This month we’ve been talking about living with purpose. You have to have a purpose to live with purpose. No matter what you calling is - that is the life task God has for you - we all have a purpose, and the core of that is being a son or daughter of God.

Let me say it clearly: nothing in your life matters more than your confession about Jesus and you embracing the truth that God’s desire is you being the son or daughter he created you to be.

Your purpose is such a huge focus in the church, and don’t get me wrong, it is important. But your purpose pales in comparison to you living with purpose.

God made you on purpose for a purpose and he wants us to live with purpose. Don’t forget he has a plan for us - Jeremiah 29:11. That we were born for such a time as this - Esther 4:14. That we are his workmanship, which God prepared beforehand, created in Christ Jesus for good works - Ephesians 2:10

Everything I’ve said to you leading up to this moment is proven biblically with that one verse. Can we read it together?

Ephesians 2:10
For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them

Don’t miss that last part: that we should walk in them. Here you have biblical evidence that God desires that we live with purpose.

Week 1 I setup the premise of this series, encouraging you to remember that you are planting seeds and whatever you are planting is going to grow.

Week 2 I reminded you that living with purpose will force you to make some decisions about how you live and what you think, believe, and do.

I believe I have a word for you today about living with purpose concerning your relationships.

When you live with purpose, you decide to add and subtract things from your life. Addictions, stumbling blocks, attitudes, beliefs, behaviors, some things had to go. Prayer, reading the Word, worship, intentionality, some things had to be added. Yet it is amazing to me how many times we try to change our core thoughts, beliefs, and actions while thinking we can maintain the same relationships.

I’ve said before what you plant you will produce. God says it like this: Galatians 6:7
Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap.

If you reap what you sow, does it stand to reason that what others sow they will reap? And furthermore, do people ever reap what they have not sown?

Now, why do these questions matter at all when it comes to living with purpose? Because, remember something is being planted and is producing in you.

Have you ever sown and had to reap the repercussions of your sowing? This is called reality. Have you ever sown and though you deserved the worst, God spared you the punishment? This is called grace. Have you ever had to deal with the repercussions of someone else’s bad sowing? This is what we are talking about today.

I want to know if your relationships are intentional. Are you friends with that person, married to that person, in business with that person intentionally because you know that they are going to help you grow and develop and succeed and live with purpose? Or is your relationship based solely on proximity, or hobbies, or something intangible like fun?

I grew up hearing things like:
“Show me your friends and I will show you your future.”
“Be careful choosing friends. You’ll become like them.”
“Don’t be surprised when after hanging around dogs, you have fleas.”

One more:
"Not everyone who smiles at you is your friend.”

Listen, I am not trying to uproot your friendships today. The goal is not for you to walk away thinking if you aren’t doing daily Bible studies with your two besties that you are sinning and need to delete them from your life. That is NOT what is going on here.

But I have realized something over the course of my life that is as true as the sky being blue: Your relationships will make or break you. One one step further in the context of this message today: Living with purpose requires relationships with purpose.

I am going to ask you to evaluate your relationships today.
Are your relationships intentional? Are your relationships helping you live with purpose? And how can you know?

For those here who think they may have wandered into a self help session rather than biblical teaching, I want to remind you that the entirety of the Old Testament was designed to help us understand who God is and how he wants us to live, that the Gospels are four books of Jesus teaching us how to understand the Kingdom and how he wants us to live, and that the rest of the New Testament is multiple writers showing us how to understand our Christian faith and how God wants us to live.

What good does a line by line discourse on Galatians 3 do if you simply hear it today and then continue living a purpose-less life tomorrow? This is why you got challenged last week to not crave convenience and be complacent. This is why this week I am challenging you to put your relationships under a microscope.

You are going to need someone tomorrow to pray for you and encourage you, not tell you what you want to hear. You are going to need someone tomorrow to battle with you and speak life over you, not be lukewarm and holding hands with the world.

I want to challenge you today to evaluate your relationships and identify whether or not those people you call friends and loved one are actually helping you become who God created you too be or not.

And before we get into it, why is this so important? Because not only will you reap what you sow, you will reap what others sow into you, too.

I want to give you three truths about intentional relationships.

1. You are known, loved, and challenged
Boy howdy do we loved being known and loved. And these are so important!

Being loved is such a giant human need that we build our lives around people who offer love to us. I know you know people who stay in toxic relationships just because of what they perceive as love. Love will make us do some dumb things! But that is only because the only thing worse than doing a dumb thing for love is not being loved to begin with.

This is why one of the things we try to get you to understand about Jesus first and foremost is his love for you.

John 3:16
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

Romans 5:8
But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Because of God’s great love for us, it makes it easier to believe what he’s promised us. And because it is easier to believe what he’s promised us, we can read his promises, the Bible, and understand and embrace his dying for us.

