Hebrews 10:24 NIV “And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds”
Have you ever been crowd surfing? I have once, and of all places, it was at a Young Life camp with my high school friends. It was pretty cool, I felt like a rockstar for 45 seconds… but about 5 seconds into that “surfing” I realized I was not in control of ANYTHING. I was at the complete mercy of the hands that help me up in the air, and most of them I didn’t even know who the people were.
I couldn’t get down on my own or even signal that the “wave was fun while it lasted, but put me down”…
Fun, yet helpless. Crazy but dangerous. I had no control.
2 Things we can take away from crowd surfing that relates to our lives:
1. Do you have friends that you can count on to hold you up at all times?
2. Are there places in your life that you feel “out of control,” and need friends to pull you down from?
Friends are essential in our lives. We are wired for relationship, both with God and with others.
I feel like since I was around 16, I have had many friends but not many deep friendships. I have enjoyed the baby pool of friendship; I’ll talk about sports, the job, my family, etc for days upon days. But I have remained in the baby pool. I was afraid to get out and jump in the deep end of friendship. So I didn’t.
Over the past few months I have seen the true power of deep friendships. It started with VULNERABILITY, sharing deeper parts of our lives with our most trusted friends. Sharing good stuff in our lives and also laying out the “crappier” parts of our lives with people that we trust dearly. HONESTY is key too, tell them the freakin’ truth. Lay it all out there, they are your best friend, why wouldn’t you? For me, I didn’t because I was afraid to look like a failure in life somewhere. I don’t like feeling like I have let someone down, or even hear it for myself that I haven’t met up to my own expectations for my life.
As I let down my guard, I found a place of SAFETY where my friends did care more than I ever thought. It was more natural to talk about stuff in the “deep end” than I thought. And here’s a winner… they had been craving the “deep end” also.
Hebrews 10:24 talks about “spurring one another on in love and good deeds,” jumping into the “deep end” of true friendship is one way that we can love deeply and encourage our friends as we go through this thing called life. Ask the tough questions to each other. Pray with and for each other. Ask deeper questions about their marriage, about their job, talk about temptations of the world, talk about REAL stuff.
Get out of the freakin’ baby pool today, and jump on in the deep end, it’s pretty awesome there!
Shoutout to my boys: TIM, DEREK, JEFF, JAKE, PETE, CONOR and PHIL … you all inspired me to write this post.
Your boy KitchNasty is out.
lifeinthekitchin 