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Redeeming Friendship: In an age where people are more connected than ever, few people have even one friend they can be open, honest, and vulnerable with. So, what kind of friendships are Christians called to, and how can this change our lives? Recorded on Dec 11, 2022, on Colossians 3:1-17, by Pastor David Parks. "Redeeming Regular Life" is a sermon series from the Epistles of the New Testament in the Bible. The Epistles are letters from the Apostles to the early Christian churches helping them understand and apply the gospel to life. "To what part of life?" you might wonder. The answer is: to every part! The way of Jesus changes everything, including marriage, sexuality, singleness, parenting, work, politics, friendship, and more. In Christ, regular life is a gift. Sermon Transcript: So all year, we’re focusing on Learning the way of Jesus. And today, we’re finishing a series called Redeeming Regular Life. This series is from the epistles/letters in the New Testament in the Bible from the Apostles of Jesus to various churches around the Roman Empire. Part of these letters address how the basic relationships ought to work in our lives, including in marriage, parenting, at work, and so on. But the apostles wrote on these things from a uniquely Christian perspective, showing how the gospel and the way of Jesus changes everything. Today, as we bring this series to a close, we’ll finish by looking at a much easier topic to stomach than talking about redeeming politics last week. However, even though our topic for today makes us less squirmy, it’s really just as difficult for us to do as it is to try and apply our faith to our politics. That is our desperate need to establish and maintain healthy Christian friendships. In all our busyness and the chaos of life, but also with how mobile people are today, moving from one house to the next or from one city/state to the next — all these things make it hard for us to form deep and lasting friendships. It’s ironic that we live in an age of social networking where we might have hundreds or even thousands of people we’re connected with online, who are supposedly our friends, and yet many of us struggle to maintain even one real friendship in which we feel we can be vulnerable and our true self. And yet, as we said in our marriage and singleness sermons in this series, even though most people get married, not everyone is called to be married in life. And not everyone who gets married stays married for various reasons. This means that a more universal need than understanding how marriage works (as important and valuable as that is) is our need to understand how friendship works. This is true for all people, married and single. So how does the gospel and the way of Jesus change our friendships? If you have a Bible/app, please open to Colossians 3:1. This is a longer passage, so we’ll break this up into four parts: 1. Who we are in Christ. 2. What we are called from in relationship to others. 3. What we are called to in relationship to others. 4. What these relationships produce? So first, who we are in Christ, starting with v. 1. Colossians 3:1-4 (NIV), “Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. 3 For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. 4 When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.” So Colossians is a letter from the Apostle Paul to the Christians in and around the city of Colossae in modern Turkey. And Paul might’ve known some of the believers there, but he hadn’t personally ministered in Colossae. Back in chapter 1, he says that they first heard the gospel through a man named Epaphras. In chapter 2, Paul says his goal in writing was “…that they may be encouraged in heart and united in love, so that they may have the full riches of complete understanding,