7 Friendships Every Man Needs

Hey, this is Jim Graham from the Masculine Journey Podcast, where we explore relationship instead of religion every week. Your chosen Truth Network Podcast is starting in just a few seconds. Enjoy it, share it, but most of all, thank you for listening and for choosing the Truth Podcast Network.

This is the Truth Network. So, who are your friends? Think about that question for a second, because I've got one of my cool friends just walked by, Dr. Alex McFarland, an international speaker, author, and what's prompting me that question is, I just met a man who Alex is going to interview on his national show soon, who's written a book about friendship.

I mean, who writes a book about friendship? I mean, friendship is like, how you doing? How you doing? How you doing? Fine, thank you, and you move on, right? And about what?

Service level, right? Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Well, most of us get a bum rap as guys when it comes to friendships, because we tend to be superficial, and we talk about work, we talk about music, we talk about sports, and we keep each other kind of at an arm's length distance. We don't let each other in, and some of that is superficiality, and we're content with that. I think some of that is actually a bit of a, I think, God-given sort of. God's made me a leader. He's made you a leader, and there's a certain kind of guy I want in my life, and there's a certain kind of guy I might not want in my life. So, part of what's happening when I'm spending time with you, getting to know you, is to go, do I want to give you access to me? Because I know that the impact that you have on my life is going to affect my leadership and the trajectory of all the people that follow me. And so, I'll be with my wife, and she'll be talking and introducing herself to a woman, and five minutes later, they're disclosing the deepest, darkest secrets of their heart.

Me, I'm still eating guacamole and talking about flyboarding videos on YouTube. And so, what I find, though, is that when you look at the scripture, you don't have to have relationships with other men like women do, and I know that's not really a new insight, but the bigger thing is there are certain friendships that every man needs to have. When you look at the Word of God, Paul and Timothy, that is a model friendship that's held up, where a mentor, like a crew chief, would be to a race car driver. In the book, we talk about how men are like high-performance race cars, and we can go the distance, but guys, they flame out, they burn out, they blow out.

You're running out of gas real quick, right? Now, your name is Justin Erickson, and you've written this book. The forward is by, this guy is probably not very bright, Dr. Albert Moller. How about that? A guy who's got a library, bigger than most libraries, and the only guy I know that's read every book in his library, amazing man of God, he wrote this forward, he said this, he said, he said about Justin's book, he said, learning about the friendships a man needs and why this matters so much to Christians. Whatever happened to friendship, whatever happened just to going to Myrtle Beach with somebody, a buddy, going out, hanging out, getting real though, who do you call at three in the morning?

That's exactly right. And the guy that's on our Truth Network has really been a friend to me, into our network for all these years, is the Christian Kargay, Robbie Dilmore, who is ministry through the Masking and Journey and the boot camps and all that. He's drilled deep on there. He's actually been mentoring me in this area for years, and I'm still not getting it, but Robbie, you see Justin's book, you get excited, don't you? Oh man, I'll tell you, because, you know, I, you may know I just lost my father last Tuesday, and you can imagine, or maybe you can't imagine, I can imagine that I was going to preach, as you know, at this funeral. And my band of brothers coming in and putting their hands on me and praying for me before that service is something I will never forget as long as I live.

It was one of the most impactful things, like I felt I was touching heaven, that these men were going to battle with me. And when you think about a band of brothers, you know, as you go to battle, it brings you into relationship that I think is really heavenly. And so, but he's got seven friends, man, it's more than cool when you see who they are, you know, it's really, it's really quite revealing. You may just get, have to get Robbie and do another chapter when this thing, but Justin, but you hear Robbie share that and you kind of lit up in that as he was sharing that, because you, something connected there where you're like, this guy maybe gets what you're talking about.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, one of the friendships that was running through my head as he was talking, as you were talking, Robbie, is Jonathan. When David was going through the worst of the worst of the worst, Jonathan stepped in and he strengthened his hand in God and the life-giving power of a friend. Sometimes the friendship might be a Jonathan who's your spiritual best friend and that guy that will go the distance with you, fill you up like a race car is filled up with gas. Sometimes it's a Barnabas, like a wingman. You might have some clashing with him like Paul did, but it's the kind of strengthening guy that takes a risk on you, but he's there no matter what, absolutely faithful. You have like a Timothy, a guy that's not only, you've poured into people, but you gotta, you gotta pour into them.

But then probably the most interesting in this list and the one I've had the most challenge writing was the one about Nathan. When, when Nathan had to level David and take the big risk to walk into the King's chamber to confront him about his sin, the kind of man that would say, I'm going to call you at three o'clock in the morning. I'm going to get you out of bed. So you don't have a hard heart. And I might have to say something hard to you so that you don't have a hardened heart towards God, because I'm willing to be harder on your sin than you are.

One of the friends in the book that's vital that I think sometimes as guys we miss, or at least aren't intentional with is that Zacchaeus. When Jesus said to Zacchaeus, I'm coming to your house today. I'm going to interrupt what I'm doing. Jesus is on his way to the cross. He says, I'm coming to your house to sit with you because you're not in my pit crew.

