"This is Weird!"
EPISODE 204
Overcome the Obstacles to Getting Close
How do our fears, anxieties, and differences get in the way of forming new and deeper relationships? In session three of our “Two By Two” study of friendship, we face the fact that sometimes making friends isn’t easy. We share some Deep Thoughts about Paul’s great ode to humility in Philippians 2:1-11. We also look to the example of Jesus and his diverse collection of followers and share our own struggles with growing close to different groups of people. Go to biblegeeks.fm/twobytwo for the study guides and videos. And don’t forget — the Bible Bracket moves onto the Sweet Sixteen this week, so we’d love it if you’d go to biblegeeks.fm/bracket and vote for your favorite Bible stories!
Takeaways
The Big Idea: Limiting friendships to people just like you severely shrinks your pool of possible partners.
This Week's Challenge: Leave your comfort zone and invest in someone else's interests.
Episode Transcription
I know this is weird. I'm making this weird and I'm still going to muscle through it. [music] Well, hello everyone and welcome to the Bible Geeks Podcast. This is episode 204. I'm Bryan Schiele. I'm Ryan Joy. Thanks so much everyone for tuning in. Before we get into our conversation about friendship here, I do want to just take a second to remind everybody that if you are listening to this episode before April 11th, 2024, please go to biblegeeks.fm/bracket and there you will find our voting available. We would love it if everybody got involved, if you would throw in your votes for our favorite Bible stories bracket that we're doing this year. Man, on the last episode, we picked a ton of stories, maybe some controversial ones, and we are in the process of voting right now. Please get involved in that. We'd love it. If you would, what did you call it last episode? Rock the vote. Make your voice heard. Decision 2024. This is important. Pick your favorites. Very important. Speaking of important things, we are picking up with session three of our guided study that we are doing called Two by Two. And on this episode, we're going to talk about making friends. How friendship is, well, really something we've got to put effort into. And we have a conversation starter to kick off our discussion with. And that one we called Make a Picture. This is Two by Two. Make a Picture. My grandma loved using her old school film camera to capture that Kodak moment anytime us grandkids came over to her house. Let me make a picture of you boys, she'd say as we stood awkwardly in front of her 60s faux wood paneled wall. Make a Picture might sound like a funny phrase, but back then photography took effort. Those pictures would take forever to develop compared to today's digital cameras and smartphones. Like analog photography, friendship takes time and energy, as we've covered, but it also requires us to stretch outside our comfort zones. Sometimes our friendships must be made and developed over time, overcoming obstacles that might keep us from getting close. So here's the big idea. Limiting friendships to people just like you severely shrinks your pool of possible partners. We bond over what we have in common, but even within the church, where we share so much in Christ, we have immense diversity. And that's a gift from God. Those closest to Jesus had obstacles to overcome too. Picture Jesus' inner circle. Pairs of brothers mixed in with complete strangers, outspoken, passionate men, following with some you never hear a peep from, and a former zealot walking with a former tax collector. Jesus didn't seem stuck on similarities and backgrounds and interests beyond their interest in following Him. And think about the differences between Jesus and His friend group. Their differences with each other pale in comparison to the difference between His disciples and Him. He was as different as a person could get. He was perfect, but He became like us to create this friendship. And now He can sympathize with our weaknesses. So follow the Lord's lead and get interested in the interests of others. So here's the big question. Who's waiting to be your friend if only you'd be interested? So follow along with this guided study of biblegeeks.fm/twobytwo, and may the Lord bless you and keep you today. Shalom. Okay, so the big idea there was limiting friendships to people just like you severely shrinks your pool of possible partners. There's some Bryan Schiele-esque alliteration right there. And I want to be clear that our goal isn't to minimize the value of those friendships with people you share all kinds of things with. You and I share a lot of stuff. We have a lot in common, but we're trying to crack the door open for those incredible relationships that you might overlook, you might miss because you thought, "I need to have a lot of stuff in common with them." We share the same hobbies or interests or that kind of thing. We're at the same stage of life with parenting or whatever. My life would be so much poorer without all the friendships with men and women, people of all different ages, people within the church, some outside the church that I've invested in. And there's just a lot of different opportunities to connect with people if you open your eyes to the possibility of getting interested in things that you weren't interested in, or at least people that you weren't interested in, and maybe they'll lead you into some other possible ways of connecting. I want to give an example real quick here of a brother here that I always think is so cool. He gets interested in all kinds of things that he had no interest in just to find