 Welcome to hope today. It's Tuesday it is a great day to serve the Lord. By the way, this is my annual warning to the men tomorrow's Valentine's Day. You have been warned. Don't forget I'm Tom Hollis and Amanda Brocker is here with me and we are going to be talking about friends. We sure are. We have Amy Weatherly and Jess Johnston with us. They're going to talk about their book here for it. The good the bad wait the good the bad wait and the case. So you need this book just for the queso recipe. We are going to dive into what do healthy friendships look like and how can we really be here for each other? Tom, it's such an important topic. I think in our social media world where we're this deep in our relationships, we almost need to learn how to take it a little. Well, I think we do. We do need to learn and again, social media in many ways is contributed to a shallowness of our relationships and we need to learn how to be friends again. And it's a wonderful thing and to have that real connection, that real person that you're in the same room with and not an electronic connection. That can be okay, but we all know the problem is there. But I just wanted to talk. We talked a little bit yesterday when Anna was here about the Super Bowl and about so many things related to that. One thing I wanted to bring up was that you happen to see that he gets us commercials at all that were on there. And that caused a lot of controversy because it's all about that whole trying to present Jesus without all the religious facade in front and that he understands where we're at. And I think it's a powerful thing. We've had the person that's led that campaign. Bill McHenry has been on the air with us. And we're so glad we've run those on Cornerstone. But the ones that were there yesterday were actually on Sunday were very controversial because they talked about Jesus didn't teach hate and it talked about Washington people's feet. I think it's great. It's great. It offended people on the right and the left. What could be better? You know, hey, get some thinking about Jesus. Yeah. If we've done that, then we've done our job. We want people to, you know, think about his life and who he was. And when we think about the life of Christ, he himself was very controversial in his day. Yeah, absolutely. And so, you know, whether or not bringing it back home here, whether where you find yourself, I wanted to say this, Jesus does love you. He cares about you no matter where you find yourself today, no matter whether you've served him, he walked away or you've been serving him and grown cold or maybe you've never known him. He loves you today and he cares for you. By the way, if you need prayer, we always have prayer partners available standing by ready to pray with you. You can call the number on the screen and get someone that will bring you the love of God and bring you hope today. I know just thinking about the Super Bowl, I think of queso and y'all, the recipe that is in here, you're going to want to get. But you know, I couldn't help but just move on. So today I'm sporting my, my gold and my black because go Steelers. This is your year. We're just going to declare it now in Jesus. That's a lot of faith. You have great faith. Oh woman, you have great faith. I've moved on. I've seen enough red. There was a whole lot of red. I'm like, where is our black and gold? But anyhow, well, life can be full of many ups and downs. And during those down moments, God can use people in our lives to be there for us and to comfort us. Our next two guests know the importance of friendships and how valuable a good friend can be. Amy Weatherly and Jess Johnston are best friends and I love the title of their new book here for it, the good, the bad and the queso. Amy and Jess, welcome to hope today. Thank you for having us. Absolutely. All right, you have to tell us, you know, what sparked the creation of here for it? We just wanted a title that sort of encompassed. Friendship isn't going to be perfect, especially like if you're going to have a deep, long relationship with anybody, there will be bumps in the road. You will go through hard things. They will go through hard things. There will be circumstances that change. And that will change you as well. But that's part of having a friendship that lasts and that endures, meaning that you're going to have to be there through the good, the bad. And then hopefully the queso, which is just this idea of just like a shared, happy, fun experiences, just the mundane, all that middle ground, we want friendships that are there for all of it. Amen. Talk to us a little about like your definition of an authentic friendship. What does that look like? Because I do feel in this day and age, we have a lot of shallow, I don't even know if we want to call them relationships because I don't know that they've got to that depth. But what does authentic friendship look like? I think first of all, we have to relearn to take off the filter because we're so used to Instagram or Facebook making things pretty and look like we have it all together. But to have authentic friendship, we have to be able to lay that