This is a compilation of the wonderful phone conference, held on Friday, November 02, 2007. Whereever two or more are gathered in His Name, He is there is their midst. You're invited to join the next terc meeting, join others in the blogosphere as we learn more about God...
Two main scriptures:
1) 1 Corinthians 15:33 “Do not be deceived: evil company corrupts good habits.”
2) Proverbs 12:26 “The righteous should choose his friends carefully, for the way of the wicked leads them astray.”
Main summary:
Bad company definitely will corrupt anyone…no one is immune to corruption. Therefore, we have to learn how to choose our friends very carefully, as the bible instructs us to. There is an old adage that says, “Your friends will either pull you up or bring you down.”
What do we mean when we say “friends?” It may be funny, but we may all have different definitions of who a “friend” is. My definition of a friend is someone you can talk to, a shoulder to lean on, someone to get advise from and someone to give advise to, someone you hang around with all the time, someone whose ideas usually matches with yours (at least some times), and just someone who usually feels you and is almost always there for you (cares about you and you care about them). Now, a unified global definition of a friend, according to the dictionary, is “a person attached to another by feelings of affection or personal regard; a person who gives assistance; patron; supporter (unabridged dictionary); a person whom one knows, likes, and trust (American heritage).”
Actually some dictionaries have the definition of a friend also as an acquaintance, but they don’t mean exactly the same thing. An acquaintance may just be someone you know very well, but a friend goes deeper than that. You can have very many acquaintances, but only few can truly be called your true friends.
I talked about how I was reading this book called, “Warren Buffet Speaks,” and one of his quotes was, “always hang around with people better than you and you will float up a little bit. Hang around with the other kind and you start sliding down the pole.” I think this is a very wise quote. Amongst your circle of friends, you must always have a role model, someone you can talk to, who can give you “Godly advice.” It does not mean that you should only pick friends who are wiser or higher than you in general knowledge, because God may place people in your life, in specific friendships, just for you to become a hand-lifter to them, as a source of strength, and as a light in the midst of their darkness. If not Jesus would not have commanded us to “be ye the light of the world and the salt of the earth.”
Have you noticed that you can’t really affect lives from an impersonal standpoint? Merely quoting scriptures doesn’t cut it all the time. It is good to disburse the knowledge that you know, but it may not change a life. What changes lives is your personal story. Everybody has a personal story. In fact, each day, we build up on our personal stories. God has placed you in one of your friends’ life so that your personal story may be a bible to them.
So T gave an awesome example. She has this friend in medical school, who she’s unusually drawn towards, despite the fact that her friend confessed to her that she is an atheist (someone who does not believe in God). Her question was, “So should I pull away from this person? Isn’t this the typical example of bad company about to corrupt good habits? (paraphrasing her)” The answer was, in summary, it depends on the situation. In this case, T’s spirit matches her friend in the sense that they have the same general behaviors, they both don’t smoke and drink, they are both not “party people” (as T coined the phrase), and they feel each other strongly on several issues (they even have discussions about God and Jesus). In this case, I strongly believe that T is in this girl’s life for a reason. Sometimes she asks T to pray for her about certain issues. Allied made an awesome comment that if an acclaimed atheist can ask someone to pray for her, then maybe somewhere on the inside of her she actually believes that God does truly exist, but she just doesn’t understand how to access Him). It would make sense, in this specific case, for T to stay in this friendship and see where God takes it. It may be for many years, but patience is a virtue, and there have been stories in the past where atheists have become born-again and incorporated into God’s family. If we don’t have people to change just by them watching how we live our lives, then how can we personally be the “light of the world?”
Psalm 42:7 says, “Deep calls unto deep at the noise of your waterfalls.” There’s something about two like spirits getting attracted to each other. That’s how a relationship or a friendship begins. It’s a natural law; you just get attracted to someone who feels the same way as you do. Don’t be a repellant. That’s why it’s possible to be friends with an atheist when you guys have the same characters and view the world in the same way. Except they have just that one (most important) fact all twisted… (But don’t repel)…be attractive…
Jesus’ Spirit called out to the deepness in Matthew’s spirit, even while he was still a tax collector who accepted bribes.
Where a friendship goes wrong is when we get influenced and pulled in the negative direction, as opposed to us pulling our friends in the positive direction.
