Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Biblical Friendship | David's Life in 22 Stories | (1 Sam. 20)

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to 10 minute Bible Talks where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. And I'm Patrick Miller. Right now we're working through the story of David's life in First and Second Samuel. Debbie and Anne were good friends, but not just friends. They were also serious bike riders and they were training partners. So they're out on a mountain trail one day. And the way Debbie tells the story, Anne is in front of her as they go down this hill.

Starting point is 00:00:32 And all of a sudden she hears screaming and screaming, crazy wild scream that Debbie knew something was really wrong as soon as she heard it. Debbie says she comes up to where Ann is and a mountain lion has evidently knocked her off her bike and he's beginning to drag Anne off the trail. And Debbie's first instinct is to throw her bike at the Mountain Lion hoping that'll scare him, but it doesn't phase him at all. And the Mountain Lion kind of has Anne kind of by the back of the shoulders, the neck area. And so Debbie grabs her feet and just starts screaming.

Starting point is 00:01:04 She said she's just praying, screaming, pulling, just praying for the strength to hold on. She's like, you know, I'm a mom and I think half what I did was just motherly instinct, but I couldn't get that lion to let go. There were two men bikers that were in the area and they heard the screams. And so they start running up there to find out what's happening. And they said that when they got there, Anne's head was in the mouth of the mountain lion and Debbie is holding on her feet face to face with this mountain lion, just screaming at it. to let her friend go.

Starting point is 00:01:38 We all need a friend like that. We all need a mountain lion friend. We all need a friend who won't let go. Because Debbie wouldn't let go and is alive today. And in a moment, we're going to see that in a similar way, David's life was physically and spiritually threatened, but he had a friend in Jonathan who would not let him go, who helped him survive some of the hardest times that he ever experienced in his life.

Starting point is 00:02:09 Now, David and Jonathan's friendship, it was an unlikely one. Jonathan was the son of King Saul. And Saul, of course, was king, but David was the anointed king, and Saul was threatened by David's very presence, and so he's doing all these things to sabotage David, even try to kill David. But in the midst of all that drama, Jonathan, Saul's son, and David develop a great, close, intimate, personal friendship. And I think we can learn from their friendship about our friendships.

Starting point is 00:02:43 See, we all want to have good friendships. We all want good community. But unfortunately, that's hard to come by. We're created by God for community. So that God alone is not enough for us. He created in us a desire and a need to have human friends. friendships. But in our culture, those friendships are hard to build. So as we look at David and Jonathan, we're looking for principles that can apply to our life. And one of the things we see in their

Starting point is 00:03:16 friendship that can apply to our friendships is that friends share common ground together. The common ground that David and Jonathan shared was a commitment to do God's will. See, Jonathan recognized that David had been anointed king. He knew that this was part of God's plan. And instead of fighting that, instead of fighting for his own rights, instead of fighting on behalf of his family, he submits to God's plan. He acknowledges that one day, David will be king, not him, and he's okay with that. They're both committed to doing what God wants more than they are committed to doing what they want. All of our friendships have some sort of common ground that we share with another person.

Starting point is 00:04:01 It could be that we both like sports or we serve in the same PTA committee or we have kids on the same soccer team, whatever it is. Friendships require that we share some kind of common ground. And yet if our common ground is just based on an activity or something we do or something we watch together, those friendships are going to be a little superficial. They're going to be a little less than they could be. They're going to be what you might call surface-level friendships. We're surrounded by people who are our acquaintances.

Starting point is 00:04:33 Some experts say that we have somewhere between 500 and 2,500 acquaintances in our lives, and those are good things, healthy things, important things. But they're not the kind of mountain lion friend that we really need in our life. They're not the kind of friend who sticks closer than a brother. other, as it says in Proverbs. So we want to go deeper in our friendships. At least some of them, we want them to be based not on just an activity, but on our common faith that we have in Christ. If you're friends with a Christian, you can go deeper into the fact that we all are sinners and we all need grace. That allows us to be open and honest and transparent.

Starting point is 00:05:17 None of us have it all together. None of us have it all figured out. of us are where we would like to be spiritually or in our character or in any area of our life. And so when you realize that you share in common with these Christian friends that you are sinners and you desperately depend on God's grace, it allows you to be honest and open about the struggles that you have in your life. Because you know that they have struggles in their life too. And that leads us to the second truth that we learn here. And that is that friends accept one another. Think about David and Jonathan. When Goliath came out to fight the Israelite armies, he was taunting them. He was saying, come on, don't be so scared. Come out and fight me.

