How to Fight for a Life of Friendship, with Justin Whitmel Earley

Loneliness has become a cultural epidemic. As society becomes increasingly isolated, it’s important to remember that God made you for meaningful connection with others. In other words: you were made for people. Find out what Christian friendship should look like and why it’s worth fighting for in this episode of Grounded with guest Justin Whitmel Earley. 

Connect with Justin 

Instagram: @justinwhitmelearley
Twitter: @Justin_W_Earley 
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/justinwhitmelearleyauthor
Website: https://www.justinwhitmelearley.com/

Episode Notes

• Made for People book by Justin Whitmel Earley: https://amzn.to/45CYPfJ
• “How Our Friendship with Christ Shapes Our Friendships with Others” video with Kelly Needham: https://youtu.be/rn6K-MByGjk?si=1op_yxJQ47aA13GX
• “A Friendship Check-Up” article by Erin Davis: https://www.reviveourhearts.com/articles/a-friendship-check-up/
• “Biblical Friendship Whispers, ‘Repent’” blog post by Laura Elliott: https://www.reviveourhearts.com/blog/biblical-friendship-whispers-repent/

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Portia Collins: When was the last time you had a lingering conversation with a good friend? Well, we're gonna have one today. I'm Portia Collins and this is Grounded.

Erin Davis: There's few things I enjoy more than a lingering conversation with a good friend. I'm Erin Davis. Portia and I are here every week to give you two things: hope and perspective. 

This week we're going to talk about something that can be a little tricky, Christian friendship. And this matters because all of the social science telling us we are increasingly isolated. An isolated Christian should be a five-alarm fire, it should be making us all feel very alarmed. We’re going to talk about why. 

Portia: Our guest today says that God made you for meaningful connections with other people.

Erin: Yes. And he's here to show us how, so you're not just gonna get theory today. I hope you're gonna walk away with something practical. You might recognize him when I say his name or when you see his face—Justin Whitmel Earley. He was here before on Grounded to talk to us about our habits. You wrote to us to tell us that you loved that conversation. And actually, I really see this as a continuation of that conversation because we're going to be talking about friendship habits. 

I actually have the privilege of helping us get grounded in God's Word. Today, we're going to be in the book of Galatian—if you're a gal who likes to know where you're going. I'm going to encourage you to reach out to a specific kind of friend today.

Portia: Well, right now you can be a friend and share this episode. One way you can start by being a good friend.

Erin: That is a good friend move. I like it.

Portia: Share this episode. Before Justin comes and gives us some good news about friendship. We want to share some good news about what God is doing in the world. So, Erin, will you be our sunshine this morning?

Erin: I'm not sure I can do it as well as you can. You are always a ray of sunshine, but I do have some good news, and this good news gets me pretty excited: “Bible Education for Public School Students During School Hours.” Does that sound like fake news? It's actually real. I can assure you it's real. Here's a story that I’ve got to think you're unlikely to find in your social media feed today.

I take great pleasure in introducing you to news that you might not find other places. Here's the scoop. More than 300 public schools right here in the United States will be teaching the Bible this year. That’s the headline; I ripped it right out of mainstream news. 

Maybe you will find it in other places. But I like to think about, what is God doing? This is actually the fruit of a ministry called Lifewise Academy. They're a gospel-centered ministry. Their commitment is to get the Bible into public schools, which I think many people just think is a lost cause because we took the Bible out of public schools, and well, they're not going to stand for it. They are trying to get the Bible back into public schools. This initiative was launched in Ohio just a few years ago, and that community saw a 95% participation rate among public school students. 

So, let's picture that for a minute. A school district, like the district where you live, like the district where I live, where 95% of the students were opening their textbooks, but also week after week they were getting hope in perspective from the source of perspective, God's Word. 

So, that was just a few years ago, and this year students in 300 schools in twelve states, and I don't do math, but this is what they tell me: 35,000 students this year will be opening the Bible and learning what it says during school hours in our public schools. And we think that's good news. 

Portia: That is great news. 

Erin: Isn’t that exciting?

Portia: I mean, yes, yes. And you know, especially for us, we love the Bible. We know how rich it is. So that young minds are getting the best of the best. 

Erin: Absolutely. 

Portia: I'm here for it. 

Erin: Me too. 

Portia: Thank you, Erin. Thank you for that great news. Justin Whitmel Earley. He's here with us. He's the husband to Lauren and dad to four boys. He's an attorney and author. First, how does a guy that busy find time for meaningful friendship? We are about to find out. Welcome back to Grounded, Justin.

