Being Real

A good friend is somebody who tells you the truth, who speaks the truth in love. Here's author Kelly Needham. This is Family Life Today. Our hosts are Dave and Anne Wilson. I'm Bob Lapine. You'll find us online at familylifetoday.com. The Bible talks about the wounds of a friend.

Let's be honest, they're still wounds, but God uses them powerfully in our lives. We'll talk more about that today with Kelly Needham. Stay with us. And welcome to Family Life Today.

Thanks for joining us. I was driving from Nashville to Little Rock. This was many years ago. I was on a stretch of road between Jackson, Tennessee, and Memphis, Tennessee. I can't imagine where this is going. Where is this going? Keep going, Bob. I'm on here. As I drive, I like to listen to sermons.

I'm an audio learner, so I look forward to long trips to drives because I get to listen to a bunch of stuff. And I'll bet you you've never one time listened to a Dave Wilson sermon. Okay, let's move on, Bob.

I'm just guessing. I'm adding that to my podcast list right now. Here we go. But I was listening to a series from Paul David Tripp, and he had done a series on the need for community in the local church. And he used a phrase in that—I could show you the mile marker in the road, because I think I backed it up and dictated it into my phone so that I would remember the phrase. And it's something we've used at our church over and over again. He says, A healthy church is made up of people who have—here's the criteria—grace-based, Christ-centered, intentionally intrusive, redemptive relationships. That's good.

And I kind of took that apart and just started chewing. Grace-based, which means we're always going to give our friends grace. We're always going to say, okay, I know you've messed up, I've messed up, but we're going to minister to one another out of grace. We're going to be Christ-centered. We're going to have that same focus. We're going to be intentionally intrusive. That's the one where people always go, I don't know about intentionally intrusive, right?

I don't know that I want you getting into my business unless I tell you. But intentionally intrusive says, no, you've got free rein, you can ask whatever you want, and I'll be honest, and that's risky, but that's real. And then redemptive.

We're not doing this for any purpose other than so that all of us can grow in grace together to be more like Christ. And I bring that up because I thought of it as I was reading through the book Friendish, written by Kelly Needham, who's joining us this week on Family Life Today. Kelly, welcome back.

Thank you so much. Kelly is an author and a speaker who lives in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Her husband, Jimmy, he's still a recording artist. He is. When was the last time he recorded a CD? Oh, man, it's probably been three or four years now. He's a worship pastor.

He is. And Jimmy actually came to a day of prayer we were doing with the Family Life staff. Did you know this a couple of years ago? And was just ministered to us in a profound way. Kelly has written this book I mentioned called Friendish. And again, that definition just jumped to mind for me because you're talking about these kinds of relationships and the need for them and the power for them. And church ought to be a place that's a natural breeding ground for this, right? That's right.

It should be. And sadly, I think most of us have seen this in churches that the superficiality of our friendships is sometimes not any different in the world than it is in the church. And we're all waiting for someone else to do something about that.

Yeah. And I think at the end of the day, if you have a heart to see that change, then you go be that change in your community that you want to see. That will both be really hard and scary and will cost you something, but it will actually bring about probably the richest flourishing of deep and meaningful friendships that you'll have otherwise by taking that risk and jumping in there. And I know I shared in the last program some about my willingness to do that, to email people and say, will you be my friend and really go that direction and invite those people into my life. But then that intrusive part came back to bite me. It was like, oh, I forgot I'm welcoming that too.

And I know theoretically I want that. But when it's actually in front of you, it feels very different. Do you remember a time when you froze up on somebody getting intrusive with you? Oh, I have more stories to count that I could even share right now. But one in particular, a friend of mine sat down with me. We were just getting together for coffee to just catch up. And she left to go to the bathroom. Found out later she was nervous about what she had to share with me.

She went to go collect herself, but she came and sat back down and was totally different. And she said, hey, I need to talk to you about something. And I was like, I have no idea what's coming because we were really good friends. But I could tell she had something to share that was going to be really hard for her to share and had to do with me. And essentially she shared some hurt she had felt from me that was totally unintentional. My conscience hadn't yet been pricked by it.

It was a blind spot in my life. And she had shared a few things with me over the past month. And as a verbal processor and a Bible student, I had sermonized her in response.

Just processed, oh, that makes me think of this that I'm learning. And she just needed somebody to listen, but instead I probably talked to her for like half an hour about what I was learning. And it was really hurtful.

