Hey friend welcome to another episode of Java 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 yeah it's been 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

get sick or something. Now 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 when you peel back

the layers of everything that's wrong in the world with sexuality and you tell people

that the church is the answer. One of the glaring holes I think particularly within American

culture is we don't have rich relationships in the church and that's

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