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225. Friendship is Essential as a Christ-Follower with Justin Whitmel Earley **Transcription Below** Genesis 2:18a (NIV) "The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone." Justin Whitmel Earley is a writer, speaker, and lawyer. He is the author of the award-winning books Habits of the Household and The Common Rule, though he spends most days running his business law practice. Through his writing and speaking, Justin empowers God’s people to thrive through life-giving habits that form them in the love of God and neighbor. His latest book, Made for People, delves deep into the profound impact of friendship and offers transformative strategies to combat loneliness. He lives with his wife and four boys in Richmond, Virginia, and spends a lot of time around fires and porches with friends. Questions and Topics We Discuss: How does becoming more like Jesus look similar to becoming more like a friend? What are some questions we can ask our friends the next time we get together, in hopes of taking our conversation and connection to a deeper level? Will you share your experience when you recognized friends are essential in the battle against evil? Thank You to Our Sponsor: WinShape Marriage Additional Recommended Episode from The Savvy Sauce: 90 Friendship with Drew Hunter Connect with The Savvy Sauce on Facebook or Instagram or Our Website Gospel Scripture: (all NIV) Romans 3:23 “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” Romans 3:24 “and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.” Romans 3:25 (a) “God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood.” Hebrews 9:22 (b) “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.” Romans 5:8 “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Romans 5:11 “Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.” John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” Romans 10:9 “That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” Luke 15:10 says “In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.” Romans 8:1 “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” Ephesians 1:13–14 “And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession- to the praise of his glory.” Ephesians 1:15–23 “For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.” Ephesians 2:8–10 “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God‘s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.“ Ephesians 2:13 “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ.“ Philippians 1:6 “being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” **Transcription** [00:00:00] <music> Laura Dugger: Welcome to The Savvy Sauce, where we have practical chats for intentional living. I'm your host Laura Dugger, and I'm so glad you're here. [00:00:17] <music> Laura Dugger: I am thrilled to introduce you to our sponsor, Winshape Marriage. Their weekend retreats will strengthen your marriage, and you will enjoy this gorgeous setting, delicious food, and quality time with your spouse. To find out more, visit them online at WinshapeMarriage.org. That's WinshapeMarriage.org. Thanks for your sponsorship. My guest today is writer, speaker, and lawyer, Justin Whitmel Earley. You may be familiar with his recent books, The Common Rule and Habits of the Household. Today, we're going to focus on the art and habits of cultivating friendship, which is the wisdom taken from his most recent book, Made for People. I also love the subtitle, Why We Drift into Loneliness and How to Fight for a Life of Friendship. [00:01:18] So I hope you experience the eternal value through this conversation now. Here's our chat. Welcome to The Savvy Sauce, Justin. Justin Whitmel Earley: Thank you, Laura. I'm very, very glad to be here. Laura Dugger: Well, will you just start us off by introducing your family to us, and tell us a bit about your journey that's led you to where you are today? Justin Whitmel Earley: Sure. My family, me and my wife, Lauren, we've been married for almost 17 years now. 16, but going on 17. We have four boys, Whit, Asher, Colt, and Shep. They are 11, 9, 6, and 5 at the time of this recording. I'm a business lawyer by day, as well as a writer. The really short version of how I got there is, I actually felt called to be a missionary in China after I graduated law school, which was great. But then I had this calling experience in China where I felt the Lord actually pushing me to go back and live missionally in law and business. [00:02:24] So a big career change, but I felt like I was following the Lord into it. I went really intentionally, but also quickly and intensely into law. I did really well in law school and got my dream job in mergers and acquisitions here in Richmond, Virginia, where I still live now. But I collapsed, I had a mental health collapse my first year of lawyering, where I was just becoming a mess of anxiety and panic and insomnia. This is a very condensed version of this, but it led to my first book, writing about spiritual disciplines and habits. Because in that year or so of struggle with mental health, I started to realize that while the architecture of my life was decorated with this Christian content of calling and my worldview, so to speak, was solid, the habits of my life, like the beams holding up that house, were just like everybody else's. [00:03:28] And it was only a matter of time before they collapsed. I started to realize that when your habits go one way and your head goes the other way, your heart will follow the habits. And I had really become converted to the nervous medicating lawyer through habit. That led to me really examining the spiritual disciplines and how much they matter, not just to our mental health, but to our overall walk with Jesus, our spiritual and emotional health. So that became a real passion of mine, thinking in terms of, how do I disciple the habits of my life to follow Jesus and to live missionally within law? That started my writing journey. There's more to that, but that's how I got into writing. And three books later, here I am today. I'm still a lawyer, as a business lawyer but I also write and speak and love, love doing that stuff. Laura Dugger: Well, and a couple things there. I'm so grateful for your transparency, but also your obedience to step into this calling. [00:04:27] Because even completing this most recent book that's all about friendship, you share that one of your friends had encouraged you to be careful not to take on more responsibility than your life stage had space for. So as you're sharing your journey, I'm just curious, in this season of life with your four young boys, what does your personal writing schedule actually look like? Justin Whitmel Earley: Oh, I love talking about that. My schedule now, it sounds... you know, when I try to say my job to people, it can