“Nobody could ever understand. I’m all alone.”

There is so much danger in that sentence. I know, because I’ve uttered it, fully believing it to be true. In a way, it is true; nobody has the exact experiences, the precise same weights to bear, or the unique personal characteristics that I possess, so no other human being will ever completely understand each minute detail of my life and burdens. But in the broader sense in which it is generally stated, it is a grave untruth. Worse, it is a lie that leads to the treacherous path of isolation, self-indulgence, and bitterness.

The truth is that “no temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind.” (I Corinthians 10:13) The specifics of our situations may vary greatly, but the experience of man is largely universal. Each life involves relationships, joys, pains, physical ailments, fears, stressors, work, environmental influences, learning, growth, change, housing, food and clothing, decision-making… the list of commonalities is long. Our details are individual, but the threads of our experience weave into a common cloth. Others can relate to what we’re experiencing; the question is whether we want them to have input.

On a theoretical level, most believers in Christ know that we are meant to live in community. We know that we are called to be many members of one body. We acknowledge that we are supposed to bear one another’s burdens, encourage one another, and prefer one another.

On a practical level, we avoid unity because we are afraid of rejection, are uncomfortable with vulnerability, and have sold ourselves on the lie that others can’t possibly relate to where we are anyway. We justify it to ourselves in all kinds of spiritualized ways: “I’m the [insert church pastoral/vocational role here]; I can’t share my burdens without compromising confidences.” “My spiritual authority would be diminished if people knew I struggled; I cannot be that kind of stumbling block.” “God is enough for me; I will keep my baggage between me and Him.”

Every one of those excuses for isolating ourselves, though couched in pious sentiment, amount to direct rejection of what God Himself has said. Yes, we are to take our cares to Him because He cares for us. In addition, however, we are to remember that “God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, that there may be NO DIVISION in the body, but that the members may have the SAME CARE for one another.” (I Corinthians 12:24-25)

Pastors cannot say that their church members shouldn’t know them well and be able to speak into their lives. Believers who don’t hold formal roles in a church organization cannot claim to need connection less than those who are at the building every time the doors are opened. Elderly, middle-aged, young adults, children, married, single, widowed, divorced…any segregation line that we have drawn in the body of Christ is a division that should not be!

We need one another. We need the benefit of the testimonies of those who have walked victoriously where we are struggling. We need the opportunity to rejoice together. We need to confess our sins to one another, knowing that in our complementary members of the body, we will find strength to heal and walk in wholeness once again. We were designed to give and receive freely between the members of this beautiful body of Christ.
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From one who has walked the self-righteous, self-protective path of self-imposed isolation, I plead with you: lay aside your pride. Set down your imagined reasoning for holding yourself back from the rest of the body. Allow Holy Spirit to bear witness between yourself and other believers. Trust Him to build bonds of love that will break chains you have been wearing in solitude. It’s scary at first. But you will find that His love, through His people, casts out all fear. You are not alone.
 

Perched along the shores of Sarasota Bay, Florida, sits an ornate home, covered in all the architectural splendor its owner could afford. He could afford a lot. The estate features meticulously patterned brickwork, exterior patio floors of fine marble, towers with staircases spiraling into the sky, delicately turned ironwork, inlaid mosaic and glasswork; and that’s just the outside of the home! Commanding a view of the Bay and encompassing sprawling grounds and gardens, of course this home has a name: Ca d’Zan. A lovely Venetian name for an impressive Mediterranean abode. 

Translated: “House of John.” 

Seriously? Just “John’s House?” After all of that expense? All of that beauty on display? The presentation of wealth and culture and craftsmanship christened merely “John’s house?”

Yes. That’s what it was. It was John Ringling’s house. The grounds: a place to host friendly gatherings. The view: a spot of restful peace in a grueling travel schedule for his work. The gardens: a place of beauty that his wife enjoyed nurturing. The skilled craftsmanship: a reflection of an appreciative eye for artistry. Running in and through it all, it was the place where the owner was comfortable, relaxed, and was simply himself. Simply John in John’s house with John’s family and friends.
 