Justin Whitmel Earley: Thank you so much, Portia. I'm so glad to be here. It’s so fun already listening to you and Erin chat. You guys are so hopeful.

Portia: Wonderful. That's what we want to be. Okay, I want to start here. You say that loneliness has become a cultural epidemic. Why do you think that's true?

Justin: Well, I didn't make this up. If you are paying attention to the news, or if you were to go online and google Surgeon General's report 2023, you would see that the Surgeon General of the United States, the top public health issue that he's talking about is what is called the epidemic of loneliness. We have realized in the past couple years that our lifespan is actually decreasing. We are having lots of deaths of despair. We're overall seeing public health decline, not because of cigarettes or obesity alone, but also because we are living life alone. What I want to point out to people is that it's true, loneliness will kill your body, but it will also destroy your soul, because God made you for other people.

Portia: You're talking my language, you're talking about my language. Okay, so we know what's going on in the world. But what about in the church among God's people? Have you found that we are better at being connected to each other than those who don't know Christ?

Justin: Well, I think we need to work on it too. I think on average, yes. What you will see in sociology surveys is that people who are connected to faith and regular attenders of things like church and Bible studies, on average, do get better outcomes.

But what I often see in my groups of people here in Richmond, Virginia, is that we struggle a lot with going along with the American current. And that is to say that the American current is a river, and it's flowing hard and strong towards making us busier, wealthier people who used to have friends. 

So, if we don't really fight back, we're going to become lonely. We're going to become isolated. We're going to become people who live in a way that God did not design us to live. Our physical, emotional, spiritual lives, our mental health will fall apart, and I do see that a lot in the church. But the hopeful thing is this. In an age of loneliness, wouldn't it be beautiful if it was God's people who were setting an example of how to live in a deep friendship that saves you, saves your body and that looks up to see how Jesus saves our soul.

Portia: Amen, this is good. I want to keep pressing in. So, help us to understand what is Christian friendship.hat is it supposed to look like?

Justin: It's more than companionship, okay. I get this from the Bible. This is nothing new. I'm not inventing it, but I call it covenant friendship. And what I mean is that you see in the garden that Adam was created, and then God looked at Adam and said, “I t’s not good that you're alone, meaning that we can be with God, and still sort of alone or lonely, because God made us for other people. As it we can't experience God, the way we were made to experience Him until we experience them alongside others. 

What does that look like? Well, if you look right at the end of that chapter, Genesis 2, you see Adam and Eve naked and unashamed, fully known by each other, and fully known by God. And yet there is no shame, there's no hiding. But what happens in the fall is fig leaves and bushes. You know, in life after the fall, we hide from each other behind fig leaves, and we hide from God. 

What I would suggest is that Jesus is the one to show us a new way. He's the one who in John 15 comes and says, I call you friends. I've told everything that the Father has told Me to you, and I will die from you and that no greater love is this than someone who lays down their life for a friend. 

So, we see this almost back to Eden, this commitment of saying that Jesus knows us fully and yet will love us anyway. 

So, my answer, Portia, is be a friend like Jesus, be someone who is known fully and who knows other people fully, and be a friend who sticks around. That vulnerability and commitment is what I call covenant friendship. I think it's biblical.

Portia: I love that covenant, friendship covenant. It's making me think a lot about my friends now.

I know a lot of people and sometimes we lose that depth. We're not as long-suffering with people as we probably should be. 

And so, covenant friendship immediately begins to change my frame of thinking in terms of how I look at the friends in my life, the people that are engaged. Alright, so here's the thing. You're busy, I'm busy, everybody's busy. We've got all this stuff going on. And yes, quite clearly, you've already made the case for we've got to be intentional about this. This is something that we've got to fight for. So, tell us why is friendship, covenant friendship worth fighting for?

Justin: Well, I really take the Bible to be true, that God is looking at us and saying, “It's not good that you're alone.” And theologically speaking, I just don't think you can argue with that. But practically speaking, I think you see it all the time. 

For example, I remember in high school, I started high school as a person who was largely alone. I remember being nervous about everything, everything was a hard decision. Everything was a cause for anxiety or depression or something like that. It was that way until there was a magic moment in high school where I found my first real true friend. I look back at that time, and I see my life pivoted not because my circumstances changed but because I stopped facing my circumstances alone. 

And ever since then, I've had this feeling that I was made for friendship. I come to find out it was theologically true. But I think a lot of people today are living lives where they think, Why is this so hard? Why? Why is my mind fritzing the way it is? Why all the anxiety or the depression? Why all the problems? I want to look at them and say, it's not your circumstances. It's because you're facing your circumstances alone, and God made you such that you need to experience Him and walk with Him beside a friend. 

