How to Think About Friendships

So we’ve been doing these let’s Talk nights. And I brought along with us, uh, the Ojis and the Girons, all of you who’ve been listening to us for a while now. We hope you’re not getting bored. And I hope you notice how much better we’re getting as a team as we get more reps and opportunity to do it. This is really new, this audio, uh, new media content. And we hope it provides some, um, energy and inspiration for discussion. That’s one of the things to remember that we’re not trying to, to do a traditional, here’s a lesson. Now go sit down in your groups and whatever has been going on, we’re trying to we’re trying to inject a bit of inspiration and get the discussion started because it’s spiritual conversations and let’s talk nights that really change lives. And we’re in many ways, we’re trying to empower all of us instead of, you know, just empowering a smaller set of us. And you empower by having great conversations. And this is going to be a great conversation today because I have questions for everybody. And they’re going to weigh in sort of briefly on these questions and you’ll have a chance. And let’s start with the first question. This is really the sort of the topic of this particular this particular audio version, or if you want to continue to call it podcast, that’s fine, is spiritual relationships or rebuilding relationships and going to prayer partners and making that change from what some of us who are older may remember a time when we actually used the term prayer partner. Some remember the term discipleship partners and everything can have a bad reputation or a bad connotation. And there’s certainly some related to at least the word discipleship or phrase discipleship partner. But the reality of the matter is there are bad connotations related to the term marriage. For those who’ve had bad experiences, there are bad connotations related to the word dating their bad connotations related to word parenting, government. President United States, you know there’s any word or phrase can have a bad connotation. That doesn’t mean the concept or the individual or the organization or the entity is bad. So the first question about rebuilding our relationships so that prayer partners can be because to me, for me, prayer partners is about taking our relationships out of a mode where they can sometimes be hierarchical, they can not have a pure orientation, but more importantly, where we learn from each other. But more important than that, it’s making them spiritual. And the word prayer is really fundamental. Do we pray together? Because when we pray together, a lot of walls come tumbling down. And the first question is based on the scripture, Matthew five thirteen from the Good News translation. How can our relationships keep us salty? I’ll read the scripture and then one of you can weigh in. How can our relationships keep us salty? Matthew? Matthew five thirteen. You’re like salt for the whole human race. But if salt loses its saltiness, there’s no way to make it salty again. It has become worthless, so it’s thrown out and people trample on it. How can our relationships keep us salty? Somebody help me out. Put some spice on my food. Yeah. I think when I think of spice and. Well, first you said salty. I was like, my connotation of salty is like, bitter. Like you’re just bitter at someone in a relationship. You know, you’re salty, you’re holding something against someone. Um, it’s a play on words. Exactly, exactly. Um, I also like to cook and salt is very important. So we’re flavoring. But, uh, I think spiritually, I think the word that I think about is, uh, empathy. And I think with the whole prayer partners and it’s easy to get wrapped up in phrases and lingos. But I think when I think of one of the core fundamentals of being a Christian, I think of is empathy, like being empathetic, um, being able to put yourself in someone’s shoes and feel what they’re feeling and what they’re going through and, and then be able to relate, be able to give, be able to love, to serve. I think. a lot of people have done that for me. And honestly, it’s like something really refreshing. And what inspired me about wanting to become a Christian is purpose, you know, and being able to help other people and have empathy for them, because there are people who’ve had way tougher lives and way tougher situations than I have, you know? And I’m like, okay, like, how can I put myself in their shoes, you know, and love them. And I think with the whole prayer partner thing too, I think of the scripture in Proverbs eighteen twenty four and the TPT, it says, some friendships don’t last for long, but there’s one loving friend who is joined to your heart closer than any other. And I really like that scripture because I think personally, it’s amazing that God puts friends in our lives that want to know, you know, what we’re going through that care, um, that sacrifice for us, that want what’s best for us. And, you know, that’s what I think of with prayer partners. I think, you know, we can get tripped up on word play and position, but really it’s God giving us friends that, um, where we help each other and help each other become who we’re meant to be. So I think, you know, when it comes to like, saltiness and, and who we’re meant to be like, I think a vision and, and something exciting. That’s awesome. Question number two, what does it mean to season our conversations with salt? Colossians four six. Let your conversation be always full of