I quite love that. What others may have judged as materialistic trappings or ostentatious bragging, John Ringling saw as just his home. 

Ephesians 2:19-22 says that we, believers in Jesus, are being joined together as a structure. Together, we are being skillfully crafted into a holy temple; a dwelling place for God, with Jesus Christ as the Cornerstone and the Holy Spirit the craftsman at work to unite us into a dwelling fit for God to inhabit. 

Does it awe you as it does me that we fit together in intricate design? Have you stopped to ponder the expense that God laid out to make sure His creative vision for His home was brought to life? Have you stepped back to admire the beauty that occurs when believers come together in love for one another? Do you see the hand of the master craftsman laying course after course of stonework, interspersing the rough-hewn stones with delicately reflective tilework, leaving onlookers to marvel at the uniquely complementary nature of it all? 

Yet, with all that cost, all of that labor, all of that grandeur… it’s simply God’s House. 

We are God’s House. The place where He rests. The place He most loves to be. The place where His nature and interests and love are on display. Stunningly beautiful. Minutely detailed. Built of the best there is by the best there is. And simply His. 
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I quite love that. 

Let’s play “Sing that Sitcom Theme Song with Me:”

              Sometimes you wanna go where everybody knows your naaaame… (Cheers)

               I’ll be there for you…(Friends)

               Thank you for bein’ a friend… (The Golden Girls)

Friendship. It’s a universal theme. We all desire friends that will stick with us. We value the people in our lives who know us well and choose to love us anyway. Most of our widespread depictions of friendship include laughter, shared adventures, holding one another up through hard times, and forgiveness after conflict.

As I read Scripture, though, there is something present in God’s definition friendship that is not widely acclaimed in today’s society. In fact, it is largely denounced. What is it? Correction.

I can almost hear you sucking in the air between your teeth. Correction? I am called to LOVE my friends, not judge them. To support them. To encourage them to be their authentic selves. Yes. By God’s definitions, not your own.

Love seeks what is best for a person; warning them that they are about to step off a cliff isn’t judgement, it’s a wake-up call to open their eyes to the reality and peril of their position. Support is to actually hold someone up, not to merely call it staying upright as they fall down. Encouragement to authenticity includes calling out the truth in our friends, not agreeing with the lies they believe about themselves so that we never face conflict.

Proverbs 27:17 describes this aspect of friendship this way: “As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.” This process, however, requires both parties to be strong and solid. It requires a closeness that allows for repeated friction to be applied at the right time, consistently, and in the right direction so as to be a honing agent. Too brittle or small, and the iron rods will break. Too frequent or concussive of a striking together, and again, brokenness. Inconsistent and imprecise directionality of the honing, and rather than a sharpening, you will actually produce a dulling of both pieces.

The more I turn over this picture of friendship sharpening both parties, the more I see places where the broader church needs some refinement, and we as individual believers need some self-examination. The broader church sometimes fails to establish the close relationship necessary for this kind of sharpening, instead raining down corrective blows on people with no strength or solidness to withstand them – and often only willing for this to be a one-way interaction, not a mutual honing. We as individuals frequently default to applying correction emotionally and sporadically, without consulting the Holy Spirit before we speak. This results in broken relationships, more pronounced warping of what was meant to be straightened, and a dulling of the love between friends.

What then are we to do? How do we effectively sharpen one another? It is a process that inherently involves conflict, heat, sparks, and a chipping away. How do we do that in a way that brings about positive change rather than destruction?

I believe that the first step must be to submit our emotions, our desire to correct, our sense of justice and righteousness, to the Father. Before we speak to our friend, we must first speak to the One who IS justice and righteousness. We must rid ourselves of any selfish motivation or offense toward the one we are about to correct. I have found that often, this step alone results in Holy Spirit gently telling me that to convict someone of judgement and righteousness is His job, not mine. I then leave my friend in His capable hands and turn my own heart to asking the Spirit to help me love them whether I see the change in them that I desire or not. It is a hard reality that this can result in me loving them from afar, because it is necessary for me to not be brought into conflict that will dull my own blade.

