The short version
God fed the Israelites in the wilderness with manna, and Numbers 11 spends a surprising number of words on the process. They had to gather it, grind it, boil it and bake it. Pastor Amber Canizaro walks that same four step process through building friendship: go out, do the work, give it time, then enjoy the result. Anything of quality requires effort to build, and most of us have been trying to get the cake without ever going out to gather.
There was a woman in one of Pastor Amber's small groups who arrived exactly on time. Not early. Not late. On the minute, every single week, right as the group was starting.
Amber remembers thinking, wow, this lady is super punctual.
Later in the semester the woman told the group what was actually happening. She was showing up ten minutes early. She was just sitting out in the parking lot, because the thought of walking in and having to make small talk with everyone made her so anxious that she waited until the very last possible minute and then ran in.
She kept doing that for a whole semester. And she kept coming.
Hold onto her, because the rest of her story is the point of all of this.
Technology promised to connect us and made us less social
Amber does not think she has to convince anybody that we are all a little disconnected right now.
The things that were supposed to make our lives better, social media in particular, have actually made us less social. And she is not anti technology. She can run her whole life from her phone, and so can most of us. Calendar. Email. Bills. Bible. FaceTime with a friend.
What I can't do from behind a screen is actually get a hug, or actually hold hands and pray with someone.
So what we need to come back to is not better connectivity. It is quality time with actual people in the flesh.
We want quality in everything except our friendships
Nobody argues with quality when it comes to stuff we buy. We all prefer the product that had more time put into it, more investment, the one that will actually last. Amber sees it all over the culture right now. People are moving away from fast food. Everybody seems to have one crunchy friend who is planting a garden or getting chickens because they want fresh eggs.
And then there is Amazon, which is so convenient that a thing can show up at your house in three hours. She admits she is tempted by the fast option constantly. And then it arrives and she thinks, this is kind of a piece of junk. She does not know where it was made. She does not know how long it took to make. If it is a toy for the kids, it falls apart in two days.
There is a time and a place for convenience, and she used it strategically. When her kids were little and the family was getting on a plane, she would take them to the Dollar Tree first and tell them they could buy whatever they wanted.
They would ask, could we get two things? Yeah, get two things. Could we get five things? Oh yeah, burn it up, get five things.
She knew exactly what she was buying. Those toys were cheap. They were going to break. They could slide to the back of the plane and get lost forever and it would not matter one bit. But at home, that is where she invested in the quality toys. The Melissa and Doug kind, made of wood, sturdier, more expensive, and somebody clearly spent more time making them. Those lasted.
The best friendships are built the same way. When more time and real investment have gone into a friendship, it can stand the test of time.
When things are built little by little, oftentimes they last longer.
What a food nobody eats anymore has to do with your friendships
There is a story in the Old Testament that shows this beautifully.
God had rescued the Israelites out of 400 years of slavery in Egypt. He promised to lead them to a land of their own, and on the way he took them through the wilderness. That part took a long time. And while they were out there, he did something else miraculous: he fed them.
This was no small thing. By even a minimal estimate, the Israelites were hundreds of thousands of people. Feeding that many people in a desert takes miraculous provision. So God sent manna, food from heaven that fell with the dew every single morning, day after day after day.
Notice how he did it. He did not provide it once so they could hoard it and never go out again. Every day they had to go out and gather. God gave them exactly what they needed, little by little, and they still had to work for it.
And then, being human like the rest of us, they started complaining about it.
"Now the rabble that was among them had a strong craving, and the people of Israel also wept again and said, oh that we had meat to eat. We remember the fish we ate in Egypt that cost nothing, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions and the garlic. But now our strength is dried up and there is nothing at all but this manna to look at. Now the manna was like coriander seed, and its appearance like that of bdellium. The people went about and gathered it and ground it in handmills or beat it in mortars and boiled it in pots and made cakes of it. And the taste of it was like the taste of cakes baked with oil. When the dew fell upon the camp in the night, the manna fell with it."
Numbers 11:4-9
Amber said that when she read this recently, the level of detail stopped her. All of that description about a food we do not eat and will never eat. How they gathered it. What it looked like. What they did to it. What it eventually tasted like. She asked God why so much of it was in there.