Evil company corrupts good habits; the more you let them get you involved in bad activities, the more you get pulled towards the negative side. Evil company means a continuous cycle of hanging out with the wrong crowd, at the wrong place, and engaging in the wrong activity. This doesn’t mean that you should now “isolate” yourself in a self-designed purified bag, no, because we see that the example Jesus gave was to go and eat and drink with sinners, and to visit tax collectors (who were involved in bribes in those days) in their private homes. But when Jesus hung out with them, it was to eat…and it was to teach! In other words, He was engaged in a “good activity.” In mathematical equations: Bad people + good activity = good company. Bad people + bad activity = bad company, and it is this “bad company” that can lead to corrupting your good habits. There’s a difference.
At this point, Allied began to teach us about self-examination. That scripture says, “Evil Company corrupts good habits,” but have we made sure that WE are not the evil company ourselves? Have we removed the plank from our own eyes before removing the tiny specks from our friends’ eyes? Are we the people bringing people down, rather than pulling them up? These were the categories or characteristics she listed, asking us to examine ourselves to see if we belonged to any. If you belong to any of these categories (which ALL of us on the phone today belonged to at least one), then we also need to ask God to renew our characters and make us brand new, to teach us how to become good company:
a) Someone with a pessimistic attitude.
b) Someone who is extremely sensitive (you have to walk with eggshells all around them).
c) Someone who is extremely defensive (you can’t really talk to them as a friend).
d) Someone who is always self-conscious about their appearance and status (do you like to take all the glory?)
e) Someone who is extremely competitive (esp. Christian friends who try to outshine each other). We’re all running our race on individual lanes, and we don’t have to struggle to be on the same lane. The difference from the Olympics is that there isn’t only one winner with the gold medal, in God’s books we’re all going to be winners, as far as we get to the end of our individual lanes (completing our own race). So don’t speed ahead of the gang when your friend is lagging behind, you can slow down a little bit and lend a helping finger when your friend needs one. After all, when you get to the finish line, God will not congratulate you for being first, but He will ask you why you refused to see your friend when he/she fell down!
f) Someone who is almost never comfortable with him or herself (please you have a talent in you, stop looking at others and find your own talent, we were created to complete each other, not compete…one part of the body completes another part).
g) Someone who is critical and judgmental
h) Someone who cannot be corrected (always wanting to be right).
i) Someone who constantly thinks about what others are saying about him or her (the things they say can either make or break you, typical case of lack of confidence).
j) Someone who has an extorted image of God.
k) Someone who follows the crowd (does not have his or her own dreams).
l) Someone who constantly shifts responsibility or blame.
m) Someone who’s afraid of close relationships.
n) Someone who’s a gossip.
o) Someone who just has a casual relationship with God (isn’t intimate).
p) Someone who’s extremely conscious of the devil (always rebuking stuff, highly distracted by what the devil is doing and cannot even see what God is doing) ~ an addition at the end of the conference (e.g. people always praying for their enemies to “somersault and die” instead of praying for their enemies).
Question: What about things about yourself that you cannot change? Take for instance your facial expressions? (e.g T’s example of waking up in the morning and saying “good morning” to someone else, and their retort was “why are you angry?” They thought she was frowning, but that’s just how her face looks sometimes!) Also Naijabloke’s example of how some people bottle up things they claim you’ve done to harm them, meanwhile you never even was aware of the fact that you did anything!
Answer: First, there is nothing impossible with God, anything can be changed. Just make sure it’s not leading someone away from God. If someone tells you once or twice that you did something to them, which you claim that you didn’t know it would hurt them (maybe that’s just how u joke or something), then you should just apologize and learn to act in a way that won’t hurt that person next time. But if different people keep telling you the same thing all the time, it may be worthwhile to cross-examine yourself and ask, “Am I really doing things the right way?” Then a third-case-scenario is that if these people keep accusing you of what you’re sure you’re not intentionally doing, then maybe they’re just crazy and you need to pray for them.