sound overwhelming. But I now think in habits, and I no longer see schedule as a constraint to what would be a life of spontaneity. This is how I used to think of it when I was in college and a missionary in China, and I hated structure. But now I really see it as the scaffolding on which you can build something wonderful. [00:05:27] So I think of my time and blocks and habits that are scaffolding to build a beautiful life. For writing, I mainly think about my writing hour in the morning. I try to write when I get to the office at eight from about eight to nine. And sometimes that's actually writing. Sometimes that might be reading or researching. Sometimes it might be like editing an article or sometimes it might be true drafting. But before I start my law work around nine, I just generally... I would obviously say take or enjoy, like savor that hour where I feel like I'm allowed to write. On the other hand, it becomes a real discipline when you're working on a manuscript because you get tired of thinking. You start to get a lot of self-doubt. Like, why am I even doing this? Nobody wants to read me. Like, who cares? Which is, by the way, spiritual warfare, I think, of the enemy talking to you and saying, you know, what you're called to do is actually not worth doing. But during those times, it's a real rhythm of discipline to say, you know, no matter what, I'm going to write for this hour. [00:06:32] And slowly across time, you know, if you write an hour a day, you'll have a book or a couple by the end of the year. You know, if you read for an hour a day, you'll have a PhD in a couple of years. It's just amazing things can happen in one hour every day when it's truly a habit that you put on autopilot. So that's what it looks like for me. Because most of the rest of my day is law and parenting. Laura Dugger: Justin, I love that so much because it feels approachable if somebody else has that as a goal right now. I love you just cut through the excuses and built that as a habit. That's so great. With your most recent book, I completely agreed with your theology on friendship. But I'd love for you to elaborate more on your claim from page 14 where you specifically write, "You need friends to be who God made you to be." Justin Whitmel Earley: I've always sort of intuited that I would not be a whole person or a good person or even a safe person alone. [00:07:35] I've always sensed that I'm better around others and that I feel complete around others. I never knew how theologically accurate that was until I really started digging into what the Bible has to say about friendship. Because I never really thought friendship was all that spiritual of a topic, honestly, until... Laura, honestly, it started to become so important in my life in my late 20s that I really started to think about it more carefully. I would say my favorite book of the Bible is probably Genesis and my favorite chapters are those early chapters. I think there's so much about who God is, who we are, what we were made for, what we weren't made for in those chapters. One of the verses that I came to afresh was the idea that Adam was called "not good" because he was alone. There's all this kind of meaning that radiates from that verse. There's something to say about marriage. There's something to say about Adam's vocation and the world that he needed help. There's something to say about relationships, too. [00:08:37] When you look at that verse and think, Here's the setup of Genesis. God creates all these things and calls them good. And then He makes Adam in his own image, in the communal triune image of the Trinity, and He looks at Adam and says, this is before the fall, before sin has happened, that it's not good that Adam is alone. That "not good" is so striking in contrast with all the other good, good, good of the six days of creation. It's odd, though, because Adam is with God. It's strange. Imagine yourself on a date with your husband and you say something like, "This is wonderful, except that I'm so lonely." Whoever's sitting across the table from you will be like, "Wait, but I'm here," right? And so it's interesting that God says... He's looking at Adam and says, despite the fact that I'm here with you, you have an aloneness about you. And that's what really struck the chord for me of saying, Oh, wait a minute. God made us such that we can't be who we were truly made to be until we have others around us. [00:09:43] We can't be who we're truly called to be, I don't think we can experience God the way that we're made to experience him until we experience him alongside others. That is human community. That's marriage. That's family. But it's also friendship. It's the church. So it's just this deep abiding theme in scripture that we are not complete alone, which I think is, you know... this is longstanding orthodoxy. I'm not saying anything new, but I do think it's a minority report in our generation of Christianity. I think we've been influenced a lot by the Jesus movement and before the 70s, 80s Christianity, where there really wasn't emphasis on it's me and Jesus, quiet times are the apex of faith. And there's so much good stuff about that. I mean, deep personal relationships with Jesus and studying the scriptures, I will say amen to all day. It's just not the whole picture of the Christian life. And you can't be who God made you to be until you figure out who you are in community. And that is what this Made for People book is all about. It's about understanding that at the deepest spiritual level, you need friendship. [00:10:55] Laura Dugger: Well, and you would say that that goes for all of us, regardless of life stage. I think a majority of listeners are parents with children still living in their home. So, Justin, would you agree that this does still apply to us in all seasons? And if so, what are some practical tips to make that happen even in those child-raising years? Justin Whitmel Earley: Oh yeah. You know, I was sitting with a couple of friends on my back porch last night around a fire, and we were actually talking about this. We were talking about how lots of us growing up, college or like hometowns, high schools, it's just... it's a typical experience I think sometime in your teens or early 20s, where you realize the beauty of community. And typically it's because something has stewarded you into that community. Maybe it was a great sports team, maybe it was a great church or good youth group, maybe it was a great college ministry, whatever it is. There are bright points in our life where we realize, Oh... you might not say it like this, but I think you would feel it. [00:12:02] "Oh, I was made for friendship. This is how life is supposed to be." And we look back at those times and we think, yes, yes, that's good. But wha…
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