I’m a country music fan. Yes I’m redneck (in many ways). Yes I realize that if you play a country album backwards the dog comes home, your wife never leaves, you sober up, and you get your job back. I know all that. But here’s the thing. I recently said in a post that I’m a words guy when it comes to music. And that’s what I love about so many country songs is that the words echo themes you find in Scripture.

Tracy Lawrence (about as redneck as they come) recently wrote a song titled “Find Out Who Your Friends Are”. It’s a song basically about hard times and when they come that you truly know who’s got your back so to speak. One part of the song goes like this:

Everybody wants to slap your back
wants to shake your hand
when you’re up on top of that mountain
But let one of those rocks give way then you slide back down look up
and see who’s around then
This ain’t where the road comes to an end
This ain’t where the bandwagon stops
This is just one of those times when
A lot of folks jump off
When the water’s high
When the weather’s not so fair
When the well runs dry
Who’s gonna be there?

As an absolute beginner in church planting, I’m experiencing this first hand as I plant Eternity. If you don’t believe me, you ought to experience the reactions for yourself that people have when you get beyond sharing the vision and ask them to join in the mission with their money.

But beyond that, I think these words hold so true for us as Christians as well. How many people are there that they love Jesus with all of their heart until something bad happens. They love the Lord so much until the road gets a little hard. They think being a Christian is great until it means sacrifice, suffering, or denial of self. It’s at those moments that I think Jesus, and churches, truly find out who their friends are.

You see this come alive in the Gospel accounts as person after person abandoned Jesus on the road to Calvary. His closest companions gone, it was down to a brother, mother, and some other women as the last people standing at the cross. Why? Because they were following Jesus for their own agendas instead of following Jesus for His agenda.

How many churches do you see this story played out at. The church is great and the staff is wonderful and everything is a virtual koom-by-a moment until the church begins to ask people to sacrifice a little bit. Everything is great as long as the pastor is slapping my back and telling me how great I am but as soon as he asks me to serve, well then we’re not so sure about that.

It’s amazing that in Scripture we see God purposefully and sovereignly using suffering and hardship to do two things: 1) Bond those who are truly His even closer to Himself and 2) Drive those who aren’t truly His away from Himself.

You wanna find out who your friends are - go through some hardship or enter into a situation where you need more from them than just a five minute howdy doody conversation and see if they’re truly willing to come and help you out.

You’d be amazed at how quickly some people cast off years of friendship and act like you’re simple acquaintances when your friendship actually requires something of them other than just words.

I might be a redneck, but I also know that rednecks sometimes put the Bible into language that the common man can understand. If Jesus decided to truly find out who His friends were - would you be one of them?