And I couldn't see it. And I think she knew that. And she had stopped wanting to hang out with me. And she valued our friendship enough to say something.

And so she took a big risk to go there with me and share some specific examples where it had happened. And as soon as she shared, I could see it. It gave me eyes to see. And I was like, I totally get that.

I couldn't see it before. Thank you for sharing. I cried. She cried. We prayed together.

She prayed for me and was like, I'm not mad at you. I just value our friendship. And I needed to say that. And that has produced so much fruit in my life because it helped me see that blind spot. It helped me have a category for not everybody needs to hear what you're learning, Kelly. Sometimes they just need someone to listen. And sometimes they just need to have fun. If they're in a heavy season, they don't need to hear all of the ways that this Hebrew word means this thing about grief and suffering.

They just probably need to go see a movie with you and you to say, I love you. And I needed somebody to help me see that blind spot. And that's where the value of a friend is so critical.

That's right. Because we all have blind spots. I mean, everybody else does. I don't, but everybody.

No, I mean, everybody does. And we have a tendency not to see them because they're blind spots. We did a exercise years ago with these guys in my life. We were meeting once a month, have a meal together, spend the whole night at one of our houses talking and studying, whatever. And we decided, I think it was my idea, let's identify each other's blind spots as a group.

Which probably wasn't my idea, now that I think about it. But I mean, it was like, what? Yeah, so when it's Dave's night and we did this.

So I leave the room, six or seven guys are in a room talking about me. They're going to decide what three things. We said, give me three gifts. We called them gifts.

Give me a gift. And I remember when I went into the kitchen of this house, nobody's there. I'm like, well, I hope this is over in like five minutes.

That means there aren't that many. And I was out there like 25, 30 minutes. I'm like, oh, my goodness. And I go in there. And one of the things I had done in this group is I remember I brought to them a pass that I was given as Detroit Lions chaplain. For every game, they give you an all-access pass to the stadium so I can be on the sideline and be in the locker room. And all the security will look at that pass. So I gave this to these guys and said, I'm not giving this pass to more than five or six people in my life, but you have all access.

Which was a beautiful picture. It's like, I'm not giving this to the congregation, but my wife has this. She can ask me anything. She can probe anywhere she wants.

You guys can too. So that's sort of the blind spot thing. And I remember walking back in there and sitting down.

So here goes all access. And they go, yeah, okay, Dave, here's your top three. And I wanted them, but when they said them, everything in me was like defensive. And yet I'm looking at these guys going, I can't get defensive because I've told them to do this. And they've talked about it. And they're not doing it because they're mad at me. They're doing it because they love me. And they want to give me a gift.

And I don't see this. But everything in me is like, that's not true. And yet when you look at one person that says that, you can maybe dismiss it.

But when you have five or six, you have to go, this is true. Oh my goodness. Okay, tell me what that looks like.

Tell me how that comes out. And what a gift God gave us and friends to do that. It is such a gift. It's a protection.

Because we can't, like you said, we can't see them. But like Proverbs says, the wounds of a friend can be trusted. Our friends, it is a wound. It hurts. It's painful.

And it's okay to name it that it's a wound. But it's from your friends and therefore it's trustworthy. And when you have friends that just are flattering you, like the kisses of an enemy, you know, watch out for them.

We should be aware of people in our life who never have anything to say to us like that. Well, we did the same thing because a lot of the guys that Dave's friends with, I'm friends with their wives. And so the guys survived this. So we had been friends for probably eight years. So we were asking, are we at the point that we could do that with one another? And so we decided to do it. Because it's dangerous.

It could go left, you know. But we had been friends long enough. I think that's important. And we trusted and we loved each other through a lot of different things. We decided as women that we would only offer one thing. But it was really hard and it was difficult and it created some friction in our relationships. There was one woman that came in and we all had to agree together.

If somebody said, I feel like this could be, and no one else agreed with it, it wasn't something we'd even bring up. So this one girl came in and it was only one person would say, I don't know if you're aware of this, but when we're in a group together, you dominate the conversation and no one else can say anything. And it was so hard. She said, what? Are you telling me that I'm that person? And we all kind of shook our heads, but she had no idea.

It was a true blind spot. But it could also, it created some friction and also some insecurity, wondering, do other people see this? Because my insecurity has been, I'm not a good friend. And so I feel like I'm not great at initiating.