The devil attacks your best trait. So if you ticked one of the options on the cross-examination scale, remember to make sure you walk in the opposite direction. Define yourself how God defines you (and He defined you before you were even born); don’t define yourself based on your emotions or your character. Tell yourself that you’re not that person, and anytime those traits come, fight them and be an overcomer! Be a true friend, and choose your friends wisely…because evil company corrupts good habits!
b) Someone who is extremely sensitive (you have to walk with eggshells all around them).
c) Someone who is extremely defensive (you can’t really talk to them as a friend).
d) Someone who is always self-conscious about their appearance and status (do you like to take all the glory?)
e) Someone who is extremely competitive (esp. Christian friends who try to outshine each other). We’re all running our race on individual lanes, and we don’t have to struggle to be on the same lane. The difference from the Olympics is that there isn’t only one winner with the gold medal, in God’s books we’re all going to be winners, as far as we get to the end of our individual lanes (completing our own race). So don’t speed ahead of the gang when your friend is lagging behind, you can slow down a little bit and lend a helping finger when your friend needs one. After all, when you get to the finish line, God will not congratulate you for being first, but He will ask you why you refused to see your friend when he/she fell down!
f) Someone who is almost never comfortable with him or herself (please you have a talent in you, stop looking at others and find your own talent, we were created to complete each other, not compete…one part of the body completes another part).
g) Someone who is critical and judgmental
h) Someone who cannot be corrected (always wanting to be right).
i) Someone who constantly thinks about what others are saying about him or her (the things they say can either make or break you, typical case of lack of confidence).
j) Someone who has an extorted image of God.
k) Someone who follows the crowd (does not have his or her own dreams).
l) Someone who constantly shifts responsibility or blame.
m) Someone who’s afraid of close relationships.
n) Someone who’s a gossip.
o) Someone who just has a casual relationship with God (isn’t intimate).
p) Someone who’s extremely conscious of the devil (always rebuking stuff, highly distracted by what the devil is doing and cannot even see what God is doing) ~ an addition at the end of the conference (e.g. people always praying for their enemies to “somersault and die” instead of praying for their enemies).
Question: What about things about yourself that you cannot change? Take for instance your facial expressions? (e.g T’s example of waking up in the morning and saying “good morning” to someone else, and their retort was “why are you angry?” They thought she was frowning, but that’s just how her face looks sometimes!) Also Naijabloke’s example of how some people bottle up things they claim you’ve done to harm them, meanwhile you never even was aware of the fact that you did anything!
Answer: First, there is nothing impossible with God, anything can be changed. Just make sure it’s not leading someone away from God. If someone tells you once or twice that you did something to them, which you claim that you didn’t know it would hurt them (maybe that’s just how u joke or something), then you should just apologize and learn to act in a way that won’t hurt that person next time. But if different people keep telling you the same thing all the time, it may be worthwhile to cross-examine yourself and ask, “Am I really doing things the right way?” Then a third-case-scenario is that if these people keep accusing you of what you’re sure you’re not intentionally doing, then maybe they’re just crazy and you need to pray for them.
The devil attacks your best trait. So if you ticked one of the options on the cross-examination scale, remember to make sure you walk in the opposite direction. Define yourself how God defines you (and He defined you before you were even born); don’t define yourself based on your emotions or your character. Tell yourself that you’re not that person, and anytime those traits come, fight them and be an overcomer! Be a true friend, and choose your friends wisely…because evil company corrupts good habits!
9 Opinions/Comments:
I WANT IJOBA ORUN!!!!!!!!!!!! its playing on the mp3 player!
i first heard it around '99...and i fell in love ever since. it brings tears to my eyes because it brings my weakness to memory and that everything i do is through His Grace.
PLS WHR CAN I GET IT?
ok i need to read this post..lol
yay! i think i found a way to get it from esnips...sigh. thank you my Father. you know how to order my steps. i really needed this right now oh. ok i'm off to read the post lol. gosh i miss TERC.
ok who is in charge of music....i need to speak to them.
na for you o mimi... se everything is ok... lol
:-)
The song is my work song right now cos it's on repeat on my compurra @ work.
The song actually humbles me in front of God and reminds me the sacrifice that was made and is still offered everyday for my soul to make it home.
Great discussion and write-up.
hmmm, it's funny that this should be a TERC topic, since i have recently being mentally asking myself "if the devil wanted to bring someone into my life as a distraction, wouldn't he bring the exact specs of my fantasy friend?"... because if he does, i think i might have just bitten hook, line and sinker...twice.
ok, now let me read...
Music request!!
Any song by KUSH...thank you :)
Nice write up. great work you doing. keep the faith.
Post a Comment