I find that the older I get, the more I cherish true and genuine friendship.

And just let me explain to you what I mean by true and genuine friendship.

Definition of friendship are those people who come into your life when everybody else is leaving

or everybody else leaves.

True friendship is those who love you with all of your quirks and with all of your idiosyncrasies.

True friends are the people who know everything about you, and they still love you all the same.

That's true friendship, as I'm talking about.

As a matter of fact, in the Middle East, we have a saying that goes something like this,

and it rhymes in the original language, but I couldn't get it rhyming in English without

changing the meaning. It goes something like this. Your enemy will count to you every one of your faults, but your friends will even

swallow gravel for you. Powerful, vivid language. Now I want you to turn with me, please,

to Genesis 18. And here we come in this chapter, and we discover something in the relationship

between Abraham and the Lord to be priceless. Truly, you cannot place a value on it.

Abraham becomes God's friend. Some would say, well, Michael, isn't everybody a friend of God?

No, not really. Then the question would be, how can we, human beings, with all of our weaknesses,

with all of our failures, with all of our foibles,

and with all of our sins, and how can we be friends to a righteous and holy God?

A great question, and I'm ready to answer it.

You see, the basis or the foundation on which a friendship with God can ever be established is faith. Faith is the basis of the foundation

of friendship of the Lord. Faith in God that connects us to God. Faith is what made Abraham to be God's friend with all of his weaknesses,

with all of his failures, and we've been seeing all the way through the series. But he became

God's friend because of his faith. Faith, in spite of his weakness and failure and sin, made David, King David, to be a friend of God.

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