Podcast: When Your Kid Needs a Friend (Trillia Newbell)

October 23, 2023 by: Crossway

This article is part of the The Crossway Podcast series.

The Gift of Friendship

In this episode, Trillia Newbell unpacks how God has designed all of us for friendship—both with one another and even more importantly, with himself.

Jesus and the Gift of Friendship

Jesus and the Gift of Friendship

Trillia Newbell

In this thoughtful children’s book, kids ages 3–6 join Zeke on his journey to find close friends. Along the way, he develops unlikely friendships and discovers Jesus is his dearest friend and ultimate provider.

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Topics Addressed in This Interview:

01:05 - The State of Friendship in the Church

Matt Tully
Trillia, thank you so much for joining me on The Crossway Podcast today.

Trillia Newbell
Thank you. I’m so glad to be here.

Matt Tully
In 2021, the American Enterprise Institute published a survey on friendship in the US, and they found that “The role of friends in American social life is experiencing a pronounced decline. And as I looked at the study, I saw that they found that Americans have fewer friends than they once did, we talk to our friends less than we once did, and we rely on our friends for personal support far less than we did in the past.” Did those findings of this survey—and I think things that we hear talked about in American life—does that resonate with things that you’re seeing and hearing in the church itself?

Trillia Newbell
Absolutely. I think we’re an individualistic society, and we’re also—I hate to use this word because it’s a word that’s thrown around so much—but we’re busy. And because we are so busy and so stretched—often too thin, doing all the things—it can be difficult for deep friendships. I would say that most people have acquaintances, but it doesn’t go much further than that. And that, to me, does not surprise me. And I see it even where I live locally in the Nashville area. I see that tendency to say hello to your neighbor but not to talk deeply with your neighbor. And I see it in the local church. So it takes a lot of effort to do that. And with a society that’s already individualistic and over stretched and busy, it’s going to take that much more.

Matt Tully
I also feel like sometimes, at least for me, the like pseudo-connectedness that we all experience all the time through the internet, like we can be connected in a certain way to so many people, those like shallow relationships can feel like they can crowd out a more in-depth, real friendship with somebody.

Trillia Newbell
And it can often be safe because you know that you only have to tell them so much. Or if you tell them a lot, there’s a lack of accountability. And there is this false sense of knowing and being seen and known. Because people are able to respond in real time, it can seem like, Oh! All of these people know me! But the reality is that they don’t. And when you get sick, you likely aren’t going to be sent a meal by someone random on the internet because they don’t know you. And so I think it gives us a false idea of community that doesn’t really necessarily exist. One caveat: I have met some of my dearest friends over the internet. And so I would say that you also can find people who are like-minded, doing similar things, and build real, lasting friendships. I think that’s rare, but I think it’s possible. And so I don’t want to discount it as well. But we do need to ask ourselves, Are we then withdrawing from our local community? And for my purposes and our context, our local church? And I think that there can be a temptation to withdraw from our local church when we have this idea of community that is disconnected from it that’s on the internet. And so we have to ask ourselves some hard questions because it can feel a little bit easier to be not known and have a thousand friends who aren’t really friends.

Matt Tully
Like you said, it can feel safer to us. It can feel safer, but I think ultimately we know that those friendships don’t often really provide the real stability and security and the sense of actually being known like a real friendship does. So one other thing that I think I’ve noticed is that as friendship is on the decline across the spectrum, it seems like things like anger and suspicion and judgmentalism are on the rise in our culture, especially across political and ethnic and racial lines. We see this kind of fragmentation happening, and obviously social media contributes to a lot of that. And yet I think we also would say that we see this in the church as well—in the evangelical church, this fragmentation. What are your thoughts on that? Have you seen that? How does that connect to this idea of friendship?

Trillia Newbell
That actually could be a whole podcast. That is a very big topic because you’re talking about all sorts of things that have divided the church, specifically evangelicalism. So the answer is yes. I have seen a rise in anger and suspicion and cynicism—all sorts of things related to people. And I have had to fight it myself. With institutions, cynicism especially—having to guard my heart and trust the Lord. And so all these things we’re in the middle of. I’ve seen it, I’ve experienced it, I’ve watched it, and it’s devastating. It’s so sad to think of all of the different people who once would gather around a table who can no longer have a conversation. It is absolutely devastating. So yes, I’ve seen it, and there’s no doubt that most of your listeners have experienced it, seen it, either experienced rejection, or rejected other people based on things that are superfluous and not important. It’s really, really sad.

