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Transformational Friendship · Mental Health and the Mission of the Church

• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: I want to do uh kind of break from what I've been talking about lately.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I just want to share with you from my own personal journey and uh just a way that uh I encounter God and and just some of the cool things.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: But uh I just want to talk today about transformative friendships.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: Friendships that are awesome in their own right, just as friendships that you enjoy being together and doing things and that kind of thing.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: But but what I want to talk about are friendships that have actually changed your life.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and I want to uh specifically talk about uh a special kind of transformative friendship.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: And uh let me let me set it off by asking you a question.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: Have you ever had someone in your life that fulfilled the role of a gatekeeper?
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: Have you ever had someone in your life that fulfilled the role of a gatekeeper?
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: And what I mean by that is you're in one place uh in your experience, maturity, intimacy, influence, income, impact, whatever it might be, and you have a sense that God has more, and maybe you're what I call stuck at the threshold.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you're you're you're kind of like at a at a fence, looking over the fence at the life you feel like God wants you to have, or you have this sense of God wanting to move you somewhere, and uh, but you just aren't you just aren't getting there.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: And um God brings someone into your life that is welcoming, inviting, honoring, celebrates who you are.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: Uh they're encouraging, they're generous in their in their perspective and and uh their access, granting of access to to you, to the world that they live in.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: So I was kind of wrestling with some of those kind of things, and uh this morning, in fact, and uh turned out that my my wife and I read the Bible through together and then pray some every morning, virtually, not every morning, but virtually every morning.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I was in Acts 9, and it was about Saul, S-A-U-L Saul, before he became Paul.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: This is when he was knocked off the horse and called by God.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: And there were just several things that stood out to me because I really started the day asking God, basically, am I doing what I'm supposed to be doing?
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'm I'm meeting with a lot of people on our church staff at Seacoast, um, in the congregation.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: I continue to meet with leaders, uh I I travel and speak and that kind of thing.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: But there's just this sort of feeling that I'm not doing all that I should be doing.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: And uh and when I posed that question before the Lord, uh I felt like it it was just, you know, a coincidence, and you know what I mean by that, that I was reading Acts chapter 9 today, and um Paul had a phenomenally monumental um uh gate crashing moment.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, he was persecuting the church, met Jesus on the road, and everything about his life changed.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: Everything changed.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: And um, you know, there's a lot of stuff going on in Acts chapter 9, and I just started highlighting phrases that stood out to me, but here's the one I want to talk to you about.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: He had a reputation for persecuting Christians, and so the church of that day was like, whoa, uh, you know, they heard he'd gotten saved, but they didn't trust it, and so they were kind of like, I don't know what to do with this guy.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, and it says that they were afraid of him, and then there's this phrase.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: It says, but Barnabas, but Barnabas took hold of him and brought him to the apostles.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: But Barnabas took hold of him and brought him to the apostles.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: Here's what I'm getting at.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: Have you ever had someone in your life who joined you where you are and walked with you to a different place, to a better place?
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: They let me just read some thoughts I wrote down.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: I would call it a transformative friendship.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: Now, here's the key thought now.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't intentional.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't like I'm gonna be a friend to you to change you.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: It was a friendship that changed you, but it wasn't necessarily the intention.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: You might call it a functional friendship.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it it this transition, this gate crashing, this moving from one level to the other, was not done by pushing or pulling, but by simply walking beside you while you transitioned, uh, while you crossed the threshold.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, somebody who who liked you the way you are, but maybe saw something in you that maybe you see, maybe you don't see, and they wanted to facilitate pulling that out of you.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um and it wasn't even direct and maybe not even conscious and intentional, but someone who just reached out, saw that in you, and wanted to create an environment in which you would grow into this next season, next level, next stage of your life, maybe in your maturity, intimacy with God and other people, maybe in your influence and impact in the lives of others, maybe in your income, I don't know.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: But what I'm getting at is this Barnabas took hold of Saul and brought him to a place of intimacy and influence.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: You got any of those people in your life?
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: Have you ever just taken a moment and sat down?
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, to be honest with you, what occurred to me first was Pastor Greg Surratt.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um I'd come into church.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: I, you know, I was doing my thing at a level that was Colleen and I felt honored, it was great.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: And uh came into Seacoast to do a little stuff that was very clearly in my wheelhouse.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: And Pastor Greg in his you'd have to know him to know what I mean by this, but in his in his just unassuming, non-pretentious, generous, almost like almost accidental feeling, but clearly not, just reached out to me.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: And all he simply said was, hey, uh he took hold of me and brought me into a different realm of relationships, influence, etc.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: And um others have done that.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: But I think Pastor Greg, I think now at this stage of his life, I think that's his calling to be a transformative friend to other leaders, to help them bridge splint from one season to the next, from one stage to the next.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: And there's other people in my life that have been that.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: Philip Miles was that to me, Fred Denham was that to me, my wife's been that to me many, many times.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Corky and Debbie uh have been that to me, and some of you know who they are, some not, by providing uh uh an outlet when I had a health challenge, and I would say, whether accurately or not, only God knows that their generosity possibly saved my life.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: And um what I'm saying to you is this think about who might have been a barnabas to you, who took hold of you at a time when you were in a place that maybe wasn't healthy, maybe wasn't um fulfilling your destiny, actualizing your potential, whatever, and they just kind of stood beside you as a friend.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: The Holy Spirit, one of the words for the Holy Spirit is para-cleat.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: Para means beside, and cleat, he was he was called to walk beside us.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: Comforter, encourager are some of the words that are used.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: Helper.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: But who are some of those people in our lives that have been gatekeepers?
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: That we were stuck at a threshold.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: A threshold's that that line between one room and the next.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: Who who what friendships have you had that intentionally or unintentionally, directly or indirectly, have helped you cross a threshold to go from a place that was maybe good, maybe not good, to a place that was clearly better.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, I just like to encourage you to think about that and maybe even reach out to them and tell them, you know, you played a really important role in my life, and you helped me transition from a place that was good or what whatever, and you made it easier for me to get to a place that I knew I was supposed to be, needed to be, God wanted me to be, but I wasn't doing very well at getting there by myself.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: And you really were a transformative friend in my life.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: So the other side of that is how about be one?
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: How about notice the people around you?
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: Just notice them.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't mean intentionally like, oh, I'm gonna be a I'm gonna be a gatekeeper for everybody.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: That's not what I mean.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: Just notice people and notice the potential in them and call it out.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: Call it out of them.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: And um, whatever.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: Hope you enjoyed that.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: It was very, very helpful to me this morning.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: Just in a moment with God, and um I just enjoy, and I hope you do, uh, have a have a walk with God that's fun and uh encouraging.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: And um, if not, I sure do want to help you.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: Later, man.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: Bye bye.