You're in the stands watching and you need to look under the hood and you need to see what really makes this thing up. And then, was he a wee little man? A wee little man was he, right?

Right. But you know what was so funny? This guy up a tree or what? Come to your house today. You come down.

You got to branch out. Leave it alone. The friendship that I was most stunned by, because the most important role of these friends is to help us in our friendship with Christ. So I was totally convinced that when I studied what it was to have a friendship with Christ, I would find it everywhere. There's only one place in the New Testament that Jesus talks about friendship with him. Only one.

I thought it'd be just all over the place. He'll talk about friends like, hey, our friend Lazarus is sick. Let's go raise him or he'll tell parables about friends. But he only describes friendship in one place with him in John chapter 15, where he says, I no longer call you slaves. I call you my friends.

And then he says, I'm leaving. And our friendship with Christ while he's at the right hand of the Father in heaven is mediated through his spirit. And Jesus tells us how to have a friendship with him until he comes again in glory. So absolutely compelled that all of our friendship should point to that one.

And that would be the strengthening, most motivating element of our life to live for Christ until we see him face to face. Okay, so the book is Seven Friendships Every Man Needs, Gathering Your Pit Crew for the Race of Life. I love the cool race car motif. Robbie Gilmore is the Christian car guy. Robbie, probe into this guy here, the author Justin Erickson.

This is Harvest House Publishers. I would encourage everyone to connect with a book like this, go through it with some guys, maybe in a small group. It's biblical. He's using scripture all over the place here. Robbie, you're questioning him about the importance, the vitality of having real big C Christian friends. Well, yes, Stu, people like you actually, you know, how many men do you have in your life that are willing to tell you the emperor has no clothes?

Because here you got this guy who's head over the truth network and you got all that, you know, all this power. So who have you got in your life that has the courage to come and say, Stu, man, you know, you're undressed right here. So, you know, I've always really valued those guys because I'm kind of a bigger guy like you, you know, than people. I intimidate them sometimes about, man, I love what you said about, you know, Nathan and that, you know, those people in my life are so huge. But the other thing, guy, you didn't mention that I didn't hear you mention that I loved when I read the thing is do you have somebody that's really seeking, somebody that just came to Christ and they're absolutely on fire? And when you have somebody like that in your life, oh my gosh, that guy that got baptized with the boot camp, Corey. I mean, he's coming to you all the time and he's challenging you with all sorts of cool stuff.

So I was really encouraged just to see what you had on your list. That's neat. Well, think about what happens when we're alone. Think about John the Baptist. He's alone in prison. He's facing Herod's sword. And what is he doing in his doubt? He's drowning and he's not got any friends around him and the friends that he is able to pull to him to send to Jesus.

You know, those are the only guys. But John's question when he's alone is, Jesus, are you sure you're even Jesus? You know, David, when he's alone on the rooftop, bad plan, weapon of mass destruction, he falls to a greater giant than he ever faced in Goliath. You know, Elijah, he's alone. He's just conquered, you know, the prophets of Baal. He slew 850 different prophets there and he runs and he's alone. And when he's alone, he starts thinking things and doing things like, I wish I was dead and I can't do this.

And a woman threatens his life and he's cowering in fear, wanting to die. When we're alone, we do incredibly stupid things. And so when God sends a refreshing help through another man, we can't do without that. We must have that. Absolutely.

That's tremendous. This book, Seven Friendships Every Man Needs, gathering your pit crew for the race of life, really remarkable. God made you to be relational. Stop settling for surface level connections and learn how to build life-changing relationships that last.

This is Hebrews 10, 24, and 25. This is considering one another. This is stimulating one another. This is pushing one another.

This is Proverbs 27, iron sharpens iron. And this is all power-packed in this book, Seven Friendships Every Man Needs. Get it. Women should get it too, I guess, too, right?

Everybody. Yeah, absolutely. And the fact that there's a couple of women on there that have endorsed it because for two reasons. Number one, those friendships are also spiritual friendships described for us. Women should have these as well. But women, I think, want this for their men.

They want the women of their lives to help these men be strong. In fact, there's a chapter in the back, well, what do I do with my wife? Because if I have all these guys in my life, if Jonathan's my best friend and Timothy is my disciple and Barnabas is my encourager, well, then where does my wife fit?

We answer that question in there. How does your wife who really is your helper designed by God, when God made man, he says, it's not good for a man to be alone. He didn't supply another man. He supplied a woman. And the woman is our helper.

But it's unmistakable clear that those women at different times have to lean on another man like a giant power tool to do the things that maybe she wouldn't do so that she can help her man by bringing the leverage of influence in by another guy who can make the difference. How about that? So be a friend, pray for godly friends and check this thing out. This is really cool.

Thank you, Justin, for hanging out with us, man. Are you on Instagram? Yes. Yeah. Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, not Snapchat. Okay.

Justin Erickson, he's probably got some StuTube videos and Robbie's on there too. And we're going to put this on Truth Talk weekend and we're going to podcast this out. And we want to thank you for having the courage to write this book, man. Totally cool. This is the Truth Network.