We're all busy. We're all in tough times. But being a person who walks through busyness and tough times alongside someone else in a deep covenant friendship, that changes everything. That's what God is calling us to.

Portia: Yeah, amen. Okay, so I’ve got a confession to make. I've kind of been like snooping on your Instagram page. I found out from a little birdie and your Instagram page that you got a new motorcycle. You and your wife have been enjoying that together. So, I can imagine that like me and my husband, you and your wife are not only husband and wife but also friends. That you are constantly working on not just your marriage, but your friendship with one another. 

Justin: Yes. 

Portia: I think that this motorcycle would probably be one of those things that you're enjoying together to deepen your friendship. 

Justin: Yes, it would. 

Portia: So, I guess my question is, what are some practical ways that we can begin to employ are things that we can do? How can we deepen the friendships that we already have?

Justin: That's good, okay. I'll say two things. One, if you are somebody who's married, and you're thinking about that spouse as one of your deep friends, I'd say, that is wonderful. Keep doing it. But know this, I don't think I can be the best husband to Lauren, or the best friend to her, unless I have really close male friends walking alongside me. So, if you're somebody that says, “Oh, I had this covenant friendship with my spouse.” I'd say, “Great, make sure it's not your only one.” Otherwise, you're being a bad covenant friend to your spouse. Make time for each other to have other friendships. That's really important. 

Second, because really, the main thing I hear when I'm talking about this is I just don't have time. But I want to encourage you, we have to sleep seven hours a day, at least to be healthy, we got to eat all the time. If we're gonna be spiritually healthy, we should be in prayer, reading our Bible every day. Friendship is one of those things that's wildly disproportionate, though, about one hour a week will completely change your life. I think that's really good news. I think it's a sign of God's grace that hHe will multiply our clumsy half efforts. 

So practically, I would just say to people, maybe it's some people you're in a small group with, maybe it's a group of friends that you know and you're close to, but you want to get closer to, maybe it's somebody who you're recently connecting with. Just say, “Where's one hour a week where I can lean into that?” Maybe that's actually going into the small group, maybe that's lingering after church, or maybe as it is for me and my friends, just setting up a weekly night where you hang out on your porch after the kids go to bed. This is not really complicated, but it will totally change your life. So, one hour a week of friendship, and it'll change everything. That's God's grace.

Portia: I love that. That is such a wonderful, practical encouragement, especially for the woman watching this. Maybe she's lonely, or she feels like she's tried a couple of things, and it's not really working. That's good advice. That's good practical advice. Thank you for sharing that. 

Well, Justin, you've got a new book. It's titled, Made for People. 

Justin: You bet. 

Portia: And I want to know, what do you hope this book will do for God's people?

Justin: That's one of my favorite questions to answer. I hope this book gives the word “friendship” back to the Church. When we hear it, we think of things like quiet times, worship, prayer, the things that we know, oh, that's essential. If we're going to follow Jesus, the way that we He made us to follow Him, I want us to bring friendship back on that short list you get from Genesis, to Jesus, to Revelation. You can see the Bible and a story of friendship. God's friendship to us and Him calling us to go befriend the world in His name. 

My great hope for this book Made for People is that we would bring and recover that idea that friendship is biblical, and we need to be chasing it ,and that it's going to be the way that we follow Jesus in this moment. It’s the way that we show Him to the world because we show them a community that we were made to be.

Portia: I could listen to you talk and teach and share with me all day. But honestly, most importantly, I think you've motivated me to go out and to be intentional about cultivating my covenant friendships.

I think you hit the nail on the head today, and I'm grateful for that. We're gonna link to your book Made for People. I'm probably gonna buy a couple of copies and share that with my friends. Thank you for being with us today.

Justin: Your welcome, Portia. I would love it if people went out and read this with friends. I think that would be wonderful. Thank you so much for having me on.

Portia: Great. Take care. 

Well, we're coming up for a commercial break. I want to say this. Is it possible that we're lonely because we have subconsciously adopted a worldly view of friendship? Sit on that for a minute. Well, Kelly Needham actually thinks so. We want you to check out this short clip from another Grounded conversation. Then don't go anywhere after our little break. Erin, we'll be right back with us to help us make peace with the messy side of friendship. All right, check out this clip.

Kelly Needham: We have been discipled by the world in what friendship looks like. Now, we don't take our friendships as Christians maybe into clubs and into parties and into some of those things. But we were watching the DNA of worldly friendship in sitcoms and in movies. We're just taking that into Bible study. We're taking it into church on Sunday morning. Whatever it's called friendship at its core, and practicing that with Christian clothes on, and we don't realize it. 