ways to connect to people. So he got into manga and anime to connect with one group of people. He got into a bunch of different stuff. Like he got into musical theater to connect with this group. There's a lot of different ways that he's tried to crack the door open on different relationships. He has become all things to all people so that he might befriend some. That's right. That's a misquote, but I think the sentiment is still on track. So the big question we covered there was, "Who's waiting to be your friend if only you'd be interested?" And it reminds me of what Jesus said in Matthew 7, verse 15, where he's talking about wolves in sheep's clothing, but it's basically the opposite of that. That story, right? Where it's instead of an enemy hiding in friendly clothing, what if there's a friend hiding maybe in enemy clothing or stranger clothing or somebody else who you may just not even recognize as a friend? It's so easy to write people off and label people, but what if we were to strip away all those labels and assumptions and get interested in people in deeper ways? So I think that's what this conversation is focused on, is helping us to see the things that maybe we haven't been able to see as clearly in the past. I love it. A sheep in wolf's clothing. (LAUGHTER) OK, so here is our icebreaker. This is where we have a fun question just to get things rolling, and it's a weird one because our question is, "Who's your weirdest friend?" You said that in a very weird way, so I'll just follow it up. -Who's your weirdest friend? -That was weird. Well, I was going to say it's another friend of mine, but maybe it's Ryan Joy, who's my weirdest friend. No, it's a toss-up. There are a lot of friends that I have that are a little bit different. Listen, we are called a peculiar people, so I'm pretty sure that a lot of us are considered weird by somebody, but for me, it's a toss-up. I'd probably have to pick Chad. I'll name him. It's OK. Some people know Chad. I love Chad, but Chad is definitely my weirdest friend. His wife even told me that. She came up and said, "You know that Chad is your weirdest friend." I said, "Absolutely, he is." For those of us who know people who are just a little bit different, make us laugh in ways that no one else can, or just have idiosyncrasies that it's like, "Man, you're pretty weird, but I love you anyway." How about you? Oh, yeah. Lovable weirdos. I love that selection. My kids ask me this question actually all the time. Who is your weirdest kid? -Oh, no. -They've been on this kick about that for the last couple, I don't know, a couple months maybe. They ask me a lot, and I'm not sure if they want to be the weird kid or if they don't want to find out that it's another one, but it's like this weird competition. I think that there... I also, like you, I've always embraced being weird. It's just a way of saying that you're showing up as you and you're letting your uniqueness be seen when appropriate. But there are two guys that come to mind. I'm not going to name them. They're two men that visit from the neighborhood that come to worship with us sometimes, and they've become good friends. And they are very unique individuals, and they are going to share my most interesting man and weirdest friend award. Thinking about your kids, I can't help but think about Matthew 2021 when James and John's mom come up and say that these two sons of mine can sit one at your right hand and one at your left. Your kids are basically coming to ask you, "Dad, can we be the weirdest kids that you have, please?" -Right. -It's so good. The least weird among you shall be the greatest. Shall be the greatest, yep. All right, so let's get into our first segment here on the episode, and that is Like the Teacher. We're going to go to somewhere where Jesus teaches us about friendship and also about being friends with different kinds of people. And that's from Mark 3, verses 13 through 21. We talked about this in the conversation starter. But Jesus, when he's going up on the mountain, he calls all of his 12 disciples by name. He names them apostles, and he gives them the charge that they will be with him, that he's going to send them out to preach and to have authority to cast out demons. And we see a whole slew of people here. We see Simon and James. We see John and all these other apostles here that he appoints. And at the end of this whole story, when his family heard it, they went out to seize him, for they were saying, "He is out of his mind." And Jesus pulling this ragtag band of disciples together was pretty clearly a bold move for Jesus to do. And not a lot of people understood why he was doing it that way. So what do you see here in Jesus' example about friendship with different people? - Yeah, the thing that jumped out at me rereading this is what Jesus called the apostles to do. And the first item on Mark's list here, if you're reading through it, is to be with him. I don't know, I didn't notice that before. It says, "He appointed 12, whom he also named apostles, so that they might be with him, and he might send them out to preach and have authority to cast out demons." I think about the second one all the time. He appointed them to go out and preach and carry his authority and do miracles and stuff. But the first purpose, and Mark is very specific, no words are lost on Mark. He's choosing exactly what he wants to tell us about what it meant to be an apostle. And the first thing it meant is, he chose them so that they might be with him. They could spend time together, and he could be amongst this ragtag group of followers, and he can teach them and they