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#49 - How To Keep A Friendship Forever · Gospel Talks Podcast

• 0:00
  Welcome everybody to Gospel Talks podcast where we help Christians all over the world become more effective in relational evangelism and discipleship.
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  My name is George Menoka.
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  With me today is Jeff Musgrave.
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  He's the author and the founder of The Exchange and very excited to be talking with you guys about Forever Friends.
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  The Gospel is the ultimate relationship retainer.
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  And if you're not familiar with the concept of a retainer, it's like when you put an attorney on retainer,
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  is somebody that you keep ah forever, even if not actively in the relationship, you keep.
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  the gospel is this amazing thing.
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  What we mean is it preserves a friendship uh forever.
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  And now there's an aspect of this that um I've asked uh Pastor Jeff to take us through biblically because I'm a little scared we're gonna sound a bit like Mormons or something
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  in this whole concept of forever friends.
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  um So what do you see in scripture
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  Because I've heard you talk about this in a seminar before.
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  What do you see in the scripture of this concept of forever friends?
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  Yeah, the word that I use more uh
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  naturally is eternal friendships.
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  And I think I see that in the story of the unjust steward.
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  I don't know about you, but there are some of these parables that um it's like the truth is so deep into this strange story that it's kind of hard to extract it.
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  And because the story is so strange, we tend to avoid it.
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  I think that
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  story of the uh king that doesn't care or the governor that doesn't care about the widow and she just keeps coming back to him and so the unfortunate prayer that one's another one
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  that's kind of a little bit ah it's so difficult that maybe we don't go back to it as often as we ought to this this parable of the unjust steward is is a difficult one and so
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  uh
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  I think we've talked about it some in the past.
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  I'm not going to go into the parable itself, but I did want to go into Jesus' summary of the parable because I feel like there's some truth in that summary that is really
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  powerful.
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  And ultimately, he tells us to use the um things of this world to be able to leverage into
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  these eternal friendships that you and I are talking about.
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  And so he's literally talking about using our temporal time, our temporal talents, our temporal treasures, and leveraging it all to be able to effectively make eternal
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  friendships.
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  So let me back up a little bit and say this first statement that uh Jesus made that I think ought to just
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  hit us in the core.
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  It's kind of like one of those punches that hit you in the solar plex and for a moment you can't even breathe.
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  I think this is one of those statements that ought to do that to us.
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  He says the sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light.
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  Now last week we were talking about being the light of the world and that we are the sons of light.
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  and that maybe sometimes we're not investing as well as we ought.
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  And what Jesus is saying in this statement is that the people of this world who are working really hard to pad their bank accounts, literally that's what they want.
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  They want the bank account to grow and so they're investing everything.
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  They're leveraging their life into that uh temporal bank account.
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  And he says, now what I want you to be doing is I want you to be leveraging your life into that, which is really valuable.
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  And then later in the verses, he tells us that's those eternal friendships.
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  And I, I just think that it's uh really an indictment on us that he looks at us and says, you know, you're, you're unsaved, um, greedy counterparts are doing a better job.
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  at what they do than you are about what I've called you to do.
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  This is so true.
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  mean, if you know anything about the business world or Wall Street or anything like that, I mean, they are intense.
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  They are absolutely intense people.
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  They work crazy long hours.
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  um They are dedicated to study.
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  They are dedicated to research.
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  They are dedicated to understanding what's the best way on earth.
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  How are we going to most effectively grow our value?
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  um And sometimes you just don't see that intensity with Christians.
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  We um can be a little lackluster about our zeal to see people come to Christ.
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  it's like, mean, hold on.
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  mean, if that guy is gonna leverage, you watch a show like The Shark Tank, you hear stories about um people leverage their house.
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  people leverage their 401k, people sell everything and go into tremendous debt over a business idea that then takes off to make something like as dumb as a hairband, you know
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  what I mean?
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  um So if somebody can leverage themselves to that point for a business idea, why couldn't we leverage ourselves to that point for eternity?
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  And I'm not talking about going and.
