"Back in My Day"
EPISODE 202
Make Some Room for Friendship
Is it just us, or is it hard to find room for all the friendships you want to maintain? Sometimes we feel guilt over not being close to everyone in the church, and other times we wonder how we’ll make the time to connect with anyone at a substantive level! So here, in session 2 of our Two by Two guided study, we notice how Jesus tended to friendships and take a Closer Look at Paul’s band of close partners. We discuss some particular challenges each of us has run into and learn to make what one brother called friendship “shepherd’s pie.” As we work towards closer relationships, you can find each session of this 9-part guided study at biblegeeks.fm/twobytwo.
Takeaways
The Big Idea: You can't be everyone's best friend, but you can make time to invest in close relationships.
This Week's Challenge: Schedule a day on your calendar this month to get together with a friend for coffee or a meal.
Episode Transcription
Back in my day, you know, it's a smart thing to do. You kids, you need to come home earlier. Hello everyone and welcome to the Bible Geeks podcast. This is episode 202. I'm Bryan Schiele. I'm Ryan Joy. And thanks so much everyone for tuning in. This is episode 202, session two of our Two By Two study. Oh man. That was good. Did that just happen or were you working on that? I don't know how we did that, but yeah, here we are. We're continuing in our guided study about friendship that we started on the last episode. We are into session two and today we are talking about creating space for friendship. This is something we talked a lot about in the last conversation, but now we're going to focus on it exclusively. Like anything else you're trying to do well in your life, it takes some room. It's going to take some resources and those can be hard to find sometimes. Absolutely. As did Jesus find himself limited in some ways, which we talked about in our conversation starter. And the title of that one was Jesus Greatest Miracle. This is two by two. Jesus Greatest Miracle? Nobody talks about Jesus Greatest Miracle, writes Andrew Bunt, having 12 close friends in his 30s. Reading that joke the other day, I thought, man, it is hard to maintain adult friendships. You slice the pie of your life, heaping helpings to family, church and work, adding other responsibilities and pursuits, you wonder, how do I make room for friendships? So here's the big idea. You can't be everyone's best friend, but you can make time to invest in close relationships. It's strange to read how much Jesus loved particular people like Lazarus and Martha, as if he didn't have an infinite love for each of us. But Jesus had friends and shared a special affection with all of them. Here's another odd thought. Christ was limited on earth. He emptied himself and dealt with a body like yours, Philippians 2:7. Jesus got tired after a long day and needed to recover. Friendships take time together and Jesus only had so much time. For those 33 years, he couldn't be everywhere at once. And he couldn't invest in everyone like he did the 12. So learn from the Lord and accept that you don't need equal closeness with everyone. Even if Jesus could have shared that closeness with everyone, not everyone wanted it. He has proven our most loyal friend, yet many will reject him. Christ forces himself on no one. He shows us how to invite friendship without forcing the issue or fearfully protecting ourselves. Other people have limitations too, so they might not have room to get lunch with you. Much less make you their new best friend. But if we avoid asking, we'll leave lonely people alone and miss out on great relationships. So make the offer and make space for some friendships. Get as close as you can to as many as you can without feeling pressured to do more than reasonably fits into your other commitments. So here's the big question. How can you make room for Christ-centered friendships? So follow along with this guided study of biblegeeks.fm/twobytwo and may the Lord bless you and keep you to- Shalom. So the big idea that we talked about there was that you can't be everyone's best friend, but you can make time to invest in close relationships. And what a liberating idea. Maybe it's just me, but sometimes I feel bad for not knowing every single thing about everyone in our church. And not just you. Maybe that's not a problem for people in like a smaller congregation, but if you're a member of what I would maybe call a moderately sized church, it becomes a challenge. Not even Jesus was able to do that or did that with his closest disciples. He had his 12, as we talked about there in the conversation starter, and to maintain friendships with 12 dudes in his 30s. I don't know how Jesus did it, but he had some of those people that he was closer to than others. He even had a disciple who he loved, and that was okay. But the point here is using our time to invest in those kinds of relationships, making time. And making time is an effort. It takes work. And so we can't be everyone's best friend, but are we going to make the time to invest in those close relationships? It's a really good challenge. Yeah, yeah. The big question there was how can you make more room for Christ-centered friendships? And we just had a men's weekend that was themed around this. We asked, what are the barriers to the bonds of brotherhood? And it actually came from a year ago. Before that, we had done one on the bonds of brotherhood, and everybody came out on fire. Like, okay, we're going to we had all these ideas. We're going to do bonfires together. We're going to go