can see how he lives, but they could get to know him. And this relationship is still core to being a disciple, being with Jesus in a different way than they were, but still with Jesus all the time. Like, we want to constantly abide in him and learn to be like him. And I think that's core to any relationship, to be spending time together. This is kind of an extreme example. This group of disciples probably spent more time together than most people spend with their wives. They're like just constantly walking around every moment of the day and night, probably together. But just the implications of being with Jesus and being together with this close group constantly is something to think about and ponder as we think about some of the obstacles, but also some of the ways we're going to need to invest in order to have relationships like we want to have. - I'm just thinking of like the logistics of how all this worked. Can you imagine like how 12 dudes and Jesus would have functioned together all the time, being around each other all the time? So you can imagine what like, yes, going out to preach and to teach people about the coming Messiah is a really important and big job. But you know what else is a big job? Being with Jesus. - It's like 13 people over for dinner. - Man, like I can't even find a hotel room for four people sometimes. You know, how do you do that with this group of people? But no doubt, I feel like Jesus was able to invest in these relationships to the point where this wasn't surface scratching. It wasn't like the outer circle of friends. This is his close inner circle. And to be able to get close with him, I was just thinking here, like wouldn't it have been amazing to be a fly on the wall? Just listening to them, listening to their conversations, listen to them whispering about what somebody said, or were they jockeying for position? There were people among them who were like trying to be out in front or Jesus favorite or whatever it is, but like, I just wonder in these relationships, because of how diverse they were and how totally different they were from each other, how that would have been just in day-to-day community, right? Because you've got like James and John who are the sons of thunder, right? And then you've got some of these other apostles who you don't even hear from at all. And we talked about that in the conversation starter, but it's like, you can imagine the conversation that would be dominated by two guys who apparently are very boisterous and outspoken, or in the context of like the zealot and the tax collector, like the fights that may be going on there, the side eyes that might be happening. And even just from the standpoint of like brothers, have you ever been at a gathering or something, a party, where it's like, there's a bunch of people who are all related to each other, and it seems like they go off to themselves and they're isolationists, like they're just with themselves and everyone else who doesn't know them or are part of the family or over in somewhere else. I just wonder how this would have looked. To have Jesus appoint people so different, it's no wonder people thought he was out of his mind. - Yeah, and 12 people is not that small of a group, really. I mean, it's a big enough group that you can have a lot of different things going on. I felt like I was watching an episode of The Chosen there or something. - I did too, yeah. - You were describing that, you know? You were painting a good picture of what it would be like. And in some ways, it makes me think of the groups of guys that we get together here and just those gatherings and all the little side conversations when we have 12 or 15 of us together in a basement talking through things or playing cards or whatever's going on. - Well, I totally agree. I think it's such a interesting thing to think about as you really just picture what life would have been like in this group of people. So let's move on to our next segment on the episode, and that is Deep Thoughts. (audience applauding) - And now, Deep Thoughts. - So we're gonna go to a passage from Paul in Philippians chapter two, verses one to 11, and we talked about it there in our conversation starter a little bit. And this passage is really focused on being like Jesus and how he was humble and how he shows us to live a different way with a different mindset. In verse five, he says, "Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus." He talks about how amazing Jesus is being in the form of God, but he didn't count equality with God something to be grasped. And if you think we've taken a tangent here, going to this verse, you back up and you start to see that he's bringing Jesus up into this conversation because he wants us to be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind, he says there in Philippians two, verse two. And if you think about unity, especially among a whole bunch of random, disparate kind of backgrounds that these people, his disciples have, and we have today within the church, how do we have unity and we have unity and our friendship in this close partnership by being like Jesus and having his mind? So let's think about some deep thoughts from these verses 'cause there's a lot here that we could pull out, I think. - Yeah, there's so much here. Humility was not something that was valued in the time of Jesus and Paul. It was something that all the Greek and Roman thinkers thought was just a shameful thing. It was not, we kind of hold up being humble as a good thing. And that comes from the way that the cross transforms how we think about humility, how we think about lowering