Matt Tully
And it seems like it’s, again, another function of when our relationships are so often mediated by the internet and they’re kind of shallow, they’re just more fragile. When those relationships are not real flesh and blood friendships where we know the person and have spent time in their presence, it can be so much easier to start name calling and assuming the worst about motives, and then kind of writing off a whole group of people.

Trillia Newbell
Yeah, absolutely. And so we have to ask ourselves, What does the Scripture say about how we should treat our neighbor? We’re to love God with all our hearts, minds, soul, and strength, and to love our neighbor as ourselves. We are to be patient, bearing with one another. So are we doing those things? And as Christians, that’s where we must turn first and ask, Are we applying God’s word to our lives as we relate to one another? And if not, then we need to repent. And we can say, with faith, if we confess our sin, he is faithful and just to forgive us and to purify us (1 John 1:9). So we need to confess where we have gone wrong, repent of it, and ask the Lord to help us put on the right lens and to love our neighbor.

08:21 - Friendship with God Is a Pathway to Friendship with Others

Matt Tully
One of the things that you highlight in your new book on friendship—and it’s a book for kids, and I want to come back to the kids part in just a minute—but you highlight the way that our friendship with God, and actually coming to understand what it means to be a friend of God, it opens up the possibility for friendship with other Christians, even those who might be different from us in important ways. And that really feels like it’s a message that needs to be emphasized afresh today. Do you resonate with that? And then maybe unpack for us what is the connection between understanding our friendship with God and then cultivating loving relationships with other Christians who might be different from us.

Trillia Newbell
We can only truly be friends with God when we have a relationship with God, so it starts with the gospel—that we have professed faith in Jesus Christ, we have submitted our lives to him, and he is friends with us. I mean, that’s pretty radical to me that we are his friends if we obey him. So there is a repentance and obedience following after God that is there in that friendship. He talks about it in John 15 specifically. So we want to ask ourselves if we have submitted our lives to him. And then if we understand the gospel, it will change the way we view others. If we understand the beginning, Genesis 1, the Imago Dei, the image of God, that we are made equally to reflect him, it will change the way we relate to one another. So the gospel really does have the power to transform our hearts and our relationships and the way we view people. And that’s how it relates. It’s not just that Jesus related to all these different people. It’s that Jesus related to sinners, and we are all those different people. What a radical God, that he would stoop to our level to be our friend. I think it’s remarkable. So why would we not? That’s the question we need to ask ourselves.

Matt Tully
Well, and it’s amazing to me, too, that I think when you study the New Testament and you look at Jesus’s life and his interactions and his relationships, it does seem like there is an emphasis, a through line, in the Gospels of Jesus crossing human lines, so to speak, to become friends, to associate with, to spend time with people who are different from him in important ways. It feels like it’s a foundational component of Jesus’s identity and mission in the Gospels.

Trillia Newbell
Well, and we have a mission to go and make disciples of all nations, teaching them to obey all that God has commanded. So it’s all throughout the Scriptures, especially when we look at the New Testament we see God making a people for himself from every tribe, tongue, and nation.

11:32 - Teaching Our Kids about Friendship

Matt Tully
Turning to kids now, how do we as parents help to cultivate this same mindset in our kids when it comes to thinking about their friendships and how they’re making friends and meeting new people?

Trillia Newbell
As parents, we want to make sure that we’re modeling a love for our neighbor. And I think the way that we will do that is opening our homes up to those who are not like us, making sure that when we talk about people that they see that we’re celebrating differences, that there’s not a fear there. So I do think for parents in particular, we have an opportunity to display a love and nurture and grow kids, not just the truth of the gospel but in a foundation that says, I love my neighbor as myself, and this is how you can too. And so that to me I think is really important. And the reason why I—one of the thousands reasons—of why I wrote Jesus and the Gift of Friendship is to help equip parents with words to say as their kids are trying to think through, Who can I ask the Lord for for a friend? And the Lord might answer it in a unique way.