study more. We're going to do all these things. And then life happened and it didn't happen the way we wanted it to. And so this one we themed around, like, why didn't it happen? How do we remove those obstacles? How do we make it happen? We actually in the in the session planned out activities like broke into groups and each one took a quarter and we're in planned out activities. But we also worked through all the like barriers and just sat in a circle in a basement for a couple of days, just thinking through what keeps us from the closeness we all want as men in the congregation. And we talked a lot about how we keep slicing up that pie of your life that we talked about in this conversation starter. And pretty soon all of the pieces are just little slivers. And you wait a minute, there's another slice I need to make. Wait a minute. And where's that going to come from? And so then we had several speakers on that Sunday night talking about these ideas. And one of the men gave a short talk on how we should give up apple pie and start making shepherd's pie. And his point was that when you make a fruit pie, there's just one thing that the slices is made of. But when you make shepherd's pie, you layer a lot of different ingredients so that each slice has some carrots and some beef and some peas. And it's not one thing. And the idea was you can invite a friend over to work on your house with you and then return the favor. And I'm not one of those super handy guys, but I've had a lot of fun doing that over the years. I've laid down a lot of flooring with people or painted walls or just worked on things with people and had people come over and help me. And you can make plans to go visit some of the widows in your congregation or teach a class together. One of my favorite things to do is partner up on a class. And just I've done it with, I don't know, eight probably different men in the congregation here through the years. And I've just loved that process because you come up with it together and then you partner and you go back and forth. Just, you know, whatever. Find something to do. Go do lawn work at the church building. And we can invite friends into our home, of course. Share that part of our life. And just like we were talking about last time, make these things normal. Make it normal to just hang out and just share what you were going to do with a little bit of extra space for people. I love that idea of just layering our activities together. And yeah, shepherd's pie. Now I'm super hungry. So let's move on to our next conversation here on the episode. And that is our icebreaker question in which we ask a silly question to kick this thing off. And that question today is what's your favorite thing to do with friends? And I think obviously eating is going to be a factor. But what else do you enjoy doing with friends? That's good. That's good. Yeah, and I wasn't as silly as I could have been probably, but like the real answer is to talk about real stuff. But like I like adventures together. But those adventures are opportunities to talk about real stuff. You know, like just go hang out, go late nights sitting outside or sometimes while you're doing some of those tasks we were talking about, you know, cooking, cooking dinner together and doing dishes. But like the adventure thing, I've had some amazing talks on road trips, you know, ski trips are one of the best times. Maybe that's my answer. Skiing together, because each time you head back up the mountain on the lift, you just pick back up your conversations and we've skied together. Me and our buddy Alan have had the best all day Bible talks on these road trips where just he and I would hop in a car and drive up to a ski lodge and ski all day. And the drive and the ski, you know, trips and the lunchtime and everything was just kind of working out the things we're thinking through. And how does this fit into our lives? And so, yeah, I mean, I guess that was like six answers, but it's really about the conversations whenever they get past the surface stuff. What about you? I was also super unadventurous in my answer, and that was basically to sit around the fire with friends. Oh, yeah. Obviously, I love to eat with friends. I love to travel with friends. I love to do all the things you were talking about. Skiing with Alan is wonderful. I enjoy that as well. But for me, I like to just sit around the fire and do nothing. It's like disconnecting from the busyness of life, you know, just having this time together, taking or letting our hair down, all that stuff, whatever. But I think for me, I was thinking about the big idea there in this question. And, yeah, you know, what do you like to do with friends? Well, you know, you can't be everybody's friends. And sometimes the things we love to do with friends aren't the things you could do with like a thousand people at the same time. Right? Like, right. You're not going to go probably driving up to a ski lodge and skiing with a thousand people and having meaningful relationships and conversations on the ski lift up with a thousand people or whatever. I think so many of the things we love to do with friends are like close intimate things and like sitting by the fire or, you know, just having a dinner with somebody at your house. Like, you don't have a thousand spots for people to come over at the same time, but often going deep, I think of these smaller scale kinds of activities. So it's a little bit deeper than our icebreaker questions tend to go more often than not. But I thought about that as I was wrangling my answer. Yeah, you know, and one of the