ourselves and putting others ahead of ourselves. And it's like love, whenever the Bible wants to define love, it points to the cross. Whenever Paul wants to define humility, he points to the cross. He points to how Jesus, as you said, emptied himself and became a human, became like us, became a servant and then died for us. And then how God vindicates humility. He proves that humility was the right path by glorifying Jesus at the end of all of that and giving him, as Paul says there, the name that is above every name. Paul also gives some helpful commandments to help us to define what humility is. As you were starting to allude to, right before he says, have the mind of Christ in you, he says, do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility, count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. And so there's these different ideas there. First of all, and that last thing, you see that it's not wrong to look after your own interests. He says, let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. And that's still part of the same sentence as the verse three, where it's really explaining what it means to have this high estimation of others. That word for count is the word Paul's gonna use in Philippians three about how he counts some things as rubbish that he gave up for Jesus. It's about how we consider things. It's also, he uses it in the description of how Jesus didn't count equality with God, or consider, didn't think about and focus on equality with God as something to be grasped. And so how we consider and focus our attention and think about others is going to determine whether we can live like Christ. And we have to look at others and elevate them. And like you said, lower ourselves, not to have selfish ambition, but in humility to count them more significant. And obviously it's natural to look after your own interests. And I think we can get all twisted up about this and think, well, the wrong thing to do would be to, in any way, prioritize what is going on with you. But he's very clear, not only to your own interests. And the most natural thing we can do is to feed our own bodies and to sleep whenever you're about to pass out, right? Jesus did that. Paul says when he's talking about marriage in Ephesians 5, no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourished it and cherished it. And the point there is treat your wife like you treat your flesh, 'cause she's one flesh with you. And the point here is again, to love your neighbor, second greatest commandment, as yourself. So start to prioritize their interests and elevate them so that they're included and their needs are included in this set of needs and concerns that you're thinking about. But he goes further than that, right? Because Jesus goes further than that. And so verse three elevates it to say, count others more significant than yourselves. Not that they're worth more to God or something like that, but that you are looking beyond yourself and prioritizing what they need and sacrificing for yourself because Jesus did that. Jesus showed us how to do that. So I think about what do other people need to eat? Do they need a break? Do they need something to help them to become healthy in all the areas of their lives? If I am seeking blessing, true blessing from God and to walk on the wise and good path, then I'm gonna seek that for others. And so then I can love my neighbor as myself, rightly. I can look after the interests of others rightly. And ultimately, that's the surprising thing here. That's the story, what the story of the cross does is it flips how you get to glory 'cause Jesus ends in glory, he starts in glory, but in the middle, he takes this dip into coming to become like us and then to give up himself and to suffer and go through difficulty. And so Jesus says, "You wanna follow me, "you take up your cross." Instead of self-service, it's self-denial and serving others and learning the gift of giving. And so we lose our life, Jesus says, to gain our life. And so it's this strange path by which we receive blessing, but that actually is the good life. So that's, I don't know, it's a deep thought to me is that idea that people talk a lot today about loving yourself. I hear that and I see that. But the surprising path to caring for yourself in the long term is prioritizing others. And so that loving others as myself is the same as loving myself by prioritizing others. - You're making me think a lot about David and Saul. A weird connection, but I was thinking, we've been studying in our Bible classes, not too long here ago about Saul, the life of Saul, David and Jonathan and their relationship and everything. And Saul was one of those guys who just made everything about himself. They were winning battles, they were knocking down the Philistines. And what does Saul do? He goes on a pity party because people are singing about how David is killing 9,000 people more than he is. It's like he makes everything about himself and he's only interested in being happy himself. He's not interested in the good of the kingdom, the Lord's will. He's not interested in anything else, but just making sure that he's happy. And sometimes in our friendships, we're looking for people who will make us happy. We're trying to take from the relationship rather than give to the relationship. And that's where you see a contrast in the life of David and Jonathan, where you see David and Jonathan who there's no reason why they should have been friends from an earthly standpoint because they were fighting for the same position in line for the throne. They should have been in competition with