Matt Tully
That’s one of the things I really loved about your book is how you do subtly emphasize the ways that our assumptions, both kids and adults alike, about who we can be friends with can sometimes be too narrow. And that really comes out in one spot in the book, right when Zeke, the main character, meets this girl, Gabby, who will become his new friend. He’s been looking for a new friend for a long time and has not found one, and then he finally meets Gabby. So can you read that little bit for us right now?

Trillia Newbell
I’d love to read it. All right, so this is where Zeke is meeting Gabby for the first time.

Zeke thought about his prayer. Every night for months, Zeke had asked Jesus for a friend like Sam. Gabby was tall for her age and slender. She had milky brown skin and freckles all over. Gabby wasn’t anything like Sam.

Matt Tully
Sam was Zeke’s old friend who he had moved away from, and so why did you choose to write Gabby like you did, compared to Zeke? What was behind the decision to make them as distinct from each other as you could?

Trillia Newbell
I wanted to make them different for a few reasons. One, God hears our prayers. He hears our prayers. He loves to listen to us pray to him, but he doesn’t always answer our prayers in the way that we think. So I want kids to know you can ask God for anything and wait to see what God will do. He may answer your prayer, but he may answer it in a surprising way or in a different way. It may be yes, it may be no, or it may be something completely different. And so the Lord answered Zeke’s prayer, but I want kids to see that they can be friends with anyone, and that the Lord, in his kindness, gives us all these different people. And we don’t know who he’s going to give to be our friend, but we can be friends with people of all different tribes, tongues, nations, different backgrounds, cultures, ethnicities. And this just helps kids see that and say, Oh! God may answer my prayer and he may give me a friend totally not like me, and it’s still such a good gift.

Matt Tully
I love the way that you do point to Jesus in the book and the way that he had all these different relationships. Sometimes we can miss some of the variety to what Jesus’s relationships looked like. Highlight a few of those things that you draw out in the book for the ways that Jesus related to other people.

Trillia Newbell
I think I list most of his disciples and then maybe some women, but everyone who Jesus is friends with is not like him because he set apart, holy, and perfect. But he was also a Jew, right? He was friends with Gentiles, he was friends with people from different regions. And there was so much division during that time, and people who did not communicate with each other from certain regions. And so the Lord was so gracious to break all sorts of barriers and boundaries and things that the society at the time would say, No, you shouldn’t be speaking to that person. They are from this community . . . they are a woman . . . they are [fill in the blank]. He just crossed it off. And it’s ultimately because he loved people and he wanted them to know him. And so I think that his example is one that we not only should emulate but we need his grace to do. We cannot do this apart from God. We have to ask him for strength and wisdom and grace in order to love the way that he so radically loved.

16:40 - Learning to Wait on God

Matt Tully
One of the things that I also found pretty interesting about the book and the story that you’ve written is how long it takes for Zeke to find this new friend, Gabby. You made him wait a long time, and I actually started feeling bad for him, like When is he going to find his new friend? Why did you do that? Why did you make him suffer that much? What were you trying to draw out from that experience that he has?

Trillia Newbell
It’s interesting. I read one critique that was like, Why did he have to wait so long? Why? And the reality is that we’re an instant gratification society. That’s what we are used to. We want it now. But that’s not the way the Lord works, and that’s not usually the way that God answers prayers, or that we receive much of anything of worth. It’s not typically instant. And so I want kids to be not just long-suffering, but to learn that there’s good in the waiting, that the Lord is working in the waiting, that God will provide. At one point, the poor guy is rejected. Zeke is rejected at one point. Well, it’s because kids are rejected. Kids experience this, and I wanted this to be as real as humanly possible. But also the reality is that not everyone will be our friends. We pray and hope for a good friend, and the Lord will provide it. It may take some time, but he will. And so I did that intentionally because I want kids to learn to pray and to wait well, and for parents to know that that might happen too. I have teenagers. I have watched them go through friendships and pray for friends and pray for friends that last. And then to go through the ups and downs of friendships breaking up, it’s so painful. Well, we need to be prepared for that. Jesus and the Gift of Friendship is written for, really, the age three- to six-year-olds range. Well, they’re just now kind of developing that. So parents need to realize this is coming, if it hasn’t already happened (which it may have), and we can prepare our kids now. This gives some foundation for when this happens and say, You can run to Jesus who is your friend, who’s going to listen to you, and you can pray to him and wait.