stuff aside and be our real selves. Because if we're not showing up authentically, they may not know it, but we'll know it. And we won't feel totally loved and known in that friendship because of that. But I think that's one of the first steps is we really have to set aside and unlearn the filtering. And then I think it means showing up for each other, just like Amy was saying, it means being there for the good, the bad and the case though. That's right. So when you talk about listening and vulnerability, how does that in itself play a role in our healthy friendship? Yeah, I think that's something we haven't done very well, especially listening. I think we have become people who really feel the need to speak our mind and we feel like we need to share our opinion and our story. And we do feel like the spotlight I don't need to be on us. And that actually leads to just a lot of pressure, like this pressure to feel like you have to be entertaining and you have to charm people and you have to be liked. And that's really not the goal. The goal is really to connect. The goal is really to be sitting in front of someone else and learn who they are, learn how to make them feel liked, learn how to make them feel treasured. I always say like, if we can get it through our head, what a gift it is that there's this other human that God has formed, that God has just specially created this person. And for this moment in time, we have the privilege of connecting with them. We need to learn how to listen to what they have to say. And then vulnerability is the other part of that equation. We're kind of like Jess said, where we are showing up offensively and genuinely, and we're not shared of, we're not scared of the truth, and we're not scared to really share our hearts and our struggles and just the whole of it in this, in a safe space. And it's so, it's so important to friendship. Jess, if I could ask you, you know, sometimes people's personalities, you know, they're more of a behind the scenes person or an out front, like, how do you help people no matter what your personality type is that when you walk in the room, that it's not too awkward? You know, how do you make it? Well, it can just be weird. Yes, it's so weird. But I think the first thing that we want women to know and men is that it's okay if it's weird. It's okay if it's awkward. In fact, I tell myself when I'm getting to know new people, it's going to be awkward. And to just be comfortable with that, it's not a sign that you shouldn't be in that room. It's not a sign that that's not going to end up being a great friendship. It just kind of is awkward as you're getting to know people. So I think it's really important to just keep pushing through. Don't overthink it. Don't overly focus on the awkward and just move forward because it's awkward for everybody. Some people may be better at hiding it. Like a really outgoing person may not look like they're uncomfortable or awkward, but that doesn't mean they're not fighting their own insecurities. And I think the other thing that's really important is don't wait. Don't wait for someone else to introduce themselves to you. Even if you're shy, take a bold step and start a conversation and invite someone to get coffee, whatever that looks like for you. It's important to be empowered and to know that you have what it takes to initiate friendship. So I'm going to speak from the guy perspective here. I'm the guy in this group today. So Amy, let me ask you, well, how is it different for guys? You know, my wife, she's out. She's walking with my sister. She's having lunch with this person lunch with that person. She's developing these relationships. And I remember my best friend was speaking at our men's retreat a couple of years ago and he goes, Tom's my best friend. I see him like once a year. That's kind of the way it is for guys. How can we develop and really set aside those times? Because we all tend to be so busy no matter what stage of life we're at. Yes, I can really only speak from a woman's experience. But I'm married to a man. I'm raising two of them. And we can go through the same thing. Men want to belong. Men want to have a safe space. Men want friendships too. We are very, very social creatures. It is how we were formed. It is how we were made. That is just something in us. So I do think we're, you know, we're all alike in that sense. But time is a big deal because time is a big one. There are studies that show that it takes like 100 to 150 hours spent with someone before you feel like close friendships develop. And that's that's pretty significant amount of time. So it really is about carving, carving time and saying, okay, this really is important. These 15 minutes, 20 minutes, maybe I'm going to make a phone call, maybe I'm going to make a text. Maybe I'm going to, I don't, I don't know, go hang out with someone after work, play tennis. I don't know. Whatever you want to do, it doesn't matter what you're doing, but that time matters. And it is like sacred. You literally have to carve it out. But one of the things we can do, I think it will, if we'll kind of watch how much time we're