Here is what she came away with. God's word is living and active, and it is rich with instruction. So she pulled the process apart and laid it next to the process of building community, because that is what she believes God showed her in it.
Which matters this week for a very practical reason. Our small group directory goes live today. Groups start and stop three times a year so it is easy to join one, and most of them meet weekly. This semester runs about 12 weeks. So if you commit to a group, you get at least 12 chances to come back to friendship, little by little.
Anything of quality requires effort to build.
God did not drop a manna cake on the tent step every morning. There was no Uber Eats in the wilderness. They did not unzip the tent and find a cake sitting there. He provided, and they gathered.
Two things to avoid before you build anything
One: do not go looking for instant gratification
This is exactly what the Israelites did. They were not okay with a longer process that required work. They wanted it their way and they wanted it now.
Amber says the same caution applies to friendships that come together too fast. You know the feeling. Somebody tells you they met the love of their life last night, love at first sight, and all you hear in your head is red flag, red flag, red flag.
Friendships work the same way. Take some time. If you jump in too quickly and never actually look at someone's character, you can end up in the wrong kind of friendship. Those can be satisfying for a moment. They do not last.
Two: do not romanticize the past
The Israelites said Egypt was better. All the meat they wanted, and the cucumbers, and it cost nothing. News flash, as Amber put it: they were enslaved in Egypt. They were not renting property there. They did whatever they were told to do.
Here is how that shows up now. Maybe you are new to church, or following God for the first time, and you are thinking, none of my current friends are doing this with me, but those friendships were so much easier to make. It was free. It was quick. It was instant.
Do not buy that lie. That is romanticizing the past, and it is the same mistake.
And notice what God did when they demanded the quick version.
"Therefore the Lord will give you meat and you shall eat. You shall eat not one day, nor two days, nor five days, nor ten days, nor twenty days, but for a whole month, until it comes out of your nostrils and becomes loathsome to you, because you have despised the Lord who is among you."
Numbers 11:18-20
He gave it to them. That is the warning. Sometimes God lets us have the easy, fast thing we asked for, and it turns out not to be the answered prayer we thought it was.
"They lusted exceedingly in the wilderness and tested God in the desert, and he gave them their request, but sent leanness into their souls."
Psalm 106:14
Another way to say leanness is an empty heart. So do not chase the instant version, and do not romanticize the old version. God can and will provide the community you need. It just might not be flashy and quick.
The grandmother's small group
Over 20 years ago Amber and Josh moved to Birmingham, Alabama. They were at a big new church and knew almost nobody. So she took a leap of faith and joined her first small group, and she picked it the way most people do: she looked at the directory and found something that sounded good, was close to her house, and met on a night she was free.
She showed up and discovered the leader was 30 plus years older than she was.
Amber was a young mom. She had just walked into a grandmother's small group. And she thought, I don't know if this is going to work.
It was not the quick, easy friendship fix she was hoping for. She stuck with it anyway and kept going week after week. That leader became one of the most influential people in her life at that time. She prayed for Amber constantly. She was generous with her. She became like family.
Amber has a friend from about ten years ago who came to One Hope specifically praying for godly friends, other Christians running after God the same way she was. She is a Black woman, and she told Amber that God answered the prayer and gave her a white best friend, which was not at all what she expected. That woman is now one of Amber's own closest friends.
He always meets our needs, but it's not always what we think it would look like.
Four steps, in the order the manna came
One: it had to be gathered
If you are going to find real community, you are going to have to leave your house to find it. Friendship begins with proximity. There is no way around that part.
Which is why the practical step this week is genuinely small. Look at the directory. Pick a few groups that look interesting. Show up to them.
Amber wants to head off the obvious objection, which is that this seems too simple to matter. Do not decide it is unimportant just because it is a small step. She has friendships today that are more than 10 and more than 20 years old, and every one of them started with the single step of going out and taking initiative.
"Do not despise these small beginnings, for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin."
Zechariah 4:10
Two: it had to be ground
The manna came as a seed. You could not eat it that way. It had to be ground down before it could become food. So the second thing is the work, and friendship absolutely requires work.
Then she said something a pastor's wife who has led small groups for over 20 years does not have to say out loud.