Sometimes, however, the Father tells me that I’m the one who has the strength of relationship with that particular friend to apply the right words at the right time under His direction and with His heart toward redemption. In those times, when we hear the Spirit whisper that we must speak boldly to our friends, we MUST ask for His words. Throughout the New Testament, we have examples of what this looks like. Frequently we find the words, “Dear Friends,” and then the author goes on to call out sin and say “STOP IT”, to warn against a tendency toward sin and say “BEWARE YOUR DIRECTION”, or to come alongside someone who is weak and say “WALK WITH ME OUT OF THIS.”

That is friendship. Dear friendship. A strong love that has taken time to build relationships that will stand up to the sharpening. An abiding love that says, “I will be here for however long it takes to hone you to your God-given purposes.” A righteous love that doesn’t lie about the dullness – the blunt, purposeless, non-reflective-of-God’s-glory parts – in a friend’s life. A love that allows that friend to apply friction in return for the same reasons.
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Father, may we learn to be grateful that Jesus has called us HIS friends…and may we truly be friends to one another, so that the world will know that we are Yours by our love for one another. 

Standing along the flight line at the 2024 Tampa Bay Airfest, we had an up-close-and-personal vantage point for all of the demonstrations flown. Our hearts raced at the aerobatic stunts performed by world-champion flyers. Nostalgia and patriotism was roused by the fly-overs of historic aircraft in tandem with their modern counterparts. Goofy grins spread across our faces as the A-10 Warthog took to the skies. The perfectly blue skies, occasional rainbow cutting through the contrails, carefully choreographed dances of machinery, skill, and musical backdrop, all melded together for a day of wonder and much-needed rest.

Then, the last act of the airshow began. The pinnacle team. The U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds; a team of 120+ members of our military working together to create the show of force and flight capability embodied in 6 of our nation’s F-16 Fighting Falcon aircraft. It is impossible to relate to you the sheer awe inspired by the speed, precision, and maneuverability of these craft as they shrieked overhead.

So fast were their passes that, had the announcer not told us the direction of their approach, we would never have seen them coming. Just as rapidly, they vanished out of sight. Only the sound of their power foretold their presence. We experienced a marvelling awe because all of that capability, all of that surprise and stealth, all of that bone-shaking power and ear-splitting noise…was friendly. It was on our side. We were safe even so close to it.

Even as we marvelled, we began to imagine. What if it wasn’t ours? What if all of that unannounced, suddenly appearing, sheer power and might arrived with us in it’s sights? Unspeakable, horrible, surety of impending destruction.

The more I have pondered this, the more one thought keeps replaying itself in my mind: If this is what the height of man-made power looks like, how much more awe-inspiring, more devastatingly immense, is the power of God arrayed in all of its glory?

Do you have a small inkling of what that power may be like? How bright? How loud? How all-encompassing of all of your senses? Can you imagine?

Now… here’s where it absolutely blows my mind…

We who stood as enemies of the very God who created us, cowering in rebellious fear of His might, are now invited, through the work of Jesus Christ’s obedience to death, burial, and resurrection, to become partakers in the very might that had every right and capability to destroy us. The One who possesses all that authority in His person - not in His equipment, or financial holdings, or machinery, but IN HIS PERSON – has invited us to be His children. To call Him “Abba”, “Father.”  We are not invited to merely stand on the flight line of His show and observe how awesome He is, but we are called up close to Himself, among the ones protected and provided for by all His capacity.

I’m not sure that I can fully grasp the kind of love that holds such power and chooses to exercise it with such mercy and grace toward people who were His enemies. But I am grateful that it is true.
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I am also not sure that I can fully grasp that the spiritual forces of wickedness, Satan and his minions, choose open warfare against such incredible power, knowing that through Jesus, their destruction has already been made certain. But, again, I am so grateful that we, as the children of the Almighty God, can wield that knowledge with confidence. The terror the enemy of our souls seeks to inflict need only be exposed to the glory and might of our Father, and it dissipates into nothing. We can stand in the thick of the noise and conflict, ready to marvel with joy as the Father’s authority is exercised on our behalf, and our enemies in the spiritual realm are made to flee.