spending mindlessly scrolling on social media, and if we can say, hey, I can cut that back by 20 minutes, then there you go. There's 20 minutes you can give to instead of giving it to social media, which is not really life giving. There's no back and forth there. There's no deep connection there. Like I'm going to give it to something that matters. I'm going to pour that water into this space and hope this plant grows and just being very, very intentional about it. Well, I was just thinking just about, you know, a situation where you have, sometimes that can be a fix it person, like you want to help people be better. But I noticed like in a relationship and you ladies address this, like it needs to be where you're really listening on both ends, not one and talking all the time and the other one listening all the time, but talk to us about that. Because I just think that it's something simple, but we need this type of help and instruction because of the day we live in. Yeah, I think it's important. I think sometimes God highlights somebody in our life that we're just supposed to love in that moment. We're just supposed to love on them. And we're definitely just, we're being the primary giver and they're being the primary receiver. But I think something I had to learn was that that's something else. That's not friendship. If it's all giving and no receiving that is maybe God highlighted that person to me to just love on, but that's not friendship. Does that make sense? Friendship, it's important to take a step back and notice, is this person reciprocating? Are they invested also in me? Are they a safe spot for me to open up and share what's going on in my life? Will they be there if I go through something difficult? And that's not a mean thing to assess. You're not being mean by thinking, well, I don't, by really evaluating if somebody is a good friend, just it's looking at the reality of it. And if they're not a friend, it's important to invest maybe elsewhere, that friendship, energy, because ultimately you want, you need people in your life. Jesus needed good friends in his life. We need good friends in our life too. Yeah, let me ask you about the vulnerability. It's such an important thing. And so often, and again, from a man's perspective, sometimes we're a little bit harder to be vulnerable. But when we open up, any Christian opens up to one another, it's always a powerful time. What are some like ground rules, some things that we should know about being vulnerable, the power of it, but also the dangers of it? For sure. So vulnerability is something you don't necessarily want to dive right in. You and I have had a, sometimes I can have a hard time doing this, in meeting someone and you don't really know them that well, and you just dive straight in. You're like, man, here's the hardest thing I've ever been through. And you hit with them. And that is foolish. That's foolish. This is not a person that you know well they are. That's just the connection that you're trying to form with them. It is likely going to just scare them. You know, that is scary to the other person, be like, wow, I, you kind of done all this baggage on me. I would love to not hold that. So it is important when, when working with vulnerability to remember that it is like walking into a pool. You start shallow. You start with small things and you buy time through time and trust and shared experiences. You can go deeper and deeper, little by little, but you don't just dive in right away and go, well, I'm here to be vulnerable. So listen to my childhood stuff. That's just not a very wise thing to do because we are supposed to guard our heart. So I always think about it as a pool that, that gradually gets deeper. That's how you want to enter vulnerability. Well, we were just laughing here a little bit because Amanda is like this, this is an open book person. I've been on the air with her so many times. I know you just never know what's going to come out, but it's a really good thing. I have done that and then I've heard like crickets afterward and it was just like, that's the worst. That was a little too much. You know, I was like, oh my God. Anyhow, clean it up, clean it up. I didn't operate that way too, Amanda. It's okay. Yes. And so it's more outgoing personality. You want people to feel welcome, but then I think on the other end, when they're not that eye personality, they're just like deer and headlights, you know? I'm looking at you. Yeah, are you walking away and realize they know this very intimate story about you and you're like, I'm not sure if I know their last name, that's not good. Yes, so we're growing in this, but you talk about, you know, the connection piece and how important that that is and that there's levels of connection and you ladies have done a fantastic job rotating the questions. We're trying to give names, dance or what, but you wrote it. So just keep on being awesome today. You can tell your best friends. Yeah, I think it's good to recognize our levels of connection and all of them are really valuable. Like I love going to the grocery store and being known. Like that's a connection. I