grace. Season with salt so that you may know how to answer everyone. I think it’s like one, it’s taking people where they’re at. I think for me, I’m guilty of this, but I’ve seen this where you you can want people to conform, you know, and conform to the Bible versus where are they at? And how can I get to their heart and help build their faith? Um, or even going back to our last conversation, if you know, they’re coming out for the first time, right? The conversation is going to look different. Um, but I think for me personally, the not conform, am I trying to help this person conform? Or am I really going back to what Christian said, being empathetic and helping build their life? Like I think about, I was not I’m was not good at school by any means, and I had so many people sit down, walk me through a schedule like time after time, help me write an essay, help me edit it. So it’s so much more than just okay, I’m having, I’m sitting down with this person, you know, it’s like walking with them in life and helping them, you know, be successful. So like meeting a need, you know, so when I, when I first, when I first, uh, experienced the kind of relationship you’re describing, um, he and we actually had prayer partners in the church. I became a Christian. Um, the person who did that for me wasn’t my prayer partner. It was someone else’s, uh, my best friend. He longer he’s no longer alive, passed away some years ago, but Scott Green and, and we didn’t have a word chart. We didn’t have a list of things you do. Uh, he he he did something. He did something kind of interesting. He decided he wanted to be my friend. And another guy who some of you know, Dave Traver. And they just decided they wanted to be my friend. Uh, the salt that was lacking in me, quite frankly, is I was worldly. I, I put more, um, importance on what the world thought of me, how successful I was in the world. I wanted to do all the things I’d done before I became a Christian. Some of them weren’t wrong, and some of them would have been a little untoward in the sight of God, I think, without question. But, uh, in order for them to make me salty according to the Bible, not according to the slang reference Christian was referring to. Um, they had to convince me that Christianity was good, that it was better. And I think part of, of what Scott Green did for me is I was very philosophical. I had a philosophical side, you know, I was a little more science. You still have a philosophical side, I suppose, but I that was how he appealed to me. He, he was he was very philosophical. And we’d have these long conversations and I could understand that. And I think that what you’re talking about is important. Both of you have talked about. It’s important. And I just want to underline this. If a person isn’t becoming more full of faith, if a person isn’t becoming more distinctive in the way they live, if their character isn’t influenced and changed. If their heart, motivations and purpose isn’t changed, then they lose their saltiness. And I think one of the one of the things happening today in a lot of churches is there’s no longer an interest in, in being able to inspire those outside the church who, who have a philosophical side or have some faith to want to be a part of it. There’s a lot of emphasis on, you know, what are you doing for me? And how is the church meeting my needs? And I believe that it should, but I don’t believe in total once I started being more committed, and I’m sure many of you can attest to this, it became an issue of saying, all right, what do I need to be for others? And I’d been selfish all my life. And, and Scott Green really did that for me because he gave the philosophical reasons. We were sitting in the library in the third floor in bu my sophomore year or my yeah, yeah, my sophomore year. And he had a little planner to do his schedule for his homework and all that. And it was open and it had a little Bible reference in it. I think it was Genesis five. I can’t remember the exact verse. And, uh, and it said something about walking with God. I said, what is that all about? He said, oh, this is about Enoch. And he turned over and he told me about it. And when I read about Enoch, I read about walking with God. I said, oh, that sounds like the philosophical version of the spiritual. And I was very taken by that. That to me was making me salty because he was pointing me toward God and what God wanted to be me to be. Not just as you said, Michel, here’s the church rules and how you conform. That took me a long time to. I’d never conformed. I just exploded in disaster. I couldn’t, I couldn’t, I was never able to conform. Yeah. Oh no, I didn’t crack. I threw grenades to get out of there. And the other people cracked because I threw the grenades. I was like grenades out of here. I can’t, I can’t do any of this. Right. I sent all the time. I say the wrong thing all the time. I can’t do anything right. And Scott and Dave understood my worldliness, coached it up, and was able to help me distinguish what’s the part of me that isn’t really worldly, it’s just relatable. And what’s the part of me that that maybe needs some adjustments? It’s not spiritual. And they put the salt in. And so I want to make sure we understand biblically when it says salt, it’s talking about being, being, being of Christ, being like Christ. It’s saying, we want to be doing everything in our relationships to make each other like Christ. And, and I think you’re right, the empathy, the patience, the, the