things we've talked about a little bit with this is that Jesus, there's like a little bit of both in that you can have someone over or you can sit down, you know, at the potluck. You can sit down and you're eating your shepherd's pie or your cobbler or whatever and just talk for, you know, 20 minutes with, you know, this 17 year old that you're you're not yet best friends with. But whenever you're there with them, you're connecting and you're doing those one on one things. And Jesus was great at people like the Samaritan woman that he's only going to talk to once he he was fully attending to them in that moment. But still, there are only certain people that you're going to have recurring ones of those that over and over again, you go deeper and deeper and deeper. And so again, something I think we said in the in the conversation starters, be as close as you can to as many people as you can. But no, like the big idea, there's going to be limitations. You can't be everybody's best friend. Well, speaking of limitations and being everyone's best friend, let's move to our next conversation here where we look to Jesus, who is the perfect teacher about friendship as we look to John 11 versus one to 11 here as he teaches us a little bit about friendship. Yeah, this is the great story. It's the beginning of the story of the resurrection of Lazarus and it Lazarus is introduced as a certain man, but then he is introduced as a little with a little more detailed in his relationship with Martha with Mary, who were his sisters. And it says the sister sent to him saying, Lord, he whom you love is ill. But when Jesus heard it, he said the illness does not lead to death. It is for the glory of God so that the son of God may be glorified through it. So Jesus is like interacting focused and then seeing the big picture. And he says now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So when he heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was. And after this, he said to the disciples, let's go to Judea again. And there's some danger there. But he says we're going to go. And he knows that they're going to to have an important moment here after these things. It says he said to them, our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I go to awaken him. So what do you take from John 11 versus one to eleven? Yeah, there's some obvious things here, but I'm going to go a little deep just to kick it off. And it's not super deep, but I just thought about here how obvious it is that Jesus has limitations. He is intentionally limiting himself. When you call up the ambulance to come to your house because something is going on, they don't schedule you for two days in the future. You know, they're like they're going to come right away. Right. And Jesus, the son of God, could have used his power to be in two places at the same time. You know, he could have been there and here. You know, he could have been everywhere. He could have been wherever he wanted to be. But he was limited by time and he was limited by distance. And what an interesting thought process to think of Jesus being limited in the same way that I am. You know, he was with his twelve. He wasn't with Mary and Martha at the time when Lazarus died. He was with the twelve and he intentionally said, I'm going to stay with you for two more days before we go over there. And he knows the reason why this is going to happen so that after Lazarus dies, it can be very, very clear what he has done, what he has accomplished for Lazarus. But, you know, he is limited. He has to use the power of his calendar just like I do. Jesus scheduled on his calendar two days from then. Here's when we're going to leave. And I think about making space for my friends. This is what Jesus was doing. Obviously, he was making himself available to Mary and Martha going to serve Lazarus and everything that he did for them. But he put him on his calendar. He scheduled everything up and he lived within the same constraints of time and place that I have. Yeah, I love that. And now I'm imagining Jesus like pulling out his calendar app and putting, you know, Tuesday, three o'clock, heal Lazarus from the dead. Yeah, but it's true. You know, he now the risen Christ, you know, omnipresent hears us, sees us. He can be with me and you across an entire country at the same time. But then he was in a space and he was in a time and all of those limitations were were his to to at least a certain degree. Of course, he can do miracles. But and and so it really just brings home. How do we work with the limitations? Well, let's look at the best person who ever did it and see what we can learn from them and realize he wasn't throwing them off and just imagining he didn't have limitations. And, you know, and because of that, you know, there's there are certain people he spent more time with. I mentioned in the starter how certain people are singled out here as the ones Jesus loved. And I'll just read some of those verses briefly again. Verse five. Now, Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. And in verse three, someone else who talks about Lazarus as a person that's dear to Jesus, as if it's just obvious, Jesus would know who he was talking about. He says, Lord, he whom you love is ill. Lord, did you hear who's sick? It's your guy, your dear friend, Lazarus. It's the, you know, he's, you know, you know, of course, that's your guy, you know, and and he Jesus calls him our friend, Lazarus, at the end of the passage. It's just it's neat how this family of siblings are all close to him. There are certain families you just love to be with