We feel the same way in our relationships.
John 15:13
Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.

That doesn’t even mean someone has to die for us! When someone answers the phone or sends that unexpected text to check on us, when they meet us for coffee just to hang out or shows up to help out when we need a hand, anytime someone lays aside their own life, schedule, and plans for our sake, we feel loved.

And when we feel loved, we feel known. Don’t discredit how big a deal being known is. It is great to know God loves me and died for me, but the fact he has a plan for me, that he knows my name, that he interacts personally with me, it means that I am not just a number, but that I am known. We feel this so deep in our core!

There is a powerful scene in The Chosen Season 1 that illustrates this. Until this moment in the episode, all we know is that this lady is demon oppressed and is seemingly forsaken in every sense of the word, even to the point where she is not using her real name. Yet when Jesus encounters her, he calls her by name.

I think they are having a little twist on John 20:16 when this same Mary goes to the tomb and finds Jesus’ body missing. A “gardener” speaks to her and in her desperation she asks where they laid Jesus. He says to her, “Mary.” She was known.

We often feel that being loved and known is enough, but that isn’t true.

Intentional friendships require challenges.
I don’t mean if you aren’t having problems you aren’t friends. I mean if you aren’t challenging each other, then your relationships are missing the key element of intentionality.

What do you call someone who always tells you what you want to hear and never challenges you? Do you have friends like that?

Do you have friends that will tell you that isn’t God’s best for you? That they are sorry but they refuse to condone your behavior? That they love you and are there for you, but you are wrong and here’s what the Bible says about it?

Galatians 2:11-14
11 But when Peter came to Antioch, I had to oppose him to his face, for what he did was very wrong. 12 When he first arrived, he ate with the Gentile believers, who were not circumcised. But afterward, when some friends of James came, Peter wouldn’t eat with the Gentiles anymore. He was afraid of criticism from these people who insisted on the necessity of circumcision. 13 As a result, other Jewish believers followed Peter’s hypocrisy, and even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy. 14 When I saw that they were not following the truth of the gospel message, I said to Peter in front of all the others, “Since you, a Jew by birth, have discarded the Jewish laws and are living like a Gentile, why are you now trying to make these Gentiles follow the Jewish traditions?

Was this beef between Paul and Peter?
Peter was not doing the right thing and Paul refused to let it go. Paul called it out and challenged Peter.

This wasn’t beef. It was intentional relationship.
It was Paul calling sin in Peter sin and refusing to allow it to continue in Paul loved dearly. And clearly Peter embraced it because not only do we see Peter’s behavior adjust, but in 2 Peter 3 (which Peter himself actually wrote), he writes about the wisdom of his beloved brother, Paul.

You want to know what a real friend is?
It isn’t someone leading you into sin but someone leading you into sanctification. It isn’t someone letting you do whatever but addresses sin in your life. It isn’t someone who passes the milk but someone who helps you chew the meat of God’s word, and it isn’t someone who just loves you and knows you, but someone who challenges you, too.

In fact, a person who claims to love you yet never challenges you doesn’t really love you. They love the complacency in you because it feeds the complacency in them. Yeah they love you and know you, but are they challenging you?

2. You are encouraged to be great
Let me tell you a story.
There was a decree that went out across the kingdom of Xerxes to kill all the Jews. Upon hearing the decree, Mordecai wept, tore his clothes, and put on sackcloth and ashes. He sent word to Esther to encourage her to speak to the king. Esther, a Jewish orphan who was raised by her cousin, Mordecai, was brought before Xerxes with a bunch of other women so he could choose one from them to replace the deposed Queen Vashti. She was chosen and became queen, however, Esther couldn’t simply go to the king without being invited, or else she would be killed. Mordecai sends back word:

Esther 4:13-14
13 “Don’t think for a moment that because you’re in the palace you will escape when all other Jews are killed. 14 If you keep quiet at a time like this, deliverance and relief for the Jews will arise from some other place, but you and your relatives will die. Who knows if perhaps you were made queen for just such a time as this?”

The rest of the story is that she went, uncovered the evil plot of the jealous Haman to the king, thereby not only eliminating Haman, but saving all the Jews.

One more story. Matthew 16:13-19
13 When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” 14 “Well,” they replied, “some say John the Baptist, some say Elijah, and others say Jeremiah or one of the other prophets.” 15 Then he asked them, “But who do you say I am?” 16 Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” 17 Jesus replied, “You are blessed, Simon son of John, because my Father in heaven has revealed this to you. You did not learn this from any human being. 18 Now I say to you that you are Peter (which means ‘rock’), and upon this rock I will build my church, and all the powers of hell will not conquer it. 19 And I will give you the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven. Whatever you forbid on earth will be forbidden in heaven, and whatever you permit on earth will be permitted in heaven.”