There are days when I don't feel like showing up to my own small group that I'm leading.
That is just the reality of life. Long days. Kids to care for. A boss who was not nice. Laundry that still needs doing and groceries that still need buying. She goes anyway, and she is clear about why: she loves the result.
The other thing about grinding is that it implies testing. And new friendships do get tested.
Her example goes back to high school. If you are a teenager reading this, know that Amber prays for you weekly, because she has teenagers of her own and she knows that sitting at a new lunch table is not an easy task.
She had a new friend named Haley. Fun personality, and they were just starting to click. Then Haley ended up standing in a group of other girls who had Amber's name in their mouths, and not in a good way. They were saying Amber had done something nice for someone but only because she was being manipulative, that her intentions were not good.
Haley stood up for her. Amber only found out later. Haley told them she did not know about anybody else, but she knew Amber, and Amber would never do that, and she has a good heart, and she did it because she is kind and wanted to show them love.
That was the test. Haley turned out to be a person of substance and character, and Amber thought, this is something I can build a friendship on.
Sometimes the grinding is not somebody defending you. Sometimes it is two people who both love God rubbing against each other, because we are human and we mess up.
"As iron sharpens iron, so a man sharpens the countenance of his friend."
Proverbs 27:17
So when a friend calls you out for something you said or did wrong, the right response is not defensiveness. It is realizing you have an opportunity to get better, and maybe to apologize, so that God can make you more like him.
Pay attention to what the verse does not say. It does not say iron sharpens wood. It does not say wood sharpens iron. Two people with similar goals are the ones who make each other better, even when the rubbing happens.
Is Amber saying to throw out every friend who is not a Christian? No. What she is saying is that you had better go curate some new ones too, with people who are also following God and want to help you become more like him.
This was the actual problem with the rabble in Numbers 11. It was not that they came from different tribes and regions. God welcomed that. It was that they brought the worship of other gods with them, so the advice they had to give was bad advice. They are the ones who started the craving that the whole camp caught.
Amber had a good friend come to her recently with real marriage problems, which every married person in the room has, because none of us married a perfect person and marriage is hard work. They opened Scripture together, applied it, and prayed. Afterward the friend said she felt encouraged, and then she said this: she had talked to three friends before Amber, and all three told her to just divorce her husband and be done with him.
That's what it looks like when iron and wood are together, not iron and iron.
Three: it had to be boiled
Have you ever actually stood in the kitchen and watched a pot of water, waiting to boil eggs, instead of walking off to do something else? Amber's experience is that it takes about 30 minutes when you are standing there watching it, and about five minutes and then it boils over the second you walk away.
Boiling takes time. So does this.
"Day by day, continuing with one mind in the temple and breaking bread from house to house, they were taking their meals together with gladness and sincerity of heart."
Acts 2:46
Day by day. Same as the manna, which they had to go out and gather again every single morning.
Studies show that the majority of people do not have a friendship more than 25 years. Long lasting friendships are precious because they're uncommon.
The strongest relationships are built over time, not overnight. So if what you actually need is a long friendship, let it start now, with day one. Day one becomes semester two and semester three. Then it is year one, and year two. Start today building the 20 year relationships.
Which brings us back to the woman in the parking lot.
She made it through that first semester. Semester two, she started showing up five minutes early, and she told the group, hey, I just want y'all to know I have gotten comfortable enough with you that I am willing to give you five minutes of small talk, even though I am still anxious about it.
She stuck with it. Three semesters in, she lost someone in her family, and the funeral was hard. Her small group, with no prompting from her at all, set up a meal train and sent her gifts.
And with tears in her eyes she said, after three semesters, I finally get it. I finally understand what y'all have been saying about small groups.
Nine months of showing up, little by little, and then it landed all at once.
Four: it was baked
The last thing they did with the manna was bake it, and Scripture says the cakes tasted like they were baked with oil. The Bible also talks about the oil of gladness. This is the part where you get to enjoy it.
Haley from the high school lunch table is still Amber's friend. That is a 40 plus year friendship now, and Haley is the funniest person she knows. When they get together they laugh until it hurts, and she sends the best memes on Instagram.
The woman from the parking lot came on a girls' weekend recently. They laughed until they cried.
