middle Earth at all. Because did you know that J.R. tolkien, author of the Lord of the Rings, was also part of the Inklings, that group of friends that CS Lewis was a part of? And after CS Lewis died, JR Tolkien said this. The unpayable debt that I owe to CS Lewis was not just influence, as it is ordinarily understood, but sheer encouragement. He was for long, my only audience. Only from him did I ever get the idea that my stuff about the Ring could be more than a private hobby. But for his interest and unceasing eagerness for more, I never should have brought the Lord of the Rings to a conclusion. Think about that. He would come to see us. What do you think about this? In their Inklings group? And he would say, no, don't give up. Keep going. Yes, you grew onto something, he said. Had it not been for that, I never would have written. Mind blown to think about how different the world would be without that friendship. And then lastly, invigoration. Invigoration. Now, I didn't just pick this word because it rhymes, but also because it's the perfect word. It's defined as to give strength to. To give energy to, or to make strong. You need friends because there's times when you're going to feel weak and you need a friend to come alongside and give strength to and encourage you. This is what the Bible calls bearing one another's burdens and so fulfilling the law of Christ. I think about How Job, chapter 2, verse 13 tells us that when Job's whole life fell apart overnight, lost his children, his net worth decimated his health, his friends came to him and sat with him in silence for seven days. Then they started talking. And you know, we could say, say less, right? Because they didn't have much to have, but I love that they just knew to just sit with him for a week, just to sit with them. When my daughter died back in 2012, we had friends who would just come and sit there. Not need to say anything, not trying to do anything, just to be there with us. And their presence spoke volumes. You will need people to be strong when you feel weak. Martin Luther said that solitude produces melancholy. When we are alone, the worst and saddest things will come to mind. Isolation compounds a sorrow left to ourselves. We will always interpret things in a worse light. It's called a heavenly perspective. That's what Martin Luther's saying. And I think that's what moves me so much. It's not just they have a bromance and yeah, we both love war and we, you know, we have. Yeah, Kingdom of. You know. No, no, listen. Their friendship is about more than just their friendship. They both had an eternal perspective. And in their low moments, they could encourage each other. Hey, come on. What about God? And I think that's what I love so much about this final clip where we see David and Jonathan both invoking God's presence and his name and covenant right before him as the final movement of their friendship story plays out.
[28:24]
B
That was terrible.
[28:26]
C
You distracted me.
[28:28]
A
I'll go fetch it.
[28:29]
C
No, no, no. It's too far. I'll fetch it myself. I need to walk. Here, take this back to the armory. Thank you. Re. Isn't safe. Ordered the guards east of here to be removed. Clear you a path of Rama. Samuel thought that's where you might go.
[29:22]
B
Yes. I'm sorry.
[29:27]
C
I tried. My father will not relent. I fear this will be the last time we will see each other. Well, I did bring you a gift. For the poet.
[29:53]
B
Jonathan. I will always love you and serve you.
[29:58]
C
I must ask something of you is kind of thing. I told this to no one. But sorrow is with child.
[30:11]
B
You're going to be a father. And you want to name him David? I will allow that.
[30:21]
C
No. But I do ask for kindness, mercy when you come into your kingdom. My father said I was a fool. Not as long as you lived. My throne will never be established. And in his madness and in his jealousy, he speaks the truth. And it is a truth that will apply to you.
[30:49]
B
Jonathan.
[30:51]
C
David. Kings Consolidate their rule. They do things they said they would never do. I've seen this with my own eyes so far. To me, promise me you will never harm my family. Still protect them when I. If I cannot,
[31:14]
B
I vow. I vow I will show your family kindness forever.
[31:20]
C
Thou again. That you will never cut off your loyalty to my house. Even when all your enemies lay at
[31:26]
B
your feet, you will never be one of them. This is a covenant between us.
[31:46]
C
Then may the house of David endure forever. May your reign never end.
[31:53]
B
John. Yeah. I did not ask for this,
[32:06]
C
John.
[32:08]
B
I never wanted any of this.
[32:11]
A
You would be the better king.
[32:12]
B
No, no.
[32:17]
C
God does not make mistakes like that.
[32:24]
A
I told you at the beginning of the sermon that there is one exception to the research about friendship being in crisis all across our country. And that one finding has everything to do with what we just saw on screen. And that is that David and Jonathan's friendship was not just about each other. It was both about their common love in God's power, in God's reign, in God's place in their life. Dan Cox said that on average, Americans who attend church regularly tend to have more friends than those who attend rarely or not at all. You see, because phileo and storge and even Eros are not enough. The fourth love in the four words for love in the Greek is agape, and that's the John 3:16 love. That's the God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son so that whoever would believe in him would not perish but have everlasting life. And when you have that love firmly in place in your life, it opens you up to actually approach the other loves, but not need them to do in your heart what they never can. Jonathan and David had that agape love, and so their filet O bloomed out of that. And so, Father, we do pray and ask that you would do that for us. The sermon on friends. We don't end with saying, well, let's go out and just try and find some friends. Now we first stop to consider where are we at with our agape love for you? That Jonathan and David both were able to love each other and weather the storms of their friendship because you, your relationship with them, between them and you, mattered more than anything else. And so then they were able to, out of the overflow, approach each other. Would you do that for us, God? And if anybody is watching today who doesn't have that relationship with you is here. We pray you would do that in our hearts. So then we then could look to our neighbors as ourselves first, having loved you with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength. And so if that's you I'm describing, and you would say, man, I. I got all these needs in my life. But as we're praying, I would just admit that I don't have that first relationship with God. Jesus loves you so much, he came to this world to die for you. Rising from the dead on the third day, he's willing to come into your heart, forgive you of your sins, and then begin to help you sort out your human relationships. But you'll never be right with other people till you're first right with him. And so if that's you I'm describing, and you would say, I'm ready to give my life to Jesus, I want you to pray this prayer with me right there in your church, right there, watching online. Just say this to God. Say, dear God, I'm sorry for my sins. Please forgive me. Thank you for sending Jesus to die for me and to rise from the dead. I give you my life. Thank you for salvation. Now help me, God, to open my life up to friendship with your people. In Jesus name.