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  selling your house or being in debt or anything like that.
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  this is not what I'm advocating for.
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  I'm just saying we could be a little bit more intense about how we pursue the lost.
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  Absolutely.
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  um When I first started doing evangelism training in churches, I talked to some friends who worked in the financial world and I just asked them, how long did it take you to make
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  the preparation to become a good financial advisor and to be able to sell people products?
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  repeatedly, mean, the shortest time period that I heard
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  was three to four months of intensive study.
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  Some people, of course, went to college and spend an entire four years building a degree.
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  And so obviously people are investing a lot of time.
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  And then I find uh sometimes pastors have a hard time encouraging their people to spend a weekend uh studying how to become a good person who can share the gospel with people.
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  And I'm not saying that to complain.
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  I just believe that when Jesus says the sons of this world are more shrewd than the sons of light, he knew what he was talking about and he is right.
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  We are negligent in regard to this.
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  Right, yeah, I think so.
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  I the exchange online, the course is 19 hours.
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  I mean, what's 19 hours?
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  I mean, which stockbroker doesn't spend 19 hours just reading quarterly financial statements from the companies they're invested in?
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  You know, and it's one of those things that it's, when you look at what um God asks us to do to prepare ourselves to be effective,
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  for the Great Commission, which is something he's asked all believers to prepare themselves for, it pales in comparison to some of the work that the secular world does to
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  accomplish what they're trying to accomplish.
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  I mean, it's nothing.
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  it is and then here Jesus in the next verse, this is by the way Luke chapter 16, now I'm in verse 9, or excuse me, yeah in verse 9, he says I tell you and then he, this is
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  literally Jesus saying this is what I want you to leverage your life for.
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  Make friends for yourselves and then I'm gonna skip the means for just a moment so that we can get the
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  the total and he goes on and he says make friends for yourselves that they may receive you into eternal dwellings.
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  So that's where that eternal friendships come from, those forever friends and literally what God is saying is just like those people are investing their entire life, they're
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  leveraging everything to build their bank account, I want you to leverage
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  everything to build the kingdom of heaven with souls.
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  And then he says by means of unrighteous wealth so that when it fails.
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  And what he's saying is God has made us stewards of financial wealth and by financial wealth, I'm sorry, I said financial wealth, I meant the exact opposite.
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  He's given us uh stewardship over
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  this temporal wealth and by temporal wealth I'm going to use the Randy Alcorn tease, our time, our talents, and our treasure.
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  So it's the whole of us.
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  Everything that we have is in the physical realm, it's temporal.
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  And what he wants us to do is he wants us to take the temporal, time, talents, treasure, and he wants us to leverage it for the eternal and the value of eternal
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  is these eternal friendships, these relationships of people that if you think about it this way, if we were to look on earth, so if we're going to try to take something from
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  earth to heaven with us that is valuable, we're investing here to live there.
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  What is valuable here that we would want to take to heaven with us?
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  And then we can look at it the other way around.
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  What was valuable enough on earth that Jesus was willing to leave heaven to come down to earth to purchase?
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  And of course, we know the answer to that.
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  It's eternal souls.
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  And that's what God wants us to invest our lives in.
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  I love that.
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  I've never thought about it exactly that way, that there was value, not just pity, but there was value that compelled Jesus to come down from heaven and come here and die for
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  people.
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  the math on that one wasn't totally upside down, you know?
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  um So, I think that's incredible.
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  um know, and I think of, um you know,
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  leveraging what we have for relationships, that's I think why God gave us the time, the treasure, the talents He did.
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  I think He didn't give them to us just for them to leverage them for us.
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  think the Jeep He gave you or the fishing rod He gave you or the gun He gave you or the basketball He gave you or the coaching ability He gave you, whatever it is, He gave it to
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  you to be leveraged for the Kingdom.
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  And instead of looking at what I have been saying,
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  you know, how can I use this for me?
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  We look at what we have and say, now what is God wanting me to do with all this?
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  How am I supposed to leverage this?