each other, but they weren't because they both loved God. There was a lot of reasons why, if they were thinking about themselves, they wouldn't have been so close of friends. And when you have Saul on one hand and David and Jonathan on the other hand, I just see this picture of letting go, right? Of just instead of white knuckle hanging on to what is yours, instead just letting it go. And that is about unity. It's about developing unity as much as is possible, as depends on you live peaceably with all. Romans 12 verse 18 talks about it. It's like being at peace with people is not an easy thing. Because like you said, our natural tendency, my natural tendency is to look out for me and to do what makes me happy. Jesus obviously took care of himself. He was resting, he was eating, he was doing all the things he needed to do, but he was doing those things so that he could then turn around and serve us. That's the question I guess I ask in my friendships. Am I trying to only get something out of this relationship or am I actually more interested in giving to the relationship far more than I'm getting? Being willing to extend yourself and give more than you're getting is exactly the point Paul's making here. Just don't look out for your interests alone. Yes, continue to do that, but count others more significant than yourselves. Not an easy thing to remember, not an easy thing to do at all, but to live in harmony with people is really the focus. And I feel like we can be at harmony with people who have nothing in common with us if we're willing to do that kind of thing. - Yeah, that's well said. Give more than you're getting, that's a pretty good like forward motto or something to bring with you into your friendships and that picture of white knuckled grasping that you're talking about. We talked about the candy calendar recently. We have this giant jar of candy and it has a mix of like M&Ms and little chocolate, all kinds of stuff. And it is a hotly anticipated and sometimes contentious part of family life whenever we're gonna dole out, okay, if you do this, you can have, whoever does this can have a candy, whatever it is. - We bribe our children with candy. (laughing) And I have this picture now of reaching into that jar and pulling out a handful and grasping it, like these fistfuls, these are mine, as opposed to emptying, you know, these words in the story of Jesus, he emptied himself and didn't consider equality with God, something to be grasped. Am I gonna hold on with two fists, what is mine and what I want and grab onto it or am I going to pour out and empty what is mine into the hands of others and just, I'm seeing like M&Ms pouring out of the hand into others, like this is me doling out, pouring myself out into friendship or I can be grasping. And it's two different ways of being in the world and two different ways of trying to establish relationships, one of which is going to succeed and one of which is gonna end in frustration for everyone. - I really wanna talk about the monkey trap here, but we're gonna move on here to our third segment, which is our reach out question. ♪ Reach out, reach out and touch someone ♪ - You can Google search the monkey trap by the way, I'll stick it in the show notes, but the question here for this episode is what fears have kept you from sparking up a relationship with someone and what advice would you give to someone to handle a similar situation? So Ryan, what are you afraid of that keeps you from sparking up a relationship? - This was a hard one for me 'cause I was thinking, well, it's not like those differences don't really bother me, this isn't an issue. And then I came on something that really is true and it is that I think I'm extra hesitant and cautious in friendships with women. And yeah, as a young preacher, it was drilled into me not to have, don't take a young lady home, don't talk alone with a woman. And that advice is good advice, it served me well. - They told Jesus that too. (laughing) - I think you're stumbling onto something that's maybe worth thinking through, yeah. It just becomes so ingrained in me that at times I've been a little weird maybe with sisters as I'm in my head, is this okay? - You're the weird friend. - I'm the weird friend. There's like a foyer full of people and I'm talking with a friend, a sister, and I'm just ever so slightly in my head about it. I think that I've more or less muscled past that, but just the idea that I'm using the phrase muscled past that shows you that it's been an issue. And I know how important great friendships with sisters are. I have three biological sisters and I grew up with women and I love talking to sisters and some of my best conversations and closest friends are sisters in Christ. But I've been super conscious of the difference still, like this thing playing in the back of my mind, be wise, be blameless. I'm kind of embarrassed that it's an issue. And I guess my advice would probably be to absolutely be wise and be blameless, but also not to think that the horror stories that maybe some of us have heard are the norm, that it is healthy to have close, loving relationships with women, just like Jesus did, as he said, like Paul did, like Paul counseled Timothy to do in all purity. 