everybody in the family. And you become like part of the family and you just fit right into a vibe that they've shared from birth. And you sort of, you know, pick up the language and the traditions and you can just walk in and you know where the plates are and you set the table in the house without being asked. And you settle in to enjoy those long, real talks with them. And I don't, of course, know everything that it was like for Jesus. He wasn't just one of the boys. He was the Lord. He was the one that they referenced as the master. But all those years later, as John is looking back and putting together his account, he recounts for us how special this family of friends was to Jesus while he walked in the world. And, you know, it's just like sometimes these lessons that we take from these things are not so insightful as like here's the application so much as Jesus was a person and Jesus lived life well. And in this case, Jesus had good friends and and he invested in those friends. He wept for those friends. He sat with those friends. And, you know, he didn't have that same relationship with everyone at that time, though he now has proven himself to be the great friend to us all. I love that we pulled this particular passage out because of how much we know about the relationship of Jesus and Mary and Martha. And I love this story. I love the fact that Jesus had these close relationships. And yeah, it may not be the most insightful thing in the whole world, but you know what? I don't care. I this is this is chicken soup for the soul and I love it. Let's move on to our second segment here on the episode. And that is a closer look. Number one, perhaps you better take an away team down and have a closer look. Dr. Crusher, join me in transport room three. I also love that intro. One of my favorite intros in the whole world. Paul, Paul, we're going to move on here talking about Jesus. We've spent quite a bit of time talking about Jesus. But there was somebody else who we learn a lot about his close and varied relationships. And that was the apostle Paul. And I think you have infected me with this idea that Paul had a lot of ampersands. Can you explain to me what that means, please? Well, I took this as an illustration from back whenever I thought of myself as a as an amateur screenwriter. We were me and one of our friends at the time would get together and write screenplays. And it was just kind of a hobby. You know, pre marriage. We had lots of time. And one of the things I learned is that whenever screenwriters write as a partnership, then they have an ampersand between their names. So like if you if you're watching the credits and you'll see like sometimes five different people have written this this movie's script together. And it'll say this person, a and D, this person, a and D, this person. And then it has, you know, Joe Ampersand, Paul and these two people. It's telling you with the ampersand they wrote together, they split the check. They did everything they get co credit because all of their writing was as a partnership. And Paul often has this and with his with his name where he's always traveling with a partner. He's always writing with a partner. Sometimes he signs his letters as if he's co writing with a partner. You know, there's just these different things where he constantly has all of these partners and it becomes this trademark of who he is. And I think we can learn a lot from that about the importance of partnership like Johnson and Johnson, like Dolce and Gabbana. Let's look at Paul in his ampersands as we take a closer look and we'll kick this off with a conversation about Barnabas and Saul. This is kind of breaking the mold a little bit, but right off the bat, as soon as we start to see Paul as he's originally known as Saul here in Acts chapter 13, it actually starts out with Barnabas and Saul, which is a pretty cool way to kick this thing off because this wasn't just a branding decision by Luke as he was writing the Book of Acts. No, no, this was the Holy Spirit who called them Barnabas and Saul. He says, set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work which I have called them. And that's in Acts 13 verse two. So it's pretty clear that Barnabas gets the first billing here. But Barnabas had taken responsibility for Saul back in Acts chapter nine. He's vouching for Saul. He is like we talked about the second witness. You know, he is he is there alongside Saul vouching for him saying, yes, he's actually changed. He's the person he says he is. He's not out to kill the Christians anymore. So it makes sense. I think that Barnabas would be the first name in this partnership for a little while. And that'll change here shortly. Yeah. Well, let's get right to that. Paul and Barnabas is our second ampersand set here. So what do we do? We took the same names and just flipped them and change Saul to Paul because that's exactly what Luke does. He switches things up, as he said. And and that back and forth, I think it isn't just about the top billing. To me, it illustrates the mutuality of the partnership. Yeah. There was a time when Barnabas saw the Antioch Church needed strong Bible teachers to anchor all those Gentile converts in the word. And he thought of the guy that, like you said, he vouched for in Jerusalem and he goes and he gets Saul from Tarsus and he brings him back. And it's like that last line of Casablanca, best movie ever, that this was the beginning of a beautiful friendship and their partnership thrived. Whether Barnabas was prominent, the son of encouragement that everybody knew about in Jerusalem had just