Starting Right
Starting Right is a 5 minute Day Starter to help keep you motivated, encouraged, and focused throughout your day. DannyMac is a pastor, teacher, motivational speaker, husband, and father. His years of leading and training people have given him vast experience in helping individuals to accomplish change in their lives and meet their goals. He can help you set the course for your day by offering practical advice from God's Word in a positive and fun way. There is no better way to begin your day than by Starting Right with DannyMac.
Starting Right
Friends That Sharpen Us.
"A friend is always loyal and a brother is born to help in time of need." These timeless words from Proverbs capture the essence of today's heartfelt exploration into the vital role friendship plays in our spiritual and emotional wellbeing.
Reflecting on Chuck Swindoll's profound observation that friendship fills our hearts with joy, we journey through some of television's most iconic friendships—from the complementary partnership of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson to the hilarious shenanigans of Lucy and Ethel; from the medical dramas featuring Meredith and Christina to the beloved bromance of Joey and Chandler. These pop culture examples illuminate what scripture has long taught: we need each other. Today, I encourage you to reach out to a friend you haven't spoken with in a while. Make that phone call, schedule that FaceTime, reconnect with those who refresh your spirit. In just five minutes each weekday morning, Starting Right aims to help you begin your day with purpose, perspective, and in this case, a reminder of the precious gift of friendship.
Good morning. I am Danny Mac and you're listening to Starting Right. Every weekday morning, I'm going to be here to share stories of life and hope from God's Word. So grab a cup of coffee, sit back and relax for the next five minutes as I help you start your day by starting right. Sit back and relax for the next five minutes as I help you start your day by starting right.
Speaker 1:Chuck Swindoll once said I cannot even imagine where I would be today were it not for that handful of friends who have given me a heart full of joy. Let's face it friends make life a lot more fun. It's absolutely true. Our friends are so important to us, and I love, love my friends and I have some very great friends. Friends are what helps to keep us sane in the middle of insanity and helps to guide us through some really tough times in our lives.
Speaker 1:I've been able to put together a list of some of the friendships that were significant in TV series over the last few years. How about Sherlock Holmes and Dr John Watson? There's a great duo that would never survive without each other Jerry Seinfeld and George Costanza One of the great contrasting friendships that there ever was on TV, but one that will leave you in stitches laughing. They not only needed each other, they just wanted to hang out with each other and enjoy life together. How about Ethel and Lucy from the I Love Lucy show? I'll never forget the two of them trying to box chocolates off of a moving conveyor belt and, winding up, shoving the chocolates into their mouths and down their tops and everything else to try and keep the chocolates from flying off the end of the belt into the world. Grey's Anatomy had Meredith and Christina who were probably the best female friends on television. They were strong, independent women but they needed each other and their friendship was key to them. How about in Scrubs, another medical show, where there was JD and Turk who had known each other since they were college roommates and grew up together to become the very best friends?
Speaker 1:Probably the best-known friends on television were the friends from the friends tv show, but within that there was the friendship of joey and chandler, which was probably the closest friendship that there was there, and those guys just fed off of each other and they they needed to spend time with one another. Even when they were mad at each other, they still loved one another and I guess that's really one of the keys about friendships is that we need each other very much. We need other people around us, but there are times when we'll tick each other off. There'll be times when we'll frustrate each other, but we still need the friends that are around us. In Proverbs, chapter 17 and verse 17,. It says a friend is always loyal and a brother is born to help in time of need. We need those friends that are loyal to us and we need to be loyal friends. It's been said that if you want to have a good friend, be one. Proverbs 27 and 17 says as iron sharpens iron, so a friend sharpens a friend. We build one another up, we help one another. We sharpen each other. We are not only friends with the other Christians around us. The Bible tells us that we're brothers and sisters in Christ. We are there to help one another and that's what we should be doing helping. We are not called to tear one another down. We're not called to tear each other apart. We're there to be a friend to those around us and, what's more, we have the greatest friend of them all.
Speaker 1:John, chapter 15, starting in verse 12. This is my commandment love each other in the same way I have loved you. There is no greater love than to lay down one's life for one's friends. You are my friends. If you do what I command, I no longer call you slaves, because a master doesn't confide in his slaves. Now you are my friends, since I have told you everything the Father has told me. You didn't choose me, I chose you and I appointed you to go and produce lasting fruit, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask for, using my name. And this is my command Love each other.
Speaker 1:We need to have friends in our lives and we need to be friends in our lives. We need those people to come around us that will love us and sometimes, yes, they will irk us and sometimes they will rub us the wrong way, but we need them to do that. Sometimes those friends are like the sandpaper that take the rough edges off of us and help us to be what we are supposed to be, and sometimes we are the sandpaper that is taking the rough edges off our friends. But real friends can do that. Real friends can work together, love for each other in the midst of it, so that we can truly be what he wants us to be as encouraging, loving friends.
Speaker 1:So I encourage you today reach out to your friends around you, wherever they may be. Maybe it's a friend you haven't talked to for a long time and they're out there and you haven't had a chance. Tell you what, phone them, do some FaceTime with them. Get a hold of your friends and talk to them and catch up. Let them refresh you because friends can do that for you and be blessed and be a good friend to your friends as well. Have a great day, my friends. We'll talk again tomorrow. Thank you for listening today and I invite you to join me Monday to Friday, right here on Starting Right with Danny Mac.
