Choose Your Company Wisely
In our youth, due to our aspirations and interests, we gravitate toward certain friends. Whether we fancy cheerleading, fitness, the high school drama club or even a love for rebellion and underage drinking, we're drawn to others with the same passions and we're influenced by them.
Then there’s the relatives and neighbors that live close by, we’re influenced by them as well as we’re growing up, learning that life requires us to live honestly and morally. It requires us to get an education, secure a career path and become a productive member of society.
There's a beauty to having seasoned relationships with friends and relatives that even I can’t deny but history alone is not a reason to keep those same friends and family members in your life. Not today or in your future. It’s not an obligation. You get to decide who you entertain and who you don’t.
We are all energy. We become the people we surround ourselves with.
If you surround yourself with people who refuse to get it together; friends and relatives that lie, cheat and steal, are manipulative, immoral, negative, dishonest, insecure, and destructive it will affect you and in a really bad way. These relationships will hurt you; they will bring you down and they will bring you down hard, regardless of the strength you feel you have as an individual, because no one is immune to a constant pounding of negative evil energy upon the soul. No one. I know this from experience.
Proverbs 13:20 – Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm.
Proverbs 27:17 – As iron sharpens iron, So a man sharpens the countenance of his friend.
Relationships, like everything else in life, continually need to be updated. They need to be reassessed, as you spiritually grow and prosper, to determine if that relationship is what’s best for you.At the same time, if you know someone is not living right but you practice the old ritual of “I choose to see the good in them”; the good being they are nice to you, give you money from time to time, bail you out or make you promises of being left everything in their will. You are doing yourself a disservice in life. You are choosing to become one of them; become part of their evil, you are quiet simply manipulating the manipulator. You have lowered yourself to their level of prosperity in life. You have sold your soul to the devil.
Apostates Depraved and Doomed
Jude 12-13 – These are spots in your love feasts, while they feast with you without fear, serving only themselves. They are clouds without water, carried about[a] by the winds; late autumn trees without fruit, twice dead, pulled up by the roots; raging waves of the sea, foaming up their own shame; wandering stars for whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever.
When you chose to ignore evil; disguise it as good, a life of unhappiness is what you feast on in return; a future feeling unfulfilled, insecure, enslaved; and unprincipled. You will doubt yourself daily, all while making excuses for others simply trying to see the good in them.God does not love by overlooking sin and he doesn’t insist that we do that either. He forgives, and expects us to forgive, but that is not the same as being blind to sin or ignoring it. Forgiveness is a process that takes account of sin and duly deals with it in mercy and in justice. True love never merely sweeps sin under the carpet. It never ignores or overlooks sin.
James 5:20 - Only "he who turns a sinner from the error of his way will save a soul from death and cover a multitude of sins".
That is God's way of love -- not to leave sin unchallenged, but rather to turn sinners from the error of their ways. We are to hold them accountable and they must repent, be remorse. They have to stop the sin. They have to truly want to change their lives. If a person is not interested in changing their evil ways, you cannot change it for them.
Every relationship you have in life should bring out the best in you.
If you are surrounded by people who bring out the worst in you, brew evil on your spirit, make you sad; make you question yourself, that’s a serious red flag. That type of relationship does not belong in your life. A true, genuine person that loves you has your best interest at heart, at all times, and they have the courage to tell you when you’re losing your way. They care enough to have those difficult conversations with you; conversations that people, out for themselves, will avoid all together. They don’t manipulate, fight, lie or cause you hardship or pain. They simply do what’s best for you.
1 Corinthians 15:33 – Do not be deceived: “Bad company ruins good morals.”
Matthew 6:22-23 – “The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!
If you want to have greatness in your life, surround yourself with great people. If you strive to be a happy, fulfilled, honest, confident, empowered and principled person, surround yourself with people who are of the same. It’s not selfish or heartless. Being influenced negatively by someone, affects who you are as a person. Once you allow a negative force to permeate your life, you hurt yourself, and that ultimately affects everyone that surrounds you, including those that genuinely love you.
Ditch those that are not good for you. Get rid of them, even if you love them. You can love a person all you want, but, selecting them to be an active part of your life is a whole other story. Love them but love them from a great, great distance. Set an example by allowing them to watch you from afar.
Choose your relationships wisely in life.
Be relentless surrounding yourself with those who bring out the best in you. Your direction in life depends on it. Your happiness depends on it.
You get only one life. Live it happy. Live it proud. Take care of you!