Matt Tully
That’s what I love. Not only is it that waiting but his parents then lead him to pray, and that is, as you said, it’s such a valuable habit to instill in our kids, that we can go to God. But it rung true to me the way that God so often uses, in a particularly powerful way, these difficult experiences, painful experiences in our lives. It’s in those seasons that our faith grows and we draw closer to him. And to see that happen for Zeke as well, I think it’s a wonderful paradigm to set for our kids, that even in those hard situations, that’s the chance to draw near to Jesus.

Trillia Newbell
Amen. It is. In those hard seasons, I want kids to think, I can go to my parent or guardian (which he did) and I can go to my Lord and Savior (which he did). But he was taught, Hey, you can do that. His parents had to teach him, This is who you can run to, and we will have to do the same over and over and over again. I recently just had to do it, reminding one of my teens, Oh, this is hard. Let’s pray. Thank you for coming to me, now let’s also go to Jesus.

20:36 - Is Jesus My Buddy?

Matt Tully
This new book that you’ve written really is delightful. It’s beautifully illustrated, and it’s just a simple story that really draws kids in. It’s something that I think many kids, if not all kids and many adults, are going to be able to resonate with different parts of the story. It’s a book that on the surface is a book about a kid making a new friend, but it also has this deeper and even more foundational message about learning to view Jesus as a friend. I’m a parent. I have three young kids, and when I think about the way I talk to my kids about Jesus, I find that I often emphasize him as our Lord and I emphasize him as our Savior. But sometimes I’m less often emphasizing him as our friend. Speak to parents a little bit on that front. How should we think about Christ’s role as friend in our theology as we talk to our kids about who he is and what he means for their lives?

Trillia Newbell
I think that it’s so interesting because I think that when we think of Hebrews 4, for example, that Jesus was tempted in every way, but without sin; he’s able to sympathize with our weaknesses. Jesus understands. And we think of that and we don’t think, Oh, he’s a friend. But think about a friend who, when they sympathize or empathize with you, you think, Wow! Thank you! Well, that’s Jesus. Jesus lives to make intercession for us. He is constantly, continually, all the time praying for us. What a friend! So if we think about the person of Christ and all that he has done and is doing right now for us—this holy, awesome, set apart God, who is our Lord, who is our King, but he’s also our friend—I think that we will run to him more. I think there is some aspect and element of it that we want our kids to be saved so much that—which is exactly right; parents, keep preaching the gospel to them—but we forget that they can run to him. And I do wonder if the way that we present the Lord [only] as our Savior can hinder kids from pursuing that deeper relationship with him. That’s part of why I emphasized prayer because I want kids not just to know this truth, but to run to him, that it will be a part of their heart and their minds, that they can love him and know him and know that this isn’t just a God to be known but a God to enjoy and to run to and to lean on. If we are to really apply the Scriptures, we need to be in communication and communion with him. Well, it’s helpful to know that God is for us; that we can run to him; that nothing will ever separate us from the love of God through Christ Jesus, our Lord; and that we can have a real, true relationship with him. It’s not just words on a page. I really believe that. And I think as parents, we can teach that and instill that into our children. But most of everything I said was Scripture, so it all applies. And we see how if we can think of it that way, that if we draw near to God and God draws near to us, that’s a friend! So I think sometimes we can—how can I say this? Not holonize. That’s a made up word! I’m making up words today! We can make our language so theologically big time—what’s the word I’m looking for? I don’t know—that we forget, Oh, wait. It’s sometimes just that simple. Jesus is our friend.

Matt Tully
And Jesus says that, and you already quoted John 15:14 where Jesus says, “You are my friends if you do what I command you.” And maybe even that sentence itself captures that there is something unique about being Jesus’s friend. He’s not just a buddy. And I think sometimes that can be my fear with my kids is I don’t want to present a picture of Jesus that’s too low or too common, like he’s just another friend from school. But I think you get that with “if you do what I command you.” So Christ does demand our allegiance. He demands our obedience. We have to worship him as Lord. But that doesn’t mean he can’t still be our friend in a very real, meaningful sense.

