Hey friend, welcome to another episode of Job with Julie. I am Julie Slattery, and I want to remind you that this podcast is an outreach of authentic intimacy, which is a ministry helping people make sense of God and sexuality.

Well, today we are going to talk about the importance of friendship. You know, in our world, there's a lot of emphasis on love,

on romance, even on marriage, particularly within Christian communities. But there's very little

emphasis on friendship. My guest today, Rebecca McLaughlin, is going to talk about how we tend to

see friendship as optional and marriage as necessary.

But in reality, if we look at the scripture, it says it's the opposite.

That friendship is absolutely essential, how we love each other, and marriage is optional.

So it's a different take that challenged me.

You might recognize that name, Rebecca McLaughlin.

She has been on this podcast before.

She's the author of a few books, including the secular creed, and the book that we're

going to be talking about today called No Greater Love.

This is a fun topic.

It's challenging.

I loved unpacking it with Rebecca, and I think you like listening

to it. So grab your Java, and here's my conversation with Rebecca. All right, Rebecca, we've

been waiting to do this podcast recording for a while now, so I'm glad we actually get to do it.

We've had a few run-ins and now we get to talk about

friendship. It's been like a series of unfortunate events where I keep thinking it's a good time and

then suddenly like a child gets sick or something. No, hey, I know that. And I just was like a little bit

relentless. Like we're not going to give up on this. This is such an important conversation.

And I feel like on job with Julie at our ministry, relentless, like we're not going to give up on this. This is such an important conversation.

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