love going to the coffee shop and knowing each other's first name and a story about our dogs or whatever. I mean, connection is really powerful in healing and then there's those deeper levels of connection that are just precious and I think it's so important to recognize those deeper connections, invest in them and protect them because you don't get those all the time. There's not always people that are ready and available to handle your deep part of the pool. As you're waiting in there, you sometimes find, wow, this person can't handle this much real. So I think our friendship is going to stay in the shallow end of the pool and that's okay. That's still a connection that can add value to your life. But those friendships that are really there for it, for the deep stuff, are precious and we are busy, as Amy has said, so busy. We just keep getting busier, I feel. And with social media, there's so much chaos and so much happening all the time, but in order to maintain those deep friendships, we have to carve out time. We have to carve out base in our lives for that and we really need it. Yes. We have like three minutes left, but I was just thinking about if each of you could just share a story of where friendship really mattered and what that looked like in the moment. We'll start with Amy. Well, I mean, anytime I have a, you know, a million different stories of times people showed up for me. I mean, your family's sick and like my kids and I had the flu last week and those little gift baskets on my front porch, you know, those kept me going. Like I couldn't, I didn't see another face for a week and a half and those were just beautiful reminders that people love you and they're thinking about you and it's just, it's so precious. I went through something hard, got some bad news and not about me personally, but just some hard stuff earlier this year. And again, I just had people show up with a plant or a written note and just, I think it's so easy and we get so focused on who isn't there, who doesn't show up and we get bitter about who didn't, who didn't meet our expectations in that moment. I think that's really easy to get bitter and unhappy and look at who wasn't there. But man, if we can just adjust our focus and be like, who did show up, who did offer to pray for me? Who was there in my time of need and you redirect and you go, this is where I pour, this is where I pour, this is where I focus because those gifts are a treasure and they are precious and that means that they are rare. That means that they don't happen very often. So you just appreciate them and love on them and give all your praise, you know, for what you do have instead of what you don't. Yeah, I would say just there's been so many moments where friends have shown up for me in big ways that are transformational. Amy showed up for me in ways that are transformational. I think one of the biggest things that sounds so, so simple that was a gift from friendship that changed my life was I have a personality that feels like I've got to be fun and bring energy to the room no matter what. And so I found myself, if I was having a hard time retreating and kind of being on my own because I thought the expectation was I've got to bring life and energy and happiness and joy to the room. So if I don't do that, people aren't going to want to be around me. And one of my friends told me one time, she's like, I like you when you're fun and I like you when you're not fun too. I like you both ways because I think I was coming over and I said, just so you know, I'm pretty grumpy today. I might not be very fun to hang out with. And she's like, I like you both ways. And I think that is that I know that that's something that really changed my life in a very simple way knowing that I'm loved in all the ways. Well said and thank you both Amy and Jess for just number one writing this amazing book and the awesome queso recipe that you've shared with us. And for just the content and giving us a true look at what real friendship looks like, you know, before we went on air, they were like on their phones like trying to help each other sign in. It was just a real moment. I thought the only thing we're missing here, Tom is the queso, but this has been just a treasure to have you on hope today. Oh, thanks so much. Thank you for having us. We love talking about friendship because we do just pray women get it. And men, sorry, men too. They're sorry. There's both. We pray everybody gets it. We pray everybody understands it just takes it for the gift. Like this is a gift God has given us. And sometimes we treat it like a burden and it's not. It's a gift to have friends. Amen. Well, thank you again. Stay with us because when we return in 60 seconds, we're going to look at a familiar scripture that talks about the importance of friendship. We'll be right back. Jesus's two greatest commandments are love God and love others. Learning how to love better is a lifelong journey. This month with your best gift of cornerstone television, we'd like to send you love like that five relationship secrets from Jesus by Dr. Les Parrot. Discover how to truly love those