That is the oil of gladness added to a friendship. That is what is on the other side of gathering, grinding and boiling.
The loneliness you cannot quite explain
Amber named something at the end that is worth sitting with. Some of you have felt a loneliness and you have not really known why, because you have been surrounded by plenty of people. Maybe even good people. Just not enough people who can speak God's word over you, or pray with you when the week is hard.
"So let's not get tired of doing what is good. At just the right time we will reap a harvest of blessing if we don't give up."
Galatians 6:9
Being around people and being known by people are two different things. The second one takes gathering, grinding and boiling. It is worth all of it.
Takeaways
- Go out. Friendship begins with proximity, and nothing happens from your couch. Look at the directory, pick a few, show up.
- Do not despise the small step. Twenty year friendships start with one ordinary decision to walk into a room.
- Expect it to feel like work, and go anyway. Even the woman leading the group does not always feel like going.
- Let the testing happen. Friction early on is how you find out whether there is anything of substance to build with.
- Choose iron, not wood. Keep your friends who are not following God, and go make some new ones who are, because the advice you receive is only as good as the direction the person is walking.
- Give it three semesters before you decide it is not working. The woman in the parking lot needed nine months. That was not failure, that was the process.
Next steps
Watch the full message and catch up on Comeback Season from the beginning.
The small group directory is live. Find a day, a time, or a topic that works for you, visit a few, and pick your favorite. You do not have to stay in a group that is not the right fit. There is a right one for you, and it is worth finding.
New to One Hope, or coming back after a while? Plan a visit. Wherever you are in life, you have a purpose, and you are welcome here.
Amber closed by praying for anyone who would say that godly community sounds great, but they do not actually have a friendship with Jesus yet. If that is you, it is simple, and you can pray this right now, wherever you are reading it:
Lord Jesus, I invite you into my life. I believe that you gave your life on the cross, that you laid down your life to pay for my sins. I believe that you rose again. Today, I ask you to make me new. God, I pray that you would give me the power to follow you all the days of my life. In Jesus' name.
If you prayed that for the first time, we would love to know. Tell us here so we can help you take the next step.
Questions people ask about this
How do you make real friends as an adult?
Pastor Amber Canizaro teaches it as a four step process drawn from how God provided manna in Numbers 11. You gather, which means leaving your house and putting yourself in the same room as other people, because friendship begins with proximity. You grind, which means doing the actual work and accepting that new friendships get tested. You boil, which means giving it far more time than feels reasonable. Then you bake, which is the part where you finally get to enjoy it. The order matters, and there is no version that skips to the end.
What is manna in the Bible?
Manna was food God provided for the Israelites during the years they spent in the wilderness after he rescued them from slavery in Egypt. Numbers 11 says it fell with the dew every night and looked like coriander seed. It was not ready to eat. The people had to go out and gather it each morning, grind it in handmills or beat it in mortars, boil it in pots, and make cakes of it. The finished cakes tasted like they had been baked with oil. God provided it a day at a time rather than all at once, and the people still had to work for it.
What does iron sharpens iron mean?
Proverbs 27:17 says that as iron sharpens iron, so a person sharpens the countenance of a friend. Pastor Amber points out what the verse does not say. It does not say iron sharpens wood, and it does not say wood sharpens iron. Two people with similar goals are the ones who make each other better, even when they rub each other the wrong way. It means friction inside a good friendship is normal and useful, and it also means the advice you get is only as good as the direction the person giving it is walking.
How long does it take to build a real friendship?
Longer than most people expect, and the discouraging part is that this is normal rather than a sign something is wrong. Studies show most people never have a friendship that lasts more than 25 years, which is exactly why long friendships are precious. One woman in Pastor Amber's small group needed three full semesters, roughly nine months of weekly meetings, before she said out loud that she finally understood what community was. The strongest relationships are built over time, not overnight.
Why do I feel lonely even when I am around people?
Because being surrounded by people is not the same as being known by them. Pastor Amber names a loneliness that people cannot quite explain, where you are around plenty of good people but not enough people who can pray with you in a hard week or speak truth over you when you need it. The fix is not more contacts. It is a smaller number of relationships that have had real time invested in them.