Starting point is 00:06:05 Now, where was Jonathan when all that was happening? Well, I think he was frightened just like all the rest of Israel was, and he was in hiding, scared to go out. David is the one who went out and faced Goliath. But David never used Jonathan's faithlessness against him. David didn't use Jonathan's failure against him. It didn't keep him from building a close, intimate, personal friendship with Jonathan. Romans 157 says, accept one another just as Christ accepted you. And I think that's how David accepted Jonathan. Just like God had accepted Jonathan. Just like God had accepted. accepted him. And that's how we have to accept all our friends. Because remember, we are all sinners, and we all need God's grace, we've all blown it, we've all failed far more than we even recognize

Starting point is 00:07:01 sometimes. So if we're going to have good, close, intimate, personal, mountain lion friendships, then we're going to have to be people who accept each other in all of our messiness and all of our faults. Now, how do I get the power to do that? Well, remember what Romans 157 said, Accept one another just as Christ accepted you. Christ accepted me in all the messiness of my life, so I want to accept others in the messiness of their life. Proverbs says, a friend loves at all times.

Starting point is 00:07:36 That doesn't mean we approve of every single thing our friends do. No, sometimes we have to have really hard conversations with them because we know a friend also corrects us and a friend also says really hard things to us. So what does it mean to love at all times? Well, it means that we accept people in Christ. We extend grace and compassion to them. Even when we have a hard conversation with them,

Starting point is 00:08:03 it's done out of love. Maybe a good question to ask yourself is, am I a safe person to share things with? Do I use things that people tell me against them? Do I share it and gossip about it inappropriately? Or do they realize that I'm a safe person and they can be honest with me? I'll encourage them and pray for them. Another truth we see in Jonathan and David's friendship that applies to our life is that friends encourage one another.

Starting point is 00:08:36 In 1st Samuel 23, there's this little story about how Saul is closing in on David, and David is really scared for his life. And Jonathan goes out to David, and here's the key phrase, he helps him find strength in God. He helps him find strength in God. He says, don't be afraid. My father, Saul will not lay a hand on you. You're going to be king over Israel, and I will be second to you. Even my father Saul knows this. So Jonathan didn't help David have confidence in himself or in his abilities.

Starting point is 00:09:15 No, he helped David have confidence in God. And the way he did that was by reminding David of God's promises. We need friends in our life who will help us find strength, not in ourselves but in God, and will remind us of God's promises to be with us, to care for us, to pay for our sin, to walk through trials with us, to use those trials to shape us into the right kind of people. we were all created for community. And I think part of us just desperately longs for those kinds of friendships. And yet we find them in our ever busy culture,

Starting point is 00:09:55 we find them increasingly more difficult to have. We crave those friendships, but we don't have them. And I think a common response is to say, I wish I had friends like that. But what if we flipped it and said, I want to be a friend like that. Instead of seeking out people who are the right kind of friend, what if I started being the right kind of friend

Starting point is 00:10:21 and then trusted God that he would build those friendships between me and other people? So instead of demanding other people, share with me about their lives and be open and transparent, what if I started to do that? So that I shared my struggles and my weaknesses with others, knowing that they have their own, and maybe they'll respond by sharing their struggles. But do we have something in common besides an activity like football or kids?

Starting point is 00:10:53 But we have something deeper in common, and that is that we are sinners in need of grace. What if I just started accepting other people, like Christ accepted me? In other words, what if I didn't hold other people's weaknesses against them, but instead prayed for them and loved them. What if I helped people find their strength in God? So when they're going through a difficult time, instead of withdrawing or retreating, what if I move toward them,

Starting point is 00:11:25 to tell them that God is in this with them, to pray with them and for them? I think we can flip this whole thing. Instead of looking for the right kind of people to be friends with, What if we started becoming the right kind of friend to other people and then left the results to God? Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed this content, please subscribe and give us a rating. That helps others find this podcast more easily.

Starting point is 00:11:52 Also ask yourself who you could share this podcast with. Texting an episode to a friend or family member is a great way to help them grow spiritually. If you want to go deeper, check out our show notes for book recommendations.

Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Biblical Friendship | David's Life in 22 Stories | (1 Sam. 20)

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