like sold land and given all the money to everybody that needed something. Or whether it was Paul who started to take the lead as this really important apostle. And beginning on that trip, when they stood before Sergius Paulus on Cyprus, you start to see Paul step up. He curses that the false teacher gives him a blindness and this switcheroo takes place. And there's this this sense that, OK, Paul is going to step to the forefront as Luke is telling the story in Acts. But Barnabas didn't stop working. He didn't stop being Barnabas. He didn't say, all right, well, you handle things and I'm just going to sit back here in the back and read a newspaper. He is still working with them. Yeah. But there's this mutuality. They're both stepping into their own. And it just, again, highlights a partnership. A good partnership isn't one way. They both benefit each other. Yeah. You know, you think about Paul and Barnabas at the time when they were called Paul and Barnabas. Some people were calling them Zeus and Hermes. And Zeus was actually referred to as Barnabas and Paul was referred to as Hermes. So, you know, first billing, I don't know. I think of Zeus as being a little bit more important there. So we've had Barnabas and Saul, Paul and Barnabas, Zeus and Hermes, maybe. And then Paul and Silas. So Paul decides to take Silas and go with him. And they begin this new partnership. And this was Silas, by the way, who was originally part of another power duo that doesn't get a lot of play. And that was Judas and Silas back in the day. So Judas and Silas, they were the one who took the Apostles letter to Antioch in Acts chapter 16. And so then after this breakup of Paul and Barnabas, it becomes Paul and Silas. And Silas was a quote unquote leading man, as he's referred to, and a prophet, which is really cool. So you think about Paul looking for a partner after him and Barnabas split up and he finds Silas and they get to go doing this work together. And man, they get into some dicey spots together. They're singing together in jail. They're converting the jailer in that case. You know, they're sneaking out of Thessalonica together. And this is a power duo for sure. They're together. They're doing some powerful work together. And Silas doesn't always get as much thought as some of Paul's other friends, but Silas definitely did a lot with Paul. And so the two of them together, not as a second string, you know, not as a replacement Barnabas, but like as a real solid partner in the work. Yeah, a partner that Paul picked. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, another one that we think of a lot maybe as a mentorship is Paul and Timothy. And mentoring friendships, we've been in here at the North Church. We've started talking a lot about mentoring and we're trying to figure out, you know, how do you encourage this more and more? Was there a program? Is there a, you know, do we just try to encourage it? But it's really helpful to look at examples like Paul and Timothy as we see what it's meant to be. Paul calls Timothy his son in the faith in 1 Timothy's opening greeting in chapter one, verse two, but it's still mutual. I think that's a really important thing to get about mentoring someone. It's not about I'm going to be the advice giver, the helper, the, you know, the wise one that this friendship is just me doing you a favor. No, you know, Paul has as much love and respect and appreciation for Timothy's contribution to him as Timothy has for Paul's. Even though Paul converted and mentored Timothy, Paul said to the Philippians, I have no one else like Timothy who will genuinely care for your wellbeing. They're Philippians too. You know, there's nobody else that I have in my, you know, many partners that I just know his heart is so pure in his commitment to the people around that he's serving. And it's, it's just a great example of the kinds of older, younger friendships in the church that I think your life should be full of. The church should be full of. This is so precious. I mean, my life would be so much poorer without friendships with people. Like think of your dad and how he and I were just, I mean, he was one of my best friends, you know, even though he was 20 years older than me or more, I don't know. And, you know, so many older saints that I get to share my life with now. And that also goes the other way. I'm blessed to have somehow become somebody who has dozens of really close friends that are right now in their twenties. And they bless me in all kinds of ways. And I try hard not to dole out advice unless they ask me for it, you know, like I want to be there for them to be that mentor, but not like the old guy that's always just, you know, telling them what they should do because that's not how I see it. Back in my day. Yeah. You know, it's a smart thing to do. You kids, you need to come home earlier. And there's things that you want to offer and you want to bless them. Yeah. But that's not the that's not the primary dynamic. The primary dynamic is he's a brother. She's a sister. And I'm I'm able to to just connect and be a friend to them and enjoy their friendship and invest in those things. So I just wanted to highlight that as we think about Paul and Timothy. And that leads to another kind of a mentoring relationship Paul had. Yeah. Paul and Titus is our next one. So if you're Paul and Timothy was focusing on the age gap, Paul and Titus was focusing on the difference in nationality. I think Paul Titus could not have been more varied and different from each other, at least from a from a background standpoint. And we don't really see Paul