I'm not great at reaching out. I don't have a shepherd's heart that will continually reach out and see how they're doing. And so then I'll feel like I don't deserve to be befriended by someone. Have you ever dealt with that, that you've ever pulled away?

Because you're wondering if you've invested enough time into the relationship. For me, it wasn't out of insecurity of feeling like, I don't know if I deserve to be befriended. I definitely have felt that way. And some of it was in my early years of college and even being a young married woman, I did a lot of reaching out and almost burnt out in my, I didn't have enough energy even for my husband.

And so that was kind of a point of contention. So I pulled back the other direction and started to feel insecure that if I didn't go above and beyond all the time that they're going to be mad at me, something's going to be off. So yeah, it definitely, my habits before marriage and in those early years made it really hard for me to try and figure out what is the balance there. And I learned I really have to trust my friends that they're going to let me know. And so some of those friendships, I verbalized that and said, I struggle with what's appropriate and how, you know, what I should be giving. And in seasons that are, some seasons we have more to give than others. You know, sometimes we need our friends to pick up the slack and sometimes we have to do that for them.

And I've asked them, will you just be faithful to let me know? You talked about your friend who you were trying to teach or help or counsel and she just needed empathy. But you had a situation in your life when you were going through a season of depression and you needed something other than just empathy. You needed some people to kind of point out, like we're talking about here, the blind spots.

Be a little bit intrusive, yeah. Tell us about that season. What was going on? Was it because of the miscarriages that you were dealing with, the depression? It was actually a little bit after that and had a little bit to do with just the exposure that God had done in my life of my pride. He'd exposed some spiritual pride and given me a true godly grief over that. I mean, I really grieved that in a beautiful way.

It was really refreshing. And that's when I started to get opportunities to teach and speak and I was not interested because I thought, well, I'm going to fail at that, so I'm writing it off. And my husband really felt strongly that that was not right for me to do, that that was self-protection for me. And he really felt like God was bringing those opportunities and was encouraging me into them. And it created a terror of personal moral failure in my own heart that I felt afraid that I was going to dishonor God with my own spiritual pride.

So it was very introspective. And so I'm in this probably two-year funk of obsessing about my motives and just becoming really in my head all the time. And I became very depressed by just the reality that I was always going to struggle with this end to some degree. And I did, I had a friend sit down with me and she knew it was a hard season for me. And the thesis of what she shared with me was, I know you're in a hard season, Kelly, but you are so focused on your own problems right now that you don't even have the ability to see anybody else's.

And I know you're struggling, but so am I. And we had had an interaction that, again, it was hurtful to her and I couldn't see it because my head was just so down in my own heart and mess. And that was a really, really painful moment.

I just, I don't know how many other things have felt as uncomfortable as that. And I took that and I sat in my closet for probably two hours and cried and talked to God about it. And it was what I needed to get my head out of the fog of my own self-obsession because what I couldn't see was in God convicting me of spiritual pride.

I course corrected way too far into a different form of pride and just was becoming very self-piteous and still self-obsessed, but in a negative way. And she really helped me see that and it was a big risk for her. I've talked to her about it after the fact. But she knew how I felt that I wanted to sleep all the time because I felt so just defeated in my life that I really was struggling with some of those presenting symptoms of depression.

And yet, here she was willing to say what was on her heart to say. And it was like the lancing of a wound, that's the best that I feel like. It was so painful, but after that was a difference. I turned a corner.

It was what helped bring me out of that funk. So, I'm imagining a listener who is thinking, I'm observing something in a friend's life. Yeah, Bob, I was meaning to talk to you about this.

Now's my shot. Something that's one of those, I think I need to say something. And there are some people who are like, I'm ready for that. Yeah, they're the speak the truth kind of. They're the sermonators. Yeah, the prophets.

I'm good at that. And then there are others who are like, I could never say anything like that because that could harm the relationship. So, Ephesians tells us, speak the truth in love. Some people run to truth, some people run to love.

We've got to bring both of them to the table. If somebody's feeling that, I wonder if I need to say something, what kind of counsel would you give them to pray through to know, do I say something? How do I say it? When do I say it?

