We are acquaintances by accident but should always be friends by choice. Some of these people were wonderful, and became our friends, but some of them were not, and I had to learn to leave them alone. Often our friends are not the products of choice or rational decision but of circumstance. Friends have a great power to help us and to hurt us. No one is exempt from peer pressure, and we should make sure that we get encouragement to do good, not temptation to do evil, from our friends. Keep in mind that it is far easier to choose friends than to change friends. If you see that you have a friend who is leading you in the wrong path, you should stop following him, bit it is far less painful to simply choose good fiends to begin with.
Ponder:
Wisdom is making right choices, and the first choice to make is to realize that you have a choice. Everyone in the world could be your friend. You do not have to "settle" for those who live in your neighborhood or those who sit next to you in class. We have wonderful means of communicating across long distances, and we can choose whether or not to expand our horizons.
If you have a choice, how are going to make it? You have learned that God is the source of wisdom (James 1:5). If you have trouble making a right choice or making a choice at all, ask the Lord to help you. He gives wisdom freely and never makes you feel small for asking. The main way God has given us wisdom is through His word. We do not need to ask God to supply us with information when He has already done so in the Bible. We do need to open our Bibles and consider what it says about choosing our friends wisely.
Don't be governed by Temptation.
We cannot avoid being tempted, but we certainly can avoid yielding to the temptation. We can be enticed, or tempted into sin, but we don't have to consent to it. This is a situation where knowledge is power. As the text puts it, the net is spread in vain in the sight of the bird. If we want to trap a bird and we show him the net, he will have enough sense to fly away. So should we. Satan knows this, and he doesn't show us the death and destruction that are at the end of the path. He only shows us the enticements at the beginning.
The process begins with ENTICEMENT. The word means "things" that are attractive and desirable. We want them and easily fool ourselves into thinking we can get these things in underhanded and evil ways. The promises of sins are always grand. We are told that we can "fill our houses with spoil" or have everything we ever wanted. Of course, it is tempting to be offered every precious thing in the world.
We are then asked to cast our lot in with sinners, to "have one purse". Here the good man has agreed to and become a part of the ways of the evil man. This is the result of evil. It never lifts the bad man up, it drags the good man down.
Would you get on a plane without knowing where it was going ? Would you get on a boat without knowing that you could get back to shore? I wouldn't. Neither should we commit our lives to any course of action without knowing where it will eventually lead. How do we find out?
Don't go down the wrong path.
In Proverbs 4:14, we are warned about actually doing what we are tempted to do. Temptation can result in only two outcomes. We will either give in to the temptation, or we will resist it. If we resist temptation to do evil, we are okay. If we don't then we, enter into the path of the wicked. This is not so much a single incident of wrongdoing as it is a choice of a lifestyle of evil. One of the ways one becomes evil is to be led astray by evil friends. Isn't it odd that evil always seeks more evil? We make fun of good people and laugh at righteousness and with the same breath glorify evil. Bad men are always recruiting.
Good choices help us avoid bad ones.
One of the best ways to keep from making a bad choice is to make a good one first. Wise choices are compared to lamps, light and the way of life. These are all accessed through the word of God. It is a commandments of God, the laws of God and the instruction of God, that offer us the benefits of righteousness. There are always temptations, but before you yield consider the outcome of your decisions. You always have a choice. You might not want to make it, but it is there for you. There may be a price to pay for making a right choice, but you can make it if you want to.
The big choices can help us avoid the little ones. If you will commit your life to Christ, you can decide at an early age that you are going to make all your choices based on His will and word. That big choice can help you when temptation comes along. You can tell the "friends" who wants you to do evil that you have already given your heart to Christ.
Any thought?
Let's have a coffee
Hari
Enjoy reading....Blessing