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  Absolutely and it's interesting the word that Jesus uses to describe that he says one who is faithful in very little that's talking about this um talents these times that I this
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  time that I have it's very little he says he will also be faithful in much and then he goes on he says the one who is dishonest in very little and I that word dishonest uh
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  strikes me because literally what he's saying is if you and I are not investing
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  into this eternal kingdom, then we're actually living a dishonest life, we have something extremely valuable.
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  And we are not honestly striving to help others to be able to have it.
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  It's, it's, it's interesting that he uses that word dishonest.
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  So to hoard it is to be dishonest.
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  It's like it's burying something, it's putting it under, shoving it under the carpet and saying, I don't wanna talk about this.
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  It's being less than transparent about what Jesus has given us, which is amazing that Jesus would, I've never heard that, I've never thought about that from this passage
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  before, is you're actually living a lie.
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  That's incredible.
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  we have eternal blessings in in our own life and we are living as if we don't and that that's dishonest.
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  That's living a lie.
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  He goes on to say, if you have not been faithful in unrighteous wealth, this this temporal world that you live in, then who will entrust you with true riches and
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  This is a little difficult, but literally those were the word true riches goes right back to those eternal friends.
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  So the real value, the real true riches that we can invest in today is the eternal souls of the people around us.
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  This makes total sense.
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  Jesus, I'm catching this in real time right now.
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  So Jesus is saying, you've been a dishonest broker with the things of eternity.
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  Why would I entrust you with more?
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  I mean, you know, I mean, that's kind of implied here, isn't it?
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  Because you look at some people who say, well, I never get any opportunities or I've never been effective or, you know, it's like, well, hold on, hold on.
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  Can we all look in the mirror and literally take a second to say, have we always been honest brokers of the gospel and been stewards of the eternal wealth that was given to us?
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  Do we expect all of a sudden to be catapulted into effectiveness in evangelism without having taken the steps to be honest brokers of the gospel message?
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  I think that's a real call for Jesus in this passage.
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  He's telling us, look in the mirror, what have you been doing with what I've given you?
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  I think it's interesting to use the phrase look in the mirror because the very next phrase, this is verse 12, he just keeps adding on top of here and it keeps getting more
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  more personal.
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  He says, if you have not been faithful and that which is another's, who will give you that which is your own?
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  So the others, when I look in the mirror, if I am honest, I have to say I am breathing today because Jesus gave me my breath.
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  I am wearing clothes today because Jesus gave me my clothes.
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  I'm standing in a bathroom that I call my own because Jesus gave me a house.
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  um Everything that I have is his.
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  But what he is saying is that you and I have the ability to gain something totally our own in eternity.
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  And that something
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  which is true riches, these are the words that he uses, is these eternal friendships.
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  So I wanted to kind of uh shift gears here a little bit.
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  We're talking about the biblical concept of this relationship retainer, the gospel, and forever friendships or eternal friendships.
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  And not only is it a biblical concept, but it is practical in that it
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  it really is effective.
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  The gospel is the ultimate relationship retainer.
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  And I just thought you've made several really close friendships in the last three years since you've been home from Africa.
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  and none of those friendships, and I've, just standing back watching none of those friendships I look at and think, you know, George has everything in common with those
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  people.
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  It's the thing that you have in common with them.
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  is the gospel.
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  took the gospel to them.
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  You literally made friends through the gospel and those friends are now eternal friendships.
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  Mm-hmm.
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  Yeah, and I think the stickiest subject that you'll ever encounter in a relationship with another person is talking about the things of eternity, talking about the gospel, talking
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  about their soul needs.
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  And once you've gone through that together, you can easily go through anything together.
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  And you will ...
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  you will learn to love the things that they love and like the things that they like just because you're kind of almost not in a negative way stuck with each other.
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  Meaning when I say sticky, that's what we call community in the church, right?
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  So it's like the church is supposed to be kind of a sticky place where it's kind of hard for people to leave because of that community relationship aspect, not because anybody's
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  making them.
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  And so what I've seen the gospel become the ultimate
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  relationship retainer is, you know, so here we've talked about the things of eternity and the things that matter most.