1 Timothy 5.2, he says something like, to treat older women as mothers, treat younger women as sisters in all purity. So there's an extra note there, and that's a note of caution. That's a note of be smart about this. There's a danger here, but also, this is an important part of family life in Christ. So this question forced me to stumble onto something here and ponder it. - That is the perfect answer for a reach out question. I just wanna say, I think you hit the nail on the head. It's like, what is it that you're thinking of, but you're not thinking of it? And it's like, oh yeah, that's right there. And it probably colors every interaction that I have. I'm in the same boat. I can feel the same exact way. And it really is something to overcome, at least to acknowledge, to say, look, I know this is weird. I'm making this weird, and I'm still gonna muscle through it, like you said. That's good. My answer to this question is a little less interesting. (laughing) - Great way to lose people in the podcast, Bryan. - You can tune out now. Thank you, go to the next episode. But I think I've struggled to get close to people who are quiet, like quiet in an awkward quiet kind of way. I have my tendency to be quiet sometimes. In groups, I really struggle in larger groups of people. I'm great one-on-one, but if you get into a sort of larger situation, larger group situation, I can struggle. But when somebody comes into our inner circle, or we invite somebody over to the house or whatever, if those people are quiet, it takes so much effort to carry a conversation. And in the back of my mind, leading into it, I'm like, oh, are we gonna be able to do this? Are we gonna be able to have this person over and to have these conversations? Or is there just gonna be like a lot of dead space? And Sherrilyn and I will talk about this from time to time when we're thinking about who to invite over or who we get together with. It's like, are we gonna be able to handle that? Do you think we're interesting enough to be able to carry a conversation with somebody who doesn't really talk very much? And it's really funny because we've started to discover that those fears are actually unfounded. Because a lot of times when you get the really quiet person into a scenario, the right scenario, they open up and everything's fine. It's just maybe whatever situation you've seen them in before has led to them being more quiet. But yeah, okay, a few minutes of awkwardness, that's probably fine, but eventually it rolls into good conversations we've seen. So for me, that's kind of a struggle that I've had. But as for advice, can I bring Erin into the conversation? Like, I think about Erin, right? Like how Moses had this real fear of communication and how God gave him his brother to be his mouthpiece. And so if you have a loud friend, is sometimes just invite the loud friend over with you and with this other quiet person so that both of them can play off of each other and you don't have to do all the heavy lifting yourself. I know that's like crowd manipulation or whatever it is, but like for me, it's like figuring out a solution to a problem, being able to have these relationships where he bounce off of each other, but you just have to, I feel like I have to just be so careful not to couple quiet people with too many loud people 'cause then the quiet people will never talk. So for me, that's been a challenge and it's just an interesting one I've been navigating through 'cause I can see myself on both ends of it. The guy who never stops talking, like right now, and sometimes the person who just doesn't have enough to say. - Yeah, extraversion and introversion. I think that can be a major issue on both sides. Like Adrian and I have no problem with quiet people. They just make great listeners. (both laughing) But it's like you gotta check yourself and set that. We talked about having an intention before you go in, like making room for them and then trying to think of questions to engage and draw them out. And then on the other hand, like you said, you get a bunch of extroverts and there's some people that, not even extroverts, but some people just have a hard time leaving space, leaving air. And I've been that person. So I'm not looking at it with like harsh judgment. It's just, that is something that can be challenging to navigate is, okay, I'm willing to be the listener here, but I'm trying to figure out what is the right dynamic in this conversation because every time I start to say something, this happened to me on Wednesday night, I was talking to somebody and I would think that they were looking for some encouragement with something they said and they pause and I would start to talk and then they'd put their finger up and start talking somewhere. And I was like, oh, I'm sorry. And so, yeah, it's hard to figure out sometimes, but it's okay too. It's okay to sort of like stumble through it together. And that's part of building a vibe, building a dynamic that works in any particular relationship. They're all different. - And I'm just gonna pull right off of the word building there and about developing like we've been talking about in this episode, it is work, right? Like some people, you're just gonna be fast friends with no work whatsoever, no effort whatsoever. And some people it's gonna take a little more time, but that investment is super worth it. So let's get into our final segment here on the episode and that is our challenge. - I am ready to face any challenges that might be foolish enough to face me. - I like this one, your challenge for this week, leave your comfort zone as wonderful as it is, leave your comfort zone behind and invest in someone else's interests. So yeah, it's time to set aside the things that you know, all the things about the area of the, I think of the waffle. Do you know like spaghetti and waffle? - Oh yeah. - Women are spaghetti, men are waffle. There's a book. Yeah, I like the little squares that I know lots of things about I feel confident