example are all important. But as we’re all talking about it, I think sometimes we. And the salt is to preserve the world. It’s to. It’s to make the world a better place. That’s what the salts for. Let me jump on in and hit this. What does it mean to make our relationships mutual? Romans one eleven to twelve. It talks about being mutually encouraged by each other’s faith. Maybe you can. Whoever’s going to hit that can tie in all this for me, but actually, this is really important to me, uh, because I think we should all be have a mindset of helping each other. But I like what you said about where the salt. It’s being like Christ and it preserves the world. Uh, because I think just being able to make when our relationships are mutual, we’re able to do that. Um, we’re able to just help each other. There’s, I, I personally put the pressure on myself. Like whoever is helping me, whoever’s my friend that my prayer partner. I don’t want them just to help me all the time. Like I want their help, but I feel like, no, I, I need to find some way to help you. And if we sometimes they just have more life than me or more experience or different. And I don’t particularly have that answer for them. Then I’ll ask other people because I want to help them or pray for them not to fill this in. Now, a lot of people out there don’t know that you, uh, you ran track for Fresno State. Uh, and, uh, I assume you were coached during those years. Oh, yes. So for a lot of people, being discipled is a negative experience because the individual doing it either didn’t know what they were doing. So the equivalent would be you go out to Fresno State, a pretty good division one school for athletics, in my view. And you go out there and, and the coach, the coach goes, the first thing you need to understand about track is that you need to be able to have good ball handling skills. You know, and you need to be able to pass well. And I expect you to be able to hit a twelve footer to fifteen footer with regularity. If a coach came out and did that, what would you. You probably can’t even get your head around this. I mean, I would walk away. I would just walk away. So what I’d like to say on behalf of some people who say, look, this thing you call discipling never helped me. It’s because some people got somebody who was teaching basketball while they were trying to run track. Yeah. And so when you use the term, you’re young, you’re young. So you don’t know about this. When you use the term, everybody interprets that differently. A mainstream Christian evangelical would assume discipling comes from Jesus and that Jesus is discipling you. A more, um, you know, uh, you know, sort of nineteen seventies or eighties church of Christ person would say, uh, oh, you’re talking about the one another way that we help each other, the one another way did not know that a, you know, a nineties sort of, you know, uh, progressive, uh, expansionist evangelistic church might say discipling is teaching people, uh, how to make disciples and that. And so there’s a lot of different definitions. And I want to put that out there because some people will go like, yeah, yeah, you don’t understand. And I actually think that what we’ve missed a lot is we’ve missed the idea of coaching. Yeah, that’s what it is to get when you go to get coached your coach, if you’re setting up now, I’m older than you. So when I ran track, there were blocks and you had to adjust the blocks and all that. I don’t even know if they do that anymore. Yes they do. Um, okay. So I had to adjust the blocks and my coaches never worked on my overall speed. They worked on how I came out of the blocks, because they felt I was costing myself time in the way I came out of the blocks. So they spent forever going and I’d be like, hey, why can’t I just race? You know? And I’d go like five steps and they’d be like, no, no, no, no. Okay. That’s how it goes. And, and, and it was frustrating, but I was able to do it because I realized he’s trying to help me win races. And I wonder sometimes if, if the problem is people don’t understand what we’re, what we’re even doing together. And I think I would have stayed. And I’m going to have you comment on this and some others of you, coach, I, I think a lot of the problem comes is that we ought to be, as you said, and I think Michelle said we ought to be friends first. Mhm. And in rare occasions, you’ll get a person who’s accomplished. And I think most of us, when we get with someone who’s accomplished, we go like your friend Martin. And the other episode, The Robotics Guy. You get with him, you’re like, hey, I want to ask you questions. But if somebody just read a robotics magazine, you don’t sit down and go, well, man, teach me about robotics. And sometimes in the church, everybody thinks, well, hey, I’m older Christian, so I should tell you what to do. Well, you may be teaching basketball in a track world. And so I think there’s a I think we have to go. There’s a lot of baggage that comes along. And what you’re really saying, I think, and you’re saying it well is I’m afraid that we’ll even have less coaching. And the other thing I want you to comment on is it wasn’t just your coach who coached you, it was upperclassmen who coached you. And I know I had I didn’t run at your level, but I had guys who were two years, three years older than me that would come over and say, hey, Russ, man, oh, or they call me by my last name a lot. You will. Hey, dude, come on now, You’re never going to win a race if you keep