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  Now everything else is just gravy.
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  And so it's like it sticks you together, it binds you together.
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  You know, because you've gone that deep, you can go into any other subject together.
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  You can have any other kind of conversation.
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  I mean, I'm sitting with Cody this week, you know, we've had all these conversations about the gospel and this week we're having conversations about
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  know, Well, we can easily have that conversation.
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  We've already had the conversation about atheism and God and Mormonism and all those things.
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  I mean, that's a walk in the park.
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  It's not necessarily every aspect of it is a walk in the park, but I mean, comparatively, it's a walk in the park.
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  and because you have this common bond of the gospel, you are brothers and sisters in Christ.
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  And now, I mean, that's it.
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  You have that person.
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  Whether, however long you thought you wanted to have them or not, fawn.
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  called me this week from Africa.
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  know, Ben, um Ben Spencer in Colorado, who was here at GCU and went back to Colorado to work in his father's business, is buying me birthday gifts or buys me a Christmas present
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  and I buy him presents and we message each other all the time and sometimes call and talk when he's got long drives between fixing people's fireplaces.
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  I mean, it's absolutely incredible.
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  And some of these guys, I look at them and I go, I know.
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  Now we have to be friends forever, which is great, but it's that stickiness of the gospel, it's the stickiness of church community.
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  One of the things that I heard at the beginning of what you started to say is that the gospel is a make or break issue when it comes to relationships.
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  I've actually heard people say, know, I am afraid to give the gospel to my friend because I'm afraid I might lose the friendship.
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  And I think what I'm hearing you say is you got to be willing to take that risk because you're never going to have an eternal friendship without taking that risk.
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  Well, think about it in terms of the analogy you just gave us so beautifully from that passage.
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  It's you are withholding eternal value from them and not having that conversation.
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  What more could bind you together forever more strongly than pointing them to Jesus Christ?
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  I mean, I heard of a pastor in Canada who had a congregation full of people that he had won to Christ.
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  Just he was an incredible relationship builder.
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  I think you know him, he's the president of Faith Baptist Bible College and yeah, Jim Tillotson.
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  Jim Tillotson came to our church, preached one of our missions conferences.
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  He talked about how one day his secretary walked into his office and said, hey, somebody just dropped off the title to a brand new F-154 truck and here are the keys.
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  It's for you.
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  It's anonymous.
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  As somebody from the Congress, they're just so thankful for your ministry.
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  It's not that that...
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  material thing is the goal of that relationship at all.
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  It's not.
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  And if it was, Jim would have never gotten that truck.
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  But Jim getting that truck is a reflection of how these forever friendships around the gospel is the most valuable kind of friendship anybody in the world can find.
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  If you can find somebody, and if you can be this type of person, that will point you to Jesus and show you the gospel and show you that real treasure, my goodness, you'll never
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  forget that person.
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  um And I mean, it's like,
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  I told you a couple podcast episodes ago, that guy from Mormonism, he's sitting there at the end of an awkward conversation.
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  We go home, he calls me up and Cody's in the car and he says, hey, how 20 years he's been with his bishop, 10 years, I don't know, however long he's been with his bishop in
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  Mormonism, he goes, you've talked with me more about Jesus Christ in the last hour than my bishop has in the last 10 years.
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  And he said, thank you, you're doing a great job, keep doing what you're doing.
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  That's somebody who doesn't right now, who isn't right now believing exactly what we believe, you know?
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  I think that's, boy, you could be in people's lives in the most significant way possible.
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  uh This is like, you want to make a difference.
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  This is what you do.
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  Escape insignificance, impact eternity by pointing people to Jesus Christ.
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  Well, that sounds like a good podcast title escape insignificance by investing your life in the gospel.
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  That's, that's awesome.
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  What we'll give him credit.
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  um We've been talking about the fact that the gospel is the ultimate relationship retainer.
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  And here's why I think that is uh the gospel.
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  When embraced,
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  by someone that God is calling to himself uh is what we call conversion.