Peter went on to flop horribly no less than 13 times recorded in Scripture, yet Jesus encourages Peter that he isn’t the reed blowing in the wind like his given name suggested, but that he is steady and stable as a rock, which his new name suggests. (https://www.godisjustlikejesus.com/13-failures-peter-jesus-loves-imperfect-people/)

Both Esther and Peter became great, and while I am not saying that you have to rise to queen and save the Jews or be the successor to Jesus leading the church, I am saying that intentional relationships speak greatness over you and pull it out of you.

Think of any Bible character other than Jesus. How flawed were they?
Abraham: Was old and lost faith in God's plan for his family
David: Committed adultery and murdered his friend
Elijah: Was suicidal
Gideon: Was driven by fear
Jacob: Was a cheater
Moses: Was weak, ungrateful, and impatient
Noah: Was a drunk
Rahab: Was a prostitute who helped the Israelites defeat Jericho
Samson: Was a rebellious womanizer
Solomon: Was an idol worshipper
Paul: Persecuted the church

Every disciple had their flaws, too. For instance:
Matthew: Betrayed his people
Peter: Denied knowing Jesus three times

All of these people, whether it was God himself or someone else, had greatness pulled out of them.

Who is that person in your life who is pulling greatness out of you? What does that look like?
- They believe in you more that you believe in yourself.
- They see in you what you can’t see in yourself.
- They speak life over you when all you can speak over yourself is death.
- They challenge you to what you can accomplish not demean you with your failures.

1 Peter 2:9
But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

Intentional relationships help us respond to God calling us out of darkness into his light.

Who is it?
Who is that person in your life who refuses to let you settle for anything less that who God created you to be? If you DON’T have that person in your life, you need them more than you could ever know.

3. Your best interest is what’s in mind.
We talk a lot about something we call The 5. You need people in your life who have The 5.
They know you, they know God.
They love you, they love God.
They have your best interest in mind.

It isn’t enough that they know you. Just because they know you doesn't mean they know what is best for you. It isn’t enough that they love you. Loved ones have given us the worst advice at times. And it isn’t enough that they know and love God, too. I’ve had people who have known me and loved me, known God and loved God, still give me advice that doesn’t have my best interest in mind.

When all 5 are working hand in hand, relationships as God intended work like they are supposed to.

Let me give some examples and then some biblical context.

Perhaps I am struggling financially.
Someone who loves and knows me might try to help with money. A person who knows and loves God might try to encourage me with the word. But someone who has the 5 will not just try to bandaid the problem with extra money or try to make me feel better with an encouraging word. They will dig into why I am struggling. They might find I am blowing money on the wrong stuff. Maybe I either don’t have or refuse to follow a budget. Maybe they discover I’ve been tipping God on Sundays convincing myself I am in financial covenant with God rather that being obedient to give the whole tithe like he commands to begin with. A friend might try to help me feel better but intentional relationships actually work to make me BE better.

Perhaps I am living in a specific sin.
Someone who loves and knows me might try to help with repentance. A person who knows and loves God might try to encourage me with the word. But someone who has the 5 will not just try to help me manage my sin but actually try to help me eliminate my sin. They will dig into why I am sinning chronically in the first place. Maybe I am walking in extreme compromise. Maybe I’ve convinced myself the behavior is justified. Maybe I am using the sin to mask pain from past hurts. Maybe I didn’t even know I was sinning. A friend might try to salve the brokenness created by sin, but intentional relationships challenge the root of the sin and help create accountability around me to stop it.

Here’s some biblical context:

Proverbs 27:17
Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another.

Iron sharpens iron because as two pieces rub against each other, the friction sloughs off rough edges and burrs to creates smoother edges, making them sharp.

Who is this in your life?
Who have you allowed enough access to in your life where they can see past what you tell everyone, past the front you present, and into your heart, into what is really happening?

You need this.

Think of your top 3 friends. Are they just friends, or are they intentional relationships that are helping you become who God made you to be?

When it comes to how people talk to you and respond to you, the delivery is important. All truth leads to broken relationship. All grace leads to compromise. But when truth and grace work hand in hand, they lead to restoration.

I know you have friends based on proximity, friends based on hobbies and interests, but do you have friends based on living with purpose?

Some of us need to eliminate some ungodly voices in our lives. That might mean a person. It might mean a musician. It might mean a show. It might mean some social media friends or accounts.

Ungodly relationships have no place in our godly lives.

And you might need to replace those ungodly ones with godly one.

If you are going to live with purpose, you have to be in purposeful relationships.

Are your relationships helping you or hurting you, and if they are hurting, what does God want you to do about them?

Let’s pray.

What is the Holy Spirit saying to you through this message?

How does he want you to respond?