Live Free with Josh Howerton - The Power of Friendship | Ep. 364 | Thursday, June 27, 2024

Episode Date: June 27, 2024

We need the connection and support of others. Happiness and deep relationships go hand in hand. Want to lessen your chance of anxiety and depression? Want to live a long life? A deep connection with others helps us through trials and gives us endurance. For more information, visit lakepointe.church/dailydrive

Thanks for tuning in to today's Daily Drive with Lake Point Church, a daily dose of God's Word for your morning drive. When the word, not the world, becomes the majority of your week, your life will start to change. For that reason, our prayer is that God will speak to you through today's devotional. For more digital content to feed your faith, visit lakepoint.comit. And now let's dive in to today's devotional. Hey, thanks for joining us on the Daily Drive Today. My name is Mike, and we have been talking about five easy ways to wreck your life. We're walking through the journal of a guy named Solomon, this book of the Old Testament,

this book of the Old Testament of the Bible, called Ecclesiastes. And we've already learned from him that if you want to wreck your life, step number one, let pleasure drive you. Let your appetites run wild. Let the unbridled pursuit of happiness become the God that you worship. And we read some pretty honest and vulnerable stuff. about Solomon's quest to fill up the round hole in his heart with a bunch of square pegs, things that did nothing but frustrate him and cause him to label that kind of pleasure-seeking life

as meaningless. He said it was like chasing the wind. Then we heard him say while you're out there chasing the wind, you might as well go ahead and let success consume you. Just become obsessed with making it to the top. Run over anybody to everybody to get there, power up on people, work long hours, neglect the important people in your life, let performance define you, compare yourself to everybody around you, abandon your character, do whatever it takes to win. Spend your life, bowing to the cultural image that is consuming all your energy, passion, affection, and becoming your God. You do all that? Guaranteed, you will wreck your life. Vulnerable and valuable advice from a guy who's been there.

Somebody gave me an article from Pixar, the innovative film company, you know, that makes so many great animated movies. It was an article about what makes a great time. story and it said this, you admire a character more for trying than for their successes. Indiana Jones fails at nearly everything he tries to do. The deck is always stacked against Ripley's survival. These characters keep moving forward when there's no hope of success miles after any one of us in the audience would have given up. Success without trials is meaningless. I thought it's kind of interesting that it's not so much their success that endears us to a

character. It's their endurance. It's how hard they battle against the odds that makes you want to cheer for them, right? And as I was thinking about all that, it hit me that almost every great character in a story also has a sidekick. Somebody going through the battle with them, somebody helping them endure through the conflict. I mean, think for a moment some of the famous pairs, like Woody had Buzz, right? Bilbo Baggins had Sam. Fred Flintstone had Barney Rubble, Dora has boots, Patrick McHolmes, as a Taylor Swift's boyfriend, Batman had Robin, Lone Ranger at Tonto,

Zach had Screech, Harry had Lloyd, shout out the dumb and number, green eggs at ham, Jordan had Pippin, Kobe had Shaq, Simon had Garfunkel, Hall had oats,

sunny edge share, Jack had Jill, and Solomon had... Not really sure about that one. Back when I used to be on Twitter, I think it's called X now, I tweeted one day, I've heard leaders say it's lonely at the top.

I think that's their own fault. Now, I totally understand that as a leader, sometimes you alone have to make a tough call, but I think that old adage it's lonely at the top doesn't have to be that way. And honestly, it shouldn't be that way. Truly great leaders surround themselves with great teams and meaningful, deep friendships,

but all too often, quote-unquote, successful people, important people, are lonely people. You may find a lot of nice stuff at a penthouse suite, but contentment and inner peace usually can't be found there. As the Roe once put it, they lead lives of quiet desperation. There is this stark and lonely reality of climbing to the top of the pyramid, and there's no room up there for anybody else, but you.

And that was Solomon. Smart, rich, handsome, powerful, universally famous, a king's king, the envy of the nations and still Solomon was the poster child of boredom and loneliness. He had little meaningful connection in his life. You say, well, didn't we read back in chapter two where he had all kinds of parties? I mean, didn't he have the adoration of millions of fans, including the other kings? Didn't the dude have like 700 wives and 300 mistresses? A guy like that is lonely?