So, I think there's a lack of seeing it modeled. Maybe that sometimes is a hindrance. I think the other big hindrance I find is that there's a poverty of relationship with Christ in a lot of hearts, that we worship Him. But the friendship we have with Christ is not tangible and real enough to people on the day to day, so they actually have nothing to draw from to give toward friendship. We are called to be generous in friendship to others, but that requires you to have something to pull from. If you are empty and thirsty, then you're always going to walk toward friendship with hunger in your heart and subtly demanding, “I need a friend. I'm going to make a friend but mainly because I need something from you.” 

There are legitimate needs that the Scripture tells us we have. But I think there is a sense in which I need to come to with my friendship because I have Christ. And when He is my living water and my true bread, then now I am I'm okay. I can greet others in the lobby. I can invite a friend for a coffee. And if that doesn't work out, I'm not upset because I have a true friend. And so, when there's poverty in the relationship, man, it really makes it hard to do friendship well.

Erin: You know,I hope that Grounded is set apart from maybe some other podcasts and places you get your information. There is lots of messages about friendship that are kind of fluffy. We're chewing on a steak today—that covenant friendship and a poverty of friendship. I'll be thinking about these themes for a long time. 

Grab your Bible if you haven't already, and turn yourself to the book of Galatians, chapter 6. As you're doing that, I'd like to volunteer to make myself the poster child for all who are experiencing long-suffering today. Portia actually mentioned that word in her conversation with Justin. That's the Lord. He orchestrates Grounded so that we're consistent. But long-suffering is as it sounds: it's just suffering that goes on for a long time. It's the trial that doesn't end after a day. It doesn't end after a week or a month. Maybe the trial doesn't end after a year or sometimes after decades. 

And one thing that often happens in the life of the longsuffering is that friends stop asking, “How are you?” They stop dropping by with a hot lasagna. Perhaps they even stopped praying. 

I'm saying these things out of the outflow of my own life right now. Please do not feel sorry for me. I know that I have friends from my real life that watch and listen to Grounded, and this is not a plea for you to do anything specific. And the last thing a long-sufferer wants is pity. 

But as we are now many years into my mom's brutal battle with Alzheimer's, I can tell you that a long-suffering friend is truly hard to find. 

I want us to consider through that lens Paul's words found in Galatians chapter 6, verse 2. Now, every text is a part of a context here, and the context here is resisting temptation. That matters. But in Galatians 6:2, Paul says, “Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.” 

One of the reasons that we can know that we were made for people is that the burdens of life are simply too heavy to carry alone. 

We're supposed to distribute the weight across many shoulders. And by bearing life's burdens together, Paul said that we were pointing to the law of Christ. What did he mean there? Well, he was likely referencing that Jesus told us the second greatest commandment second only to loving God with everything we got, an outflow of that is that we love each other. We care for the needs of each other like they are our own needs. 

And we don't just hope someone helps carry the weight of what we are going through for a little while. But we want, we hope that someone will carry our needs all the way across the finish line. 

And Paul was saying that when you bear each other's burdens, you fulfill this great commandment that Jesus gave us to love others as we want to be loved. Now, of course, Jesus is the model for this and all things, right? 

He took our greatest burden—sin. And He didn't just carry it for a little while. He didn't just carry it until He got tired of carrying it. He didn't just carry it until he could pawn it off on someone else. No, Jesus took our burdens. He bore our burdens, as Paul is commanding us to do here in Galatians 6. He bore the burden of sin until His final breath. He bore the burden until He could say, “It is finished.” All the way. 

Friendship is messy, because life is messy. And if we only want friends with sanitized lives that aren't messy, and they don't require anything of us, then we will never live the kind of interdependent lives that we were created for. There is such beauty in the mess. I don't know why I can't explain it. But by some supernatural reality, there is intimacy, covenant intimacy, in walking the hard road with a friend, especially when that road is long. 

I want you to take a moment right now. I'm going to do it too. I want you to ask the Holy Spirit to bring to mind a friend whose burden is long. Maybe she has a chronic illness. Maybe she has a spouse who has had an affair or is hard hearted. Maybe she has a prodigal child, and she's been praying for that child to come back to Jesus for a long time. Maybe she has cancer. Maybe she has MS. Maybe like me, she's a caregiver, I don't know. But let's take just a minute. Pray that God would bring her to mind. Maybe she's facing a very long goodbye. I don't know what it is. But right here on Grounded right where you are, let's take a minute to pray.

And Lord, I think about the Grounded sisterhood spread all over the world, in multiple time zones and multiple nations. I think about what could happen if each of us reached out to a long-suffering friend. 