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  mean, person, conversion is not, I'm going to stop having this worldview and start having that worldview.
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  Conversion is not, I'm going to stop being this religion and start being that religion.
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  Conversion is an instantaneous, miraculous,
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  transformation.
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  It literally is God taking someone and transferring them from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light.
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  He makes them a new creation.
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  He calls it a new birth.
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  So literally they were children of the devil, John chapter 8 verse 44, and he makes them children of God, John chapter 1 verse 12.
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  I mean, literally, is you and I are sitting across the living room from a man who doesn't know Jesus, and we are totally unrelated to him.
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  And the moment God gives him conversion as he places his trust in Jesus Christ, that instantaneous moment, we are now brothers.
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  And that's the source
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  of this uh eternal friendship is that that person has been transformed.
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  It's miraculous.
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  It's supernatural.
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  It's something only God can do.
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  That's why we invest into this because that's what life is about.
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  Life on earth is about building life in heaven.
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  uh
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  you're your brothers with that person and right now you have that close relationship with them because you are kind of the primary caregiver.
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  You're the spiritual parent so to speak but eventually and you're watching this happen with some of them.
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  The podcast you had with Cody certainly shows that you're becoming partners in this business of the kingdom that God has called you to.
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  Okay, yeah, yeah.
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  I think that's great way to put it.
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  I love that word, partnership.
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  Now you go from, know, hey, I'm kind of your shepherd or I'm leading you through a process.
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  I'm walking ahead of you to, um now we're walking alongside of each other.
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  Now that's that full circle of ministry kind of process.
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  That's actually the stage you're in now because, you know, I got to sit at the
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  exchange board meeting and I'm sitting around looking at people that we've written articles about, how about you and Anna won them to Christ with the exchange Bible study.
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  I'm looking at Mary Ellen and I'm looking at Michael and I'm looking at your boys even, Jonathan and Josh and all these people sitting around and I it's incredible the long-term
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  dividends.
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  of this relationship and partnership um that it becomes.
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  I don't know you want to speak to that at all, what you've seen God do there.
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  I just think that's what life is about is investing, literally leveraging everything we have physically, temporally time, talents, treasures into seeing those lives transformed
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  by the gospel.
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  um I told you I was going to read this quote and I got to go looking for it.
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  Will Gawken has said that discipleship
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  is the intentional leveraging of all that I am so that others may become more like Jesus Christ.
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  And I think we could say that to this regard, disciple making is the intentional leveraging of all that I am so that others can spend eternity in heaven with me.
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  I mean that's literally what disciple making is all about.
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  Yes, amen, amen.
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  um Which you don't take anything else with you when you leave this world.
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  You could take other people.
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  more valuable.
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  mean, you listening to you describe that table at the exchange board meeting and letting me look around that room in my mind's eye and see those people.
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  And I will just tell you, there is nothing more valuable to me in my life than the people that I've been able to influence for Christ.
• 25:48
  Yeah, amen, amen.
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  Well, um that's been a tremendous podcast episode and uh forever friends and the eternal relationships that God gives us.
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  um Thank you so much, brother.
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  um Thank you guys for listening and pray with us as we pray to the Lord of the harvest that he would send forth laborers that would go and find forever friends, people that were
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  gonna take with us to heaven.
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  And there's nothing else that you're gonna take with you.
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  There's nothing else you're gonna wanna take with you.
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  This is the only thing of value in this world that you can take with you.
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  The furniture is better in heaven, the roads are better in heaven, the healthcare is better in heaven, the money is better in heaven.
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  And so really, all that we're here for and everything that's been given to us is to be leveraged for these forever friends.
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  And so pray with us as we pray to Lord of the harvest and be praying for what God might do if you want a gift towards the exchange and its needs to continue expanding.
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  We're looking for some people who can be $25 a month
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  donors, regularly monthly donors for the price of a pizza and help us expand our mission and our outreach to getting more people, uh getting the exchange in front of more people.
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  We love you guys and we're praying for you.
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  We'll see you next week.