"Who You Hangin' With?" He Is Able Page 041 at http://www.he-is-able.com/page041.html


	Who You Hangin' With?


Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. Psalm 1:1


...He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper. The ungodly are not so: but are like the chaff which the wind driveth away. Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous. For the Lord knoweth the way of the righteous: but the way of the ungodly shall perish. Psalm 1:3-6. Who are you hangin' around with? Who are you letting hang around in your life? Those of SOLID faith or a dried up bunch of doubting gossipers? When you have a need in your life, can you get hold of them and they'll say, "Let's pray, right NOW" or do they say, "Well, I sure hope everything works out ok"? Or, "You know, it just might not be the Will of God." The Word of God tells us that there is only one way to worship God, and TODAY, it's still the same as when Jesus told the woman at the well (John 4:24), God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in SPIRIT* and in TRUTH.* Get in the Spirit and quit worrying about the "mights" in your life! Who you worshiping, the god of "maybe", or the GREAT I AM ??

Let me ask you, do those you hang around with push you up or pull you down? Do they build faith in your life, that what God has promised to do He will, or are they more of the, "Well, I don't know now. We need to examine this and think about it" kind? Don't THINK about it, PRAY ABOUT IT! You can think till your brain hurts, and still be as depressed, dejected and defeated as you were to begin with! Let me tell you right now: prayer changes things. I said, PRAYER CHANGES THINGS!! The devil is a liar! What God has spoken, WILL COME TO PASS! You hangin' around folks who don't believe God is STILL the VERY SAME God that He was in the days of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob? Get away from them! Folks who don't believe our Heavenly Father is the VERY SAME wonder-working, all-powerful God that He was in the days of the disciples? Get away from them! The Bible reassures us that God never changes, and that which He says He will do, He does! "Well, I've fasted and I've prayed, I've done this and I've done that, but nothing's different." (1) Keep praying, and (2) Quit doubting God! Either you ARE PERSUADED in Whom you have believed, or you ARE NOT! There's no middle ground there! Either you FULLY believe, or you're full of doubt. *Halfway belief* is full DOUBT!

Has it ever "dawned" on you, have you ever stopped to consider that some of the things wrong in your life COULD be due to the people you have in it? Have you sought out Godly, fully-committed-to-Christ folks? People who are like-minded in Christian thinking, or are you still hanging with the same old crowd that you were before you got saved? Let me tell you, if they won't allow you to be a good influence on them, don't you DARE allow them to be a bad influence on you! Did you get that? If it means you have to make new friends and get away from old ones, don't you DARE allow "friends" to rob you of your experience with Christ! Don't let ANYONE (or anything) persuade you away from Christ! The influence of friends can build you up or tear you down. And just as a Christian should NOT allow sinners to influence him (or her) away from Christ, you'd better be careful of the "Christians" you let into your life, too! That can prove to be an even BIGGER danger, did you know that? Simply because they "profess" to be Christians doesn't make them the kind of people you ought to be hanging around with. If they don't encourage you in Christ, if they don't lift you up, don't you DARE let them pull you down! They need to be God-fearing (not world fearing), spirit-filled people, not scared of their own shadows! Can you rejoice with them over the goodness of God and His wonder-working power, or are your conversations full of gossip and defeat? Are they the kind of friends you can openly speak to about the good things of God, or do you have to AVOID such topics when you are around them? Do they encourage you to keep on keeping on, or tell you, "You might as well give up" when God doesn't answer some prayer you have prayed right away?

Get this: not only are you known by the company you keep, but the company you keep can destroy your witness of Christ. Oh yes they can! It is Satan's job to destroy the children of God any way he can, and one of his most successful methods is through the influence of those that Children of God keep around them. Obviously, we have to interact with sinners every day through business, on our jobs, in stores, etc. Even so, as a Christian, your life is not When In Babylon...--the Word of God tells us Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation; of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he cometh in the glory of his Father with the holy angels. Mark 8:38. So not everyone we, as Christians, have to deal with in this world are going to be followers of Christ, but the folks we call "friends" need to be those who will lift us up in faith and encourage us in Christ. While I'm so close to the subject, I'm going to interject something here: don't use the label "christian" to lure folks into your con games just so you can cheat them! It's a sad thing when so many people would MUCH rather do business with known sinners than with "Christians"! It's not the world who has done that to us--it's (so-called) "Christians" who have given "Christianity" such a bad name!

You want to know how important it is to have the influence of good people around? Turn to the 5th Chapter of II Kings, starting at verse 1 and let's read about Naaman, Captain of the host of the King of Syria. The Bible describes him as a mighty man of valour and tells us he was a "great man with his master". Yet, as powerful a man as he was, as high a position as he held, he suffered from the dreaded disease, leprosy. On one of their raids into Israel, the Syrians had brought back a "little maid" who became a servant to Naaman's wife. It was this child who said to her mistress, Would God my lord were with the prophet that is in Samaria! for he would recover him of his leprosy. Somebody went in to the King of Syria and told him what Naaman's little servant girl had said. So the king of Syria sent a letter to the king of Israel, along with three gifts: ten talents of silver, six thousand pieces of gold and ten changes of clothes. Now pay attention to verse 7: And it came to pass, when the king of Israel had read the letter, that he rent his clothes, and said, Am I God, to kill and to make alive, that this man doth send unto me to recover a man of his leprosy? wherefore consider, I pray you, and see how he seeketh a quarrel against me. We're not reading about a "heathen" here--this king was the king of ISRAEL, a person who was "supposed" to know about God and His wonder-working power (just like so many today claim to do).

Listen up: simply because a person flies under the flag of "Christianity" does not make them one! Just because a person goes to church every Sunday and is on a first-name basis with the pastor does not make them a "Christian". Billy Sunday is credited with saying, "Going to church doesn't make a person a Christian any more than going into a garage would make a person a car." Do you grasp that fact? If, I said, IF a person is a Christian, as in follower of Jesus Christ, their life will be a witness of it! That which is in their hearts and minds comes through, whether it is of God or not. And it behooves us to KNOW the DIFFERENCE, Amen? Now let's read on: And it was so, when Elisha the man of God had heard that the king of Israel had rent his clothes, that he sent to the king, saying, Wherefore hast thou rent thy clothes? let him come now to me, and he shall know that there is a prophet in Israel. So Naaman came with his horses and with his chariot, and stood at the door of the house of Elisha. And Elisha sent a messenger unto him, saying, Go and wash in Jordan seven times, and thy flesh shall come again to thee, and thou shalt be clean. But Naaman was wroth, and went away, and said, Behold, I thought, He will surely come out to me, and stand, and call on the name of the Lord his God, and strike his hand over the place, and recover the leper. Are not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? may I not wash in them, and be clean? So he turned and went away in a rage. And his servants came near, and spake unto him, and said, My father, if the prophet had bid thee do some great thing, wouldest thou not have done it? how much rather then, when he saith to thee, Wash, and be clean? Then went he down, and dipped himself seven times in Jordan, according to the saying of the man of God: and his flesh came again like unto the flesh of a little child, and he was clean. II Kings 5:5-14. Did not Naaman sound like an awful lot of folks today? Don't get what they want the way they expect: II Kings 5:12 tells us that ole' Naaman went into a rage. "Hey, wait a minute! I am Naaman, Captain of the Host of the King of Syria, mighty in valour, great man with my master! Elisha will SURELY come out to ME, and stand, and call on the name of the Lord his God, and strike his hand over the place, and recover the leper. Are not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? may I not wash in them, and be clean? Who does that Elisha think he is, anyway? I ought to