and Titus together in the Book of Acts specifically. But we do see their interactions together throughout Corinthians and Galatians and obviously in the letter to Titus. But apparently we learned that Titus was close by when Barnabas and Paul went to go visit the apostles during Paul's recounting of his conversion. He's talking about how Barnabas and Titus were there. And so while we don't see a whole lot about Titus back there in the Book of Acts, apparently he was there. And so I don't know how obvious it is, but like Paul being a Jew, by the way, being a Jew of Jews and Titus being a Greek, they should not have gotten on the way that they did. I mean, just from a human standpoint. Now, obviously, Paul was there as a servant to the Gentiles. So it's very clear that he needed to be the kind of person who could relate to someone like Titus in order to even just influence them for Christ. But the fact that he's got Titus there as a sounding board, you have to imagine that Titus was giving him some advice about how to talk to people who aren't Jews. Just the conversations I'm sure that they had about how to influence people and the decisions that they would make to best promote the gospel to people of every background and nationality. I mean, credit to these two guys for working past their differences, whatever the differences might have been for the betterment of the gospel, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. I love what you highlighted there. And it really shows you don't have to have everything in common in order to connect with someone. They had the most important thing in common. Exactly. And among the friendship challenges, you brought up one there, and this list is full of some real friendship challenges. Maybe one of the big ones involves Paul and Mark. And this is our last ampersand that we want to highlight here. At one point, Mark abandoned the missionary journey and headed home whenever Mark was traveling with Paul and Barnabas. And when it was time to draft partners for the next trip, Barnabas wanted to take John Mark, but Paul wanted Silas. And so it became this fierce difference in strategy for the way to move forward. And so they split up and they went on two different trips. But it's clear that this wasn't one of those feuds that people carry with them, one of those cold wars that breaks up years of friendship. I have seen people who used to be so close, whether it's family members or friendships, that something that really doesn't need to be a division that breaks things just because it's handled poorly ends the relationship or they go 20 years without speaking. And then finally, maybe there's a late in life kind of resolution and reconciliation. But here that does not happen. We see that they continue to value each other in the Lord. Many years later, Paul tells Timothy to get Mark and bring him because he's so helpful to the ministry at the end of his letter to Timothy. And it's a lesson in seeing past each other's weakest moments and giving each other some room to grow. I think it's also a lesson in agreeing to disagree without being disagreeable, as we sometimes say, or without letting the problems fester. These lifelong friendships are going to take a lifetime of work, but they often hinge on certain moments when we have to show up for each other with all our wisdom and intentionality and humility and grace and just make sure that, oh, this is one of those moments I need to, it's like you come to the curves in the road as you're driving along a cliffside highway. OK, this is a moment to pay close attention, slow down a little bit, steer it carefully, both hands on the wheel. Friendships have those moments where the stakes are high, the moment is tense. You need to handle it well so that you can see each other through to another 20 years of friendship. I have a lot to say on that, but I would like to lead us right into our next conversation here, which is our Reach Out question. Reach out, reach out and touch someone. OK, the Reach Out question is, was there ever a period when you had a particularly difficult time maintaining friendships? Oh, this could be a moment to look back to that last point. I know. I don't know. Explain why and what, if anything, you did to change things. OK, so for me, this phrase or the question is phrased a little interestingly because it says a particularly difficult time maintaining friendships. It's a funny phrase because I feel like I've always struggled to maintain friendships, or at least for a very long time. I think there was a time when I was in college or maybe late in high school where maintaining friendships was just super easy. Right. It was like fall out of bed and oh, there's my friends. Right. But you get married and things happen and I don't know what happens, but like all of a sudden I find myself just going through these points where I'm kind of sad or I'm kind of lonely or I'm kind of frustrated or, you know, and I just find myself turning inward in a very Elijah way. I mean, I definitely sympathize with Elijah in that story standing in the cave. Right. I am all alone. And if you think about that, it really just keeps you from reaching out to other people. It keeps you from developing these other relationships, these close relationships with people. And so for me, that's been a big challenge of mine. Anytime that I'm going through a particularly challenging time where I'm in a funk or I'm, you know, turning inwardly to myself. One of the ways that I've gotten out of those funks is just finding opportunities to serve random strangers in different ways or