Absolutely. Incredibly miserable. You see, connectedness is not the same as just knowing a bunch of people. People can have all kinds of contacts in their network. You can have thousands of Instagram followers or Facebook friends and still not have any real meaningful connection. And Solomon is riding from that lonely top seat. I've been looking around at my life.

Let me tell you where all this success at any price has led me. Let me tell you what you will find at the top. You will find incredible loneliness. So, if you really want to wreck your life here, step number three, isolate yourself. Just isolate yourself. As you probably know, the value of human connectedness is one of the most proven by research. We know more about the value of connection and the destructiveness of isolation than just about anything else. I mean, tons of research shows that when people have strong support systems where they're processing their needs or feelings or fears or problems or joys,

they are physically healthier with stronger immune systems, and when they do need medical attention, to respond to treatment much better. They're emotionally healthy with less stress, depression, and anxiety. They're more likely to reach their attempts to change their life. They're more able to reach their goals, and on and on and on and all the research goes. Everything we do is affected by the quality, the amount, and the level of connection that we have in our lives.

Robert Putnam, part of Harvard's famous and exhaustive connected to research, writes the single most common finding from a half-century's research on life satisfaction, not only from the U.S., but around the world, is that happiness is best predicated by the breadth and depth of one's social connections. Thousands of years prior, Solomon had conducted his own extensive research and rode down his findings from the lonely spot at the top. He said, chapter 4, verse 7 and 8, I observe yet another example of something meaningless under the sun. this is the case of a man who was all alone.

Without a child or a brother, yet who works hard to gain as much wealth as he can, think he's talking about himself here. But then he asked himself, who am I working for? Why am I giving up so much pleasure now? It's all so meaningless and depressing. I look around and see so many people like me who are completely alone, no connection with their kids, no connection with their family. They might have a few acquaintances, but no real friends,

no real soul, a soul intimacy with anybody. I see people like me working obsessively late into the night and possibly greedy for more and more, never bothering to ask, why am I working like a dog? I got all this stuff. But why am I so lonely? So here's the deal. Here's the conclusion of my research, Solomon says.

Here's what I have found. Two people are better off than one, for they can help each other succeed. If one person falls, the other person can reach out and help. But someone who falls alone, they're in real trouble. Likewise, two people lying close together can keep each other warm. But how can one be warm alone? A person standing alone can be attacked and defeated, but two can stand back to back and conquer.

Three, that's even better. For a triple-brated cord is not easily broken. That's where Solomon lands. Now, I want to come back to that kind of famous passage tomorrow and break it down a bit. But he is saying what contemporary studies have come. confirmed. You and I flourish when we are connected to God and to other people, but we struggle, we languish, we shrivel up and die inside when we're disconnected from either. Again, the research is very conclusive on this. Emotionally isolated people are more prone to depression,

anxiety, low self-esteem, substance abuse, sexual addiction, and eating and sleep disorders. People who are socially disconnected are between two and five times more likely to die from any cause than those who have close ties with family, friends, and other relationships. In fact, people who have bad health habits like smoking, elevated blood pressure, physical inactivity, but they have strong connectedness live longer than people who have great health habits but are disconnected. Winston Churchill had terrible health habits. He ate a high fat diet. He ate a high fat diet. regularly smoking and chewing on fat cigars. He had the incredible stress of a world war on his shoulders.

Still, he lived to be nearly 90. He was asked, do you ever exercise? He responded this way. The only exercise I get is serving as a pallbearer for my friends who died while exercising. I saw an expose a while back in a 102-year-old doctor who is still practicing. He keeps office hours five days a week. He's one of the leaders in the field of arthritis still sits on the board of arthritis research

foundation. Now he looked a hundred years old but he still plays the violin every day with amazing dexterity. And the interviewer he was asking about the keys to living a long life, he chuckled and said, I can tell you this, exercise is vastly overrated. And then his wife of 70 years walked in

he says, find someone to love and give yourself a way to them. There's power and connection, gang. I pray for you all every day. And one of my prayers is that you would find meaningful connection, that you would take a risk and be known. Don't isolate yourself. One of the best ways to make a friend is to be a friend. So why not look for someone to give yourself a way to today, and we'll pick this up again tomorrow. Have a great day.

Thanks for tuning in today. For more biblical teaching and worship, join us for our church online live weekend services on Saturdays at 5 p.m. and Sundays at 9.30 and 11 a.m. Central Standard Time. For more information, visit lakepoint.com. Church slash daily drive.