Trillia Newbell
Absolutely. Absolutely. And if you look at all the scriptures that I was sharing, you see it. And I’ve experienced it—the nearness of God while I’m broken-hearted and suffering deeply, and God drawing near and caring lovingly; when my groanings were too deep, the Holy Spirit praying for me. I’ve experienced a God who is near and a friend. He is our Lord and our Savior, and he says that the proof of the friendship is that we obey him. So we need to. That’s not unimportant. That’s actually deeply important. And then how we apply that, I believe, is through prayer and worship and adoration and, of course, obedience.

Matt Tully
I’m struck that maybe some of the reason why we can, at times as parents, struggle to know how to communicate this to our kids and help them understand and view Jesus this way is because we ourselves don’t always fully grasp what it means for Jesus to be our friend. We haven’t always experienced that like we should and like we want to. Do you think that’s part of the explanation?

Trillia Newbell
Absolutely. I think there’s a few things. I think that we know to teach the gospel; taking it to this step seems maybe a little odd. Jesus is your friend? Like you said, he’s not a buddy, so how do take it to that step? And I think part of it is that we ourselves don’t view Jesus as a friend, or we’ve gone too far and we do see him as our bro. I’ve seen language that makes it sound like he is a buddy.

Matt Tully
Like a “Jesus is my homeboy” t-shirt.

Trillia Newbell
Yeah. So we want to guard against that, but I actually think that some of the reasons why we struggle with this is that we are struggling with condemnation. We ourselves aren’t receiving his grace, and so we think that what we’ve done is too great for us to actually be a friend. I think that there’s probably deeper reasons why we struggle with that. I also wonder if we struggle with our obedience—we ourselves aren’t following Jesus and aren’t submitting our lives for us to be able to say John 15 with faith. Well, we have to have a true faith. We have to be walking with him. And if we’re not, if we’re struggling, that’s a hard thing for us to communicate. And so there could be a few reasons why we never go to this. But I think I’ve said this already, that if we confess our sin, he’s faithful and just to forgive us and purify us, so if we haven’t been obedient, we can be! We’re not stuck. We can change. We can repent and change and walk in the light. Or, if we are struggling with condemnation, we cling to that Romans 8 truth that there’s no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, that nothing can separate us, and we ask God for help to live and walk by the Spirit so that we can teach it to our children. And then we receive his grace, and walk with him as our friend. And so I think that there’s a few reasons why, beyond just the all I want to do is teach the gospel to my kids.

28:46 - A Prayer for Parents and Kids

Matt Tully
Trillia, I wonder if you could close us out today by just praying for parents who are listening right now as they think about not just their kids and their kids’ relationships and trying to help them to make good friends but also to see Jesus as their friend, but even adults as well who need to hear this message. Could you close us in prayer?

Trillia Newbell
Absolutely. God, our Father, we love you. We worship you. We thank you that you are holy, set apart, just, worthy of all our worship and adoration. Thank you that we can also draw near to your throne of grace in our time of need because of you, Jesus. Jesus, thank you that you’re interceding for your own right now. God, I pray that you will help us. We need your help to navigate relationships, hard friendships. God, I pray that you will give us grace—the grace that we need to love you with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength, and to love our neighbor as ourselves. Lord, I want to pray for the parents who are listening, who themselves have been through the ringer. Lord, you know. You know every need, you know every pain point, you know what they’ve been through. Broken relationships abound, God, in your church right now in the United States. God, I pray, Lord, that you would help them amend where mending needs to be done. Help us to repent where repentance needs to be done. God, help us to be a people who shine a light in a dark, dark world, Lord. We need your help to do that. And, Lord, I pray that as we ask for help for our own friendships, that we could teach our children about you, Lord, and about your gospel and how it transcends ethnicity and race and people and all of these things that you have created, Lord. Thank you. God, help us and enable us to help our kids run to you, God, that they would run to you, Jesus, who are a friend. You say that you are our friend if we obey you. So God, I pray that we would help instill into our children the truth that, God, that they would obey you, Lord God, that they would know you deeply, God, and that they would ask for friendships. I pray that they would all have thriving, wonderful friends, and ultimately, God, that they would know you as their Lord and Savior and friend. It’s in your name we pray, amen.

Matt Tully
Amen. Thank you, Trillia, for taking the time today to talk to us about Jesus and the Gift of Friendship.

Trillia Newbell
Thank you.

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