show kindness to people, be an encouragement to brighten someone's day, doing some small thing for somebody else has tended to be a good way of getting me out of that funk. You know, keeping it less about me and more about other people. That's been helpful for me in order to make connections with people around me. One of the things that I've been doing recently that I've actually found super helpful is just being or trying to be, I suppose, the most curious person in the room. This is a phrase that is like bounced around in my head a lot lately. Like, if I can be the most curious person in the room, how would that change the way I interacted with people wanting to learn more about them, wanting to listen to the things that they've experienced in their life? You know, the whole idea about these like reach out questions started from a place where we really wanted to have more substantive conversations with people, get to know people more. And that's something I've been really trying to do in my own life, in my preaching, you know, trying to help people start conversations that are deeper and, you know, getting past some of these particularly difficult moments tends to be just the small moments, the small little interactions with people that can kind of pull me out of it, if that makes sense. Yeah, that's a really great phrase, too, that'll stick with me. Instead of being the most interesting man in the world, be the most curious person in the room and just engage with people from that perspective. That's really good. I related to a lot of what you said there. I think the main period that I thought of when I saw this question is when I first got married. And there's this passage in Deuteronomy 24 verse 5 that talks about when a man is first married, he wouldn't be sent to war. And it says something like that he should be free to stay home and bring happiness to his wife or something like that. And it's a passage that Adrian and I noted early on and thought, you know, God is trying to tell us something here. You know, there's maybe a bigger principle than just the law to the Jews there. And we've mentioned it to other married couples as their newlyweds and that kind of thing to give attention to the marriage early on. You've got to establish new rhythms and you've got to figure so much out. And so you have to accept that this is going to be your focus for a while. And that might mean, you know, though I hate to say it, you know, doing a little bit less in the church for a little bit. You know, maybe you're not teaching as many classes or whatever it is because you just want to make sure you're really focusing on this marriage and you'll come out of it stronger and ready to serve the Lord and the church together. And in my case, I experienced it as a real like break in my friendships because, you know, I mean, my friends were just that huge part of my life. And then we got married and there was so much to focus on. And I wanted to be with my wife more than I wanted to be with anybody else. And I kind of like, incidentally, it wasn't intentional to let the friendships slide, but they did. And my friends experienced it and later told me like, dude, you just disappeared on us. You're like, bailed, man. It was like, you know, you were one of us and then it was like you were gone. And, you know, I think that's a common experience of single people as I've talked to them, as their friends get married, watching their friends just kind of disappear on them. And so, you know, I think if I had it to do over, I wouldn't have drastically changed, but I would have given more attention, you know, with Adrian in partnership with her to finding some space to bring in, you know, other people more early on. You know, we eventually got back and you build those friendships as a couple again, but it was particularly difficult in that period. And I think changing things up, you learn who you are as a couple, and then you figure out how to serve and be friends together with people outside of the marriage. And it's just like, just an intentional process. You debrief together after you have people over or after you go to a get together or something and you set intentions before you go in. Hey, I know that these are all my friends and you don't know them very well. I'm going to try really hard not to get caught up in the conversation and neglect you, you know, or whatever. You know, it's kind of like working with in-laws sometimes, you know, you just have to look out for each other, but also invest in people outside the marriage and let the marriage be a blessing. I think a lot of people can relate to that, but let us move now into our challenge for the episode. And yeah, we do have a pretty cool one this week. I am ready to face any challenges that might be foolish enough to face me. So as you might have guessed, as Jesus used his calendar, we encourage you all along with us to schedule a day on your calendar this month to get together with a friend for coffee or for a meal. And man, I have been discovering over the last at least year or so how powerful the calendar can be. If you put it on the calendar and you're meaning what you put on there, great things can happen. So that's a cool challenge for this week. As we think about our friends, put them on the calendar, do so consensually, make sure that they're OK with you putting them on your calendar, that they agree to that, but do it and get it scheduled. Oh, you didn't know you were on my calendar for right now. We're having lunch. That's right. I hope you weren't busy. I just showed up at your work or your house. Yeah, I