in your life with this revolutionary guide. Blending the latest research in psychology and sociology with biblical insights, Parrot shares five practices being mindful, approachable, gracious, vulnerable and empathetic to help you forge meaningful, fulfilling connections with others. Love like that will revolutionize every relationship in your life. Ask for your copy of love like that five relationship secrets from Jesus by Dr. Les Parrot when you give this month to support Christian television through Cornerstone Network. Give online at ctvn.org slash donate or call us at 888-665-4483. Hope happens here. Well, I love that, you know, the conversation we just had with Jess and Amy about friendship. And we have a scripture that we've shared a lot here. It's actually the main scripture of one of our programs, but we've got a scripture that we're going to share with you and it is found in Proverbs 2717. And it says, as iron sharpens iron, so a friend sharpens a friend. Now think about that for a second. Now, you know, Amanda, I like to work in the garage, you know, and I sharpen things in the garage sometimes, and there's sparks that fly. And it's it it wears away the thing that I'm sharpening, you know, and and it's I'm sure if we could make an analogy here, it's not fun for, you know, the lawnmower blade or the ax or the knife, kitchen knife, if I take it downstairs, whatever I'm sharpening, it is tearing away little pieces of that that piece of metal. But that is what causes the sharpness. Now, our friends can do that to us. And if they can do it in a in a difficult way, or they can do it in a right way, right way, I mean, both can be right. But you know, those kind of things, they when it's tearing and wearing away that portion of us that is rough. Listen, we don't all have all the answers. We don't have it all figured out. I've been a Christian for a long time, and I'm still learning how to do it because and I need people in my life. I need people to, you know, rub me the wrong way sometimes or the right way and just say, hey, I just want to I just want to strengthen you today. I want to be there for you today. And I and I get sharpened by that, whether they're sharing a scripture with me or a prayer with me or just a laugh with me. That is sharpening me and grounding me into the things of God and making me more effective when I go out and talk to someone else that maybe I'll be able to do that to them. You know, in their book, they talk about the importance of when your friend comes to you and gives you some good advice, you know, or like, you know, maybe he's calling you out on something that you need to make a change to not allow pride and arrogance to rise up and be all defensive. A true friendship is where you can say that to the person and they're going to, they might mull over a little bit, but then the Holy Spirit, because if you're a real friend, you have someone's best interest in mind. You're not giving them this bit of information to tear them down. That's not being a friend. But I think on the receiving end that we would actually take those words of wisdom. I feel like the Bible Jesus is our friend because sometimes the Bible makes me say, ouch, you know, like I need to change this. So in a friendship, and then they talked about the different levels and how the closest connection is eye level, like looking at someone and being present in their life. The next is a voice where you pick up the phone or FaceTime, you know, and you're communicating with them. And those are our two deepest level of connections that we can reach out. So make friends. It's fun. Don't say too much though. And listen, from someone who's naturally introverted, you know, God has opened my life up to be able to do this. You know, there is a value in small talk. There is a value in being able to talk to someone. I know how you say, I don't, I don't do small talk. I'm talking about serious stuff all the time. Well, you're boring. Okay. You know, small talk is good. It's something that you can, you know, really find out something about that other person. Do that. Be a friend to someone. If you want someone to be a friend to you, and I know people that are lonely, and maybe you're one out there, you say, hey, I don't really have any friends. Make yourself a friend. And that may just mean be in proximity, go to church, go to, you know, the bowling league or whatever people are doing these days, you know, go to a prayer meeting, whatever, to do something to get yourself in a physical proximity to another person so that you can begin to share because it's what God wants. He's made us for fellowship and He's made us for Himself and you are going to have a great day when you do that. On tomorrow's hope today, instilling confidence and faith, even during the most challenging circumstances, author Erin H. Warren shares her everyday prayers for faith that showcases how faithful and trustworthy God is no matter what life throws our way. Don't miss tomorrow's hope today. Cornerstone Television wishes to thank all our faithful viewers whose consistent prayers and financial support have made this program possible.