So Lord, I pray that You would bring a specific name, a specific life to mind. I pray that we would want to obey and reach out to her. Thank You, Lord, in Your name, I pray, amen. 

The Holy Spirit doesn't answer to me. I can't put Him on a timeline, as much as sometimes I would like to. So, He may or may not have responded in that moment. Maybe it'll be tomorrow, when you're driving down the road, maybe it'll be in a couple of weeks, in church. Listen to that Shepherd’s voice as He drops the name of a friend into your heart. 

If you did think of a friend immediately, I would encourage you to just write her first name in the chat as a means of accountability. And then, I want to encourage you to bear her burden. 

And beyond that, I want to encourage you to keep bearing her burden all the way to the finish line. I gotta tell you, in the journey with terminal illness that I'm in with my mom, I don't even know what the finish line is. In some ways, the finish line is her death. She's now in hospice. And that moment is coming closer and closer to us. And that'll be the end of the disease we've been fighting all these years. But then there's a new burden to bear, the grief of the loss of my mom. And there haven't been many, they're few and far between. But I do know I have some friends that are going to walk that long road with me. I do know that's what they were made to do. And that I was made to let them carry it because I can't carry it alone. 

I'm not saying this is easy. It isn't. We have tugs and pulls on our own lives that can make it so hard for us to be attentive to a friend. Especially when something goes on for a long time. And in some sense, it's easy to write the card when the tragedy happens. It is easy to sit with her when the husband leaves. But when it goes on and on for a long time, that is not easy friendship. It won't be easy. But it will be Christ-like. And isn't that what we want our friendships to ultimately be? 

So, I would echo what Justin said; I would echo what Portia said. I would remind you to be a burden bearer. I'd remind you, that you were made for it. You can do it. By the power of the Holy Spirit, you can walk the long road with a friend. I pray you will. 

Portia: Erin Davis, you're my friend, and I want to be a burden bearer with you. 

Erin: You are. 

Portia: So, I'm gonna walk this road with you. We already said we're joined at the hip until we get into heaven, alright?

Erin: We’re going to walk together all the way home. Home and beyond. 

Portia: Home and beyond. I love you. Thank you for sharing such a timely and blessed word from the Lord, I love you. 

ReviveOurHearts.com is filled with content to keep you grounded in God's Word. And David says God knows. We've been grounded since we started the episode. But there is tons of content to keep us grounded. We want to point you to a couple of articles from the archives. So first, a friendship checkup.It's four questions to help you assess your heart toward friendship. So, we're going to drop a link to that in the chat, and I encourage you to do the checkup today. 

Erin: Today, through that lens of covenant friendship. Is it covenant friendship you're fostering? This is the title of this article, “Biblical Friendship Whispers, ‘Repent.’” It's about how and why our friendship should be incubators for repentance. 

So, this whole episode has been about a version of friendship that is only for God's people, and what a powerful force it can be. So, we always like to get those things right at your fingertips. We will of course, drop the link. 

Portia, I knew it was going to be a solid episode. I didn't know I was gonna have tears in my eyes. Silly me, I always think I'm gonna be able to get through Grounded without crying. But I rarely, rarely do. Is there one just take it home step for you, Portia, as you've been thinking about what Justin said.

Portia: Yeah, just the covenant friendship. I think that really stuck out because all too often we do think of friendships as this: I can pick it up and put it down. Pick it up and put it down when it gets too hard or gets too uncomfortable. You know, I'm out. And so now me thinking of it through the lens of it being a covenant makes me: a) more intentional about how I even engage and pursue opportunities for friendship. And then b) it makes me want to be more committed to my friendships and not just run and hide when things get a little tough. 

Erin: Amen. For the sake of the Gospel. Kelly mentioned that transactional view of friendship, and certainly we give and get with our friends. But this idea that covenant friendship is a witness to a very lonely world should call you to action. This is not a just listen episode. This is a listen and respond episode, and we hope you'll take some action this week.

Portia: Erin, my belly is starting to grumble.

Erin: My belly is always grumbling. I’m always hungry. 

Portia: Ditto. But guess what? My body is not the only thing that is hungry. 

Erin: Hmm?

Portia: Next week we're going to talk about what soul hunger is. Kristen Whetherall will be our guest. She's going to come and explain and tell us how to get filled up and what we need to do to fix our soul hunger. You don't want to miss it.

Erin: No, you do not. So, let's wake up together as covenant friends next week on Grounded.

Portia: Grounded audio is powered by Skype. Grounded is a production of Revive Our Hearts calling women to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

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