What's the process you go through rather than just saying, I need to say something, I'm calling them right now. Probably a time out to do a little evaluation before you have that conversation, right? Definitely. And I think there's a category in this conversation we have to have for overlooking offenses that the Bible does tell us it's godly to overlook an offense. Usually when I know I need to say something, though, is when I don't want to be around them or I'm tempted to be false. That verse in Ephesians says, put therefore, laying aside falsehood, speak the truth in love. And so, when a friend comes up to me and says, hey, are we okay? And like, we're not, because I'm actually secretly offended. And I say, oh, we're fine. I've embraced a level of falsehood in that friendship. And maybe I'm doing it under the guise of love and overlooking offenses.

But when I notice that I'm starting to be fake with my friend or I don't want to be around them, then I know I need to say something. Because that conflict moment that's coming is actually the way we fight for unity. That because we're sinners, we're all going to offend one another. We have to be willing to go to those moments and address them. So, when I know that's coming, I then start praying. And I give myself probably, it depends on the nature of the situation, but I give myself probably a week to just pray and talk to God about it.

Ask the counsel of my husband, sometimes people who don't know that friend, who live somewhere else, and share confidentially. And then I ask the Lord to pull the log out of my own eye. The thing that I feel offended about in them, God, show me where that's happening in my own life. Because then I will become, like Jesus says in that parable, you pull the log out first so that you are able to pull the speck out. It actually humbles you and tenderizes your own heart that you could come into that conversation with an understanding that you're just as weak and needy as they are. So then, I'll set aside time to meet with that friend and ask for that meeting, which is usually when the awkwardness ensues. When you say, can we meet without our kids, or can I talk to you about something? They sniff, something's up here, right? They know something's going on. If somebody calls you and says, hey, could we get together and just the two of us?

You go, what's coming here, right? Exactly. And it feels horrible, and it's super uncomfortable. Nobody likes it.

Maybe some people do, but I think most people, when I talk to them, they don't like it. They'd rather do what most of us do, which is slowly back away from the relationship and go build friendships somewhere else in the church or in the community and just kind of go, oh, that was weird, and move on. And we then have fractured communities, I think, because of that. We don't have the depth of unity that we could have if we'd be willing to go there. You have to be willing to do that, hey, let's have a conversation, let's talk, and embrace that awkwardness and then remind them.

This is, I love you, because I value this friendship. I want to talk about something. I don't want us to fall apart.

I want us to have unity and peace between us and then to go there. The courage to do that is big, because I've seen it's so easy to do the opposite, which is go talk to Bob about Kelly when I need to go talk to Kelly. Now, not that I have anything, you know what I'm saying, but in the church, it's almost accepted.

It's almost even put under the prayer request time, hey, we need to pray for Kelly. You know, and it's like, oh my goodness, I'm just afraid to speak to a friend in love, truth. And yet when you do it, that's when maturity happens, right?

That's right. And I think the counter of that is making sure that we speak life into our friends, too. Because we can see these great qualities in our friends and the people around us without ever saying it. I remember I was out to lunch one day and all our girlfriends were together, probably a table of six, and we were talking about, you know, just kind of topics that were super light of, hey, where did you get that jacket and who's doing your hair? And it was so, and after a while, and this is what I'm known for, I love to go a little deeper. And so I'm like, hey, let's go a little deeper. And I was younger and my words were actually, can we not talk about nothingness for a while? Which was so offensive to my friends, we're talking about nothingness, which they were so like, what? And so I wouldn't have said that the same way now, but I think just to go a little deeper into speaking life into one another, too.

I know for our birthdays, we'll go around the table, whoever's birthday it is, and we will just speak life of even victories of what we've seen our friends going through that year. Like you've gone through some really hard stuff. But these are some of the character qualities I see that God has put in you that's really helping to deal with what you're going through. And I think that too, countering the speaking the truth and love is so beneficial because it's building one another up.

Yeah. And I think if you do that, it actually builds the foundation and trust for when that moment might need to happen with a friend, that that's not the only deep conversation you've had is a negative one, but you've been encouraging one another and spurring one another on. And so that friend can now trust you that you're for them because you've been for them verbally. So I agree you have to have that in your relationships. What can churches do to help promote and foster better friendships in the congregation?

Programs aren't going to work. We've got to figure out how we model this or how we facilitate this to happen organically in our churches. Do you have any thoughts about that? Yeah, I think part of what we can do is normalize these uncomfortable parts of friendship and remind people this is what it feels like to be friends with fellow sinners in a real way.