in, but sometimes it's time to go into that square that you avoid and say, okay, I'm ready to engage in what I know this person is interested in. - I like that Kenny Loggins song, Highway to the Danger Zone from the Comfort Zone. Here we go. You know, in our last guided study conversation, we were talking about being more curious, being the most curious person in the room. I was talking about in my reach out question. I think that's where this skill really kicks into action. Like maybe your new friend has an activity that they love, but you just can't get into that thing or you don't have any interest in that thing, but you love that person or you want to love that person more or you want them to have a more comfortable relationship with you so you go learn how to do the thing. Like you were talking about earlier with your friend. And I was thinking about this for myself. My weird friend, Chad, a long time ago, he invited me to go fencing with him. And I don't like fencing. I'm not a fencer. I don't even know what it is. - You're a fencing enthusiast. - I'm not a fencer. - What is an epi? Could you tell me that? - I don't know. Is that a pen that you poke yourself with? But anyway, this whole interaction, you know, I said, yeah, sure, let's go fencing. And we would go fencing together and wear the silly outfits and hit each other with sticks and all sorts of things we would do. And I loved it. Not because I loved that activity, but I loved the opportunity we had to be together. So I feel like this is an easy challenge from a mental acknowledgement standpoint, but it's a real challenging one when you're out there actually putting on the outfit to go fencing with a friend and you don't even like that activity. So yeah, just get out there and ride into the danger zone, I suppose. (laughs) - Anytime we can bring Kenny Loggins and Top Gun into our conversation as a way. - Exactly. Well, let's close this out with our request and our closing prayer comes from the passage we talked about, Philippians 2, 3 through 4. The one we suggested in the study guide says, "Father, help us to look out for the interests of others." All right, let's pray. Holy Father, you are full of all wisdom and goodness. You are the center of our lives. You deserve all the praise and we come before you so happy to be in your presence, so thankful to know you and to know all the people that you have redeemed and you fill our lives with. We pray that we would learn from you, that we would learn from Jesus. Help us to understand the wisdom of the cross. Help us to see the glory in self-sacrifice and the beauty of loving others like Jesus loved us. May we look beyond our little circle and draw others into relationship with us and ultimately draw them closer to you. Help us to get interested in the world within each person that we come into contact with, interested in all the things that they have in their lives going on around them and within them and recognize that their world is like our world, that we share so much and that you love others like you love us and you want others close to you like you have brought us into your presence and into fellowship with you. Pray that we would build more friendships. You would fill our lives with meaningful friendships and deepen the ones that we have. Pray that you would help us to treat our friends with the honor that Jesus treats his friends with, the way that he looked at us and said, "No greater love could he have but to give himself, to give his life." Pray that you would help us to give ourselves, to empty ourselves, to share ourselves and to serve the people around us with devotion to you. May you be glorified in everything we do. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. - Amen. All right, on the next episode, we are going to continue in this two by two guided study with session four and that will be where we transition from these conversations about the makings of friendship into the circle of friendship. We're gonna talk a whole lot more, I think, about the inner life, about the heart and being a more loving person in our relationships with each other. We'll also go on in later episodes to talk about listening and creating safe spaces for our friends and even being willing and able to sharpen each other the way that we should. And so session four is going to be on love as we said. So to prepare for that conversation, we encourage you to read Luke 10, 25 to 37, 1 Corinthians 13, obviously, verses four to seven and Matthew 22, verses 36 to 40. - And that is obviously also important, the great commandments. So we're breaking out the greatest hits. - Greatest hits, man. - Good Samaritan, the love chapter and the greatest commandments. We're getting into love next time. - Yeah, and if you think this is gonna be a super easy conversation, it doesn't get any easier. We're just gonna keep poking at it and making ourselves feel uncomfortable. And you know what? We'll muscle through it. Thanks everyone for tuning in to the Bible Geeks Podcast. You can find us on our website at biblegeeks.fm. You can find show notes for this episode in your podcast player of choice or at biblegeeks.fm/204. You can find this series over at biblegeeks.fm/twobytwo. There's a course there that you can take and you can join along with a friend or your small group at church, whatever you wanna do. We've got all that content there on our website. And if you haven't voted yet, go to biblegeeks.fm/bracket, if it's before April 11th, 2024 and vote for your favorite Bible story. Until next episode, everyone may the Lord bless you and keep you, Shalom. [music playing]