think this is totally doable. We're giving a whole month to schedule something, find one hour in the whole month and make a space. Figure out you can give your the person that you're inviting a few options and work with it there. I agree with you. The calendar is a marvelous tool and it's something that you don't want to book it within an inch of your life is something I've also learned. You know, like try to leave margin on either side of these things and leave lots of breathing room. But yeah, if something is on the calendar, it will happen if you if you respect your calendar and also let's like we have shared calendars. Everybody in the family knows what's going on today, and I would add the suggestion in addition to scheduling it to prepare yourself by thinking through. What do you want to create in that hour with that person? You know, it's something that I've done. I don't know, just sort of intuitively for the past decade. Adrian and I started talking about things when we're going together someplace, whenever I'm just driving on my way to have lunch with somebody or whatever. How do I want to listen? What kind of conversation do I want to have? How do I want to serve them in this conversation? Am I prepared to open up and and share things? You know, what is the kind of relationship? Who is this person? And just kind of preparing myself because we've talked a little bit about the power of intentionality and being purposeful. And it's not you're not scripting anything. You're leaving it loose and open, but you're just kind of leaning towards a direction. So you don't show up cold like I don't even know what we're doing. My brain is halfway in the thing that I was doing last. And I, you know, because I've done that before, too. You know, you show up and you're like, I was just dealing with something crazy. You wouldn't believe. Now I got to orient myself to like this moment with somebody who's trying to think through preparing for marriage. It's just that, you know, this twenty five year old brother that I'm sitting down with and I want to be there for them. But I wasn't ready for it. And now, you know, if I've thought through it and I can bring myself to be prayerful about what this is going to bring about for them, then, you know, the conversation just is different in my experience. I totally agree. It reminds me of the book, The Art of Gathering by Prey of Harker. She talks about never heard of the importance of why when we gather like, why are we getting together? And her whole focus in that book is basically that idea is like, don't just get together for some rando reason, like have a reason why and think about it ahead of time and make sure to know why we're spending time together with people. So as we close out this conversation, though, let's go ahead and have a word of prayer. And the suggested prayer in the study guide is revealed to me when my friends are in need or when there's an open door for me to serve others. Oh, God. And that comes from John 11 verses 1 to 11, just these opportunities we have to serve other people. And we can ask God to give those opportunities more attention to us throughout the day. So let's pray. Our Father in heaven, how amazing and wonderful you are. We're in awe of your power and your might, especially considering how much you love us and how much you've made yourself available to us. As we think about all the ways that we've failed and that we've not lived up to your standards, we see your grace. We see your mercy on display in the face of your son, Jesus, as he suffered for us on the cross. How can we ever thank you enough for what you've done for us? Our love for you, though, leads us to love others. And in this conversation today, we pray that we've been encouraged to be a friend like Jesus, help us to be available when our friends are in need of our care, when we can take care of them and step in on their behalf. Show us those open doors to serve others, to serve those people in our circle of influence. Give us the intention to step in as others do the same for us. We ask that you'd bless us throughout the rest of this study to remember that it's not good for man to be alone. And when we see our relationships with others growing, let that be a reflection of our growing relationship with you through your son, Jesus. It's in his name that we offer this prayer. Amen. Amen. Amen. Okay. Well, it is that time of year again. We're going to take a break from this two by two guided study and mix it up with our Bible bracket draft episodes. So we do this thing every year. We're starting to do it again every year. We've done it like three times before. And it's just so much fun and so encouraging that we've we've I think we want to make it kind of a yearly practice. We do a Bible bracket. It's March Madness, but with Bible books, Bible characters, Bible chapters. And so we're going to do that next week. And I hope you'll show up for that and participate in the draft. And then after that, we'll get back to our two by two study. As they said long ago, we are going to draft Bible things in Bible ways. And I'm excited about it. So that's true to the restoration movement motto. Right. Exactly. All right. So thanks, everyone, for tuning in to episode two oh two of the Bible Geeks podcast. You can find show notes for this episode in your podcast player of choice or a biblegeeks.fm/202. And not confusingly at all, you can find this series at biblegeeks.fm/twobytwo. There's lots of twos here. Thank you again to everyone for tuning in. And until our next episode, may the Lord bless you and keep you Shalom.