When we really do life together, it's going to feel like this. And when we normalize that, then when somebody's facing that, they don't feel like something's broken in the friendship or I'm broken or I've messed this up or this is wrong. We see this in the Bible. We see Paul confronting Peter, we see Jesus saying, you go to your brother and confront him when he sins against you. There's categories for that.

It's normal. And we can give stories when we have a platform to make that known. Our pastor just recently preached on friendship and was very vulnerable about when some of his friends had been faithful wounders in his life. And I think for our whole congregation, that kind of gives like a, oh, okay, you face that. Okay, so I can face that and expect that for my friendships and not be scared of it when it happens. And did your husband lead the congregation in singing Friends Are Friends Forever if the Lord's the Lord of them? Of course, yes.

I think we should do that right now, Bob. Friends are friends. No, I was going to add, I think it's so important to model it in the church, like your pastor did. It's like, I don't remember growing up in a church and ever hearing our pastor talk about a friend, you know, or the vulnerability of being weak and needing a friend in his life. I remember we had a young high school kid stay at our house for 10 days. And right at the close of his time with us, I said to him over dinner, I said, hey, so you've been with the Wilsons for, you know, almost two weeks.

Where'd you learn? It was very interesting what he said. He goes, yeah, it's a lot different than my house. And I go, yeah, in what way?

Not knowing if that was good or bad. He said, your buddies come over. You have friends and they come over and they show up unannounced. They'll eat here. You go out and shoot baskets. He goes, I've never seen that with my dad.

He doesn't have any friends. And I thought, wow, that's a beautiful thing. And I didn't even realize it was that central to my life, that these guys are really soulmates. That I will show up at their house, they'll show up at my house, and that that was uncommon when it should be common. That's what the church should be, you know? Well, and maybe if a few more people read Friendish, that could help, right? I mean, imagine if our listeners got together with other people in their neighborhood, in their church, you know, where the kids go to school, get together with the moms or the dads there, and go through Kelly's book together.

There could be people you know who are lonely, who would be desperate for that kind of interaction. And this is a great book to help you think through what the Bible has to say about friendships. Go to familylifetoday.com to order a copy of the book Friendish by Kelly Needham. You can order it from us online at familylifetoday.com, or call 1-800-358-6329.

That's 1-800-F as in Family, L as in Life, and then the word TODAY. Again, the book is called Friendish by Kelly Needham. Order online at familylifetoday.com, or order by calling 1-800-FL-TODAY. Speaking of books, there's another book we'd like to give to you. Our friends at Desiring God Ministries are helping make this available. John Piper has just written a brand new book called Coronavirus and Christ.

We talked with him about this earlier this week, and it was a great conversation. In fact, if you didn't get a chance to hear our conversation with John Piper, it's available online at familylifetoday.com. His new book is available in ebook format or as an audiobook for a free download. You can go to our website, familylifetoday.com, and download either the ebook or the audiobook for free.

The print edition will be available in about a week, and if you'd like to pre-order that, there's a link on our website for that as well. Again, the title of the book is Coronavirus and Christ. And I would just say this is an important book because we need to be thinking rightly about God and the gospel, the good news in the midst of our current situation. We have friends and neighbors who have questions. This book will help equip all of us to be able to address those questions. It may answer questions you have about how a good God could remain good when there are thousands of people dying all around the world every day as a result of this pandemic. So again, get your copy of the audiobook or the ebook Coronavirus and Christ by John Piper.

The download is free for either of those resources. Go to familylifetoday.com to request your copy. And thanks to those of you who support the ongoing work of Family Life Today. You make it possible for us to make resources like this available to you and to hundreds of thousands of other people all around the world. So we are grateful, especially in these times, for those of you who are able to continue your financial support of this ministry. I hope you're being generous with your local church and generous with people who are challenged.

And if you can make a donation today to support this ministry, we would be grateful. And we hope you can join us again tomorrow. We're going to talk more about friendships. We're going to talk about those friendships that can be draining, people who are needy.

How do we handle those kinds of friendships? Kelly Needham joins us again tomorrow. We hope you can join us as well. I want to thank our engineer today, Keith Lynch, along with our entire broadcast production team. On behalf of our hosts, Dave and Ann Wilson, I'm Bob Lapine. We'll see you next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a production of Family Life of Little Rock, Arkansas, a crew ministry. Help for today. Hope for tomorrow.