Be careful who you choose to hang around. Chances are you will become like them. A strategy of the enemy is to get us to meet people who live with a different moral standard than the Bible teaches and then convince us that it’s ok to make them our best friends. What happens is – the longer we hang around them the more like them we become and the further we get away from God.
This strategy is very deceptive. First, we feel included with a group that is different than what we have been accustomed to hanging around. The newness is exciting. Second, there is a feeling of freedom we get from trying out some of their ways of living that is new to our experience though we have heard about those things in the past as being wrong. This “freedom” feels good but is only a feeling. In reality we are being bound and conquered and the “life” we feel we are participating in is really “death” made to feel like life, just like the bondage is made to feel like freedom. That is the deception. A deception that has occurred because we have opened our minds without a filter. We have opened our minds and laid down our defenses which has allowed the enemy to take over our thought life and our actions.
This often causes a person to live two different lives. One they live on Sunday and the other they live during the week. The one they live around their “free thinking” set of friends and the one they live around their Christian set of friends. They intoxicate themselves with one group and think nothing of taking Communion the next Sunday.
Here’s the kicker…
eventually some where down the road…
one side will win out.
If it is the one that has lead us into a duality, the following of the “new” way of life that is in direct contrast with the Bible, all kinds of destruction will occur. That destruction is forgivable but irreversible. And only forgivable if you ask for it.
You see, Jesus ate with sinners to reach them, but He never participated in what they were doing. That would have been sinful and would have disqualified Him from His mission. He wasn’t careful who He ate with, but He was careful who He hung around.
That said…
Be careful who you hang around so you will not be lead astray.
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