doing that. And sometimes they were tougher on me than the coach, and they were my friend and peer. But we all agreed on one thing. We’re trying to win races, and I think sometimes what happens in church is we don’t all agree on what we’re trying to do. Yeah. And so we have different views on coaching. But I think that’s the best analogy. Coaching and mentoring is what it ought to be with a spiritual bent. What do you think? I definitely agree, like my college coach coached me so well in track that he ended up offering me a job when I graduated to coach the team. So I became like the assistant women’s sprint coach. And I was like, you know, I don’t have like experience. He’s like, I taught you like all these four years you’ve been competing and he did. Um, but yeah, I think when I think about like helping each other, we do it in every other area of life in the business world. Yeah. In those positions. We want it because we want to get better. And now your husband, Martin. He likes one of the greatest. Oh, the Spurs teachers. One of the greatest sports teachers in any sport. Gregg Popovich, who takes guys that nobody else thinks can make it in the NBA. Yes. And the next thing they stab him in the back. They go to the Toronto Raptors. I’m sorry. Are you talking about Kawhi. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. No but but what do you think guys about. And I’ll start with you Martin. What do you think about this idea that we have to change our definitions if we’re going to get the relationships right. What do you think about that idea Martin. Man, I, I think it’s very accurate because when I think of coaching and mentorship, I think a few things. I think vision. I think if we have a common vision, then we’re speaking the same kind of language and we’re, we’re working towards a common goal. And then when we have that vision, it’s no longer. I’m better than you. You’re better than me. No, we’re just helping each other get somewhere. There’s a there’s a hunger, there’s a passion. There’s a let’s do this together. So I think redefining really discipleship, I think that’s crucial because it does come down to. And what are we really here for? Like I remember those who care enough for me to tell me truths, not caring about my anger or my defensiveness, like, hey man, oh yeah. Like they care enough for me to tell me the truth. I’ll always remember people like that. Yeah. Because I feel like they care about me. They’re not trying to make me feel better. They’re not trying to just tell me some and don’t. Don’t you think that sometimes the problem is that we’re trying to give people input and direction before we build the relationship. And I’m not saying it has to take a long time, but I think, Christian, you started out talking about empathy, right? AM I in the right? Yeah. And I think that is a really crucial thing. Sometimes we walk in and just go, you know, I’m here. It’s like going to a hospital, a spiritual hospital. I’m here and I’m a surgeon, and I’m here to operate on you. And then you’re like, hey, dude, I don’t need I don’t need surgery. It doesn’t matter. That’s what I do. I do surgery, but but but but but but I don’t need, I don’t need surgery while I’m taking your appendix out. Because the last four people I was with, I took their appendix out and it was in trouble. And so I know your appendix is in trouble. Just because everybody they ever put me with has people with appendix problems. So I’m gonna I think there’s a whole lot of issues that we have to be willing to sit down and talk through. And that’s why I’m excited that all of our figuring out of our relationships now will be done in house church, not done, done by people who know each other, just like we know each other. And you can say, you know, if I’m, if I’m trying to get help with my jump shot, probably Michelle’s not going to do that. Right? Jeanette. Either. Jeanette. Either. Jeanette. Either. And, but if I’m trying to, if I’m trying to run faster, or if I’m trying to manage some, some some emotional issues, I’m going to run faster. I’m going to go to genetic. I’m going to have some emotional issues. Michelle’s a school counselor. I’m probably going to go to Michelle. I think what happens a lot of times is everybody says, well, I’m your prayer partner. So I’m the I’m your answer to all the questions. Unless, look, unless you’re a genie that popped out of a bottle, you’re not the answer to all my questions. You know what I’m saying? And I, I believe that all when I, when I was in swimming class, which I forgot everything I learned. But when I was in swimming class, the first thing they said is we’re going to assign you pool buddies. And I was like, what’s a pool buddy? I was like ten. And they said, A pool buddy is the kid who’s assigned to be with you at all times. So if anything happens to you, they can yell and scream and get us over there and we can save your little rear end. And I think a lot of times we overestimate what’s going on here. And Christian remembers from whoop, you oftentimes got paired up with another guy or a third guy to do drills or whatever. And I think we’ve gotten a lot very, very tense about the subject of spiritual relationships. And we ought to, in some ways, do away with some of our phraseology and say, you know what? I’m afraid you’re not going to get any coaching to keep you salty in this unsalty world. Let’s talk nights. We can’t answer every question. We don’t know everything, but we can get you started. We’ll see you next week.