Countless sermons, books and podcasts have tackled marriage and dating, but are there enough helping people figure out friendships? The “Gospel Friendship” Podcast takes on the topic and recently addressed the battle of making real friends.
The podcast that is also filmed and posted to YouTube is hosted by author Kim Cash Tate along with rapper and producer Lamontt “Spec” Blackshire. On a recent episode called “Battling Loneliness” Kim invited her 23-year-old son Quentin to open up about his own lifelong struggle with making friends.
Quentin says he’s never had someone he could call a friend and has a hard time fitting into social circles on the college campus where he lives alone.
“I spend most of my days by myself with my homework or my books or something,” says Quentin, a graduate student.
Kim spoke about the struggles that she and her husband have had watching their son never truly connect with other people.
“The bottom line is we knew it had to be prayer and it had to be a focus on the Lord and what He could do in [Quentin’s] life but it’s been hard to watch and not see God answer in the way we would want him to answer,” Kim admits.
Spec also speaks about his own battle with loneliness after believing for many years that relationships are a transaction between people who do things for each other. Before completely giving his life to God last year and losing a lot of his relationships, the rapper and producer says he would overextend himself to people in order to feel a sense of validation.
“I got into impossible situations when I wasn’t sleeping for three or four days because I was committing to so many people,” (found validation in never saying no to anybody),” he says. “I feel that could help somebody that is overworked and overcommitting and in too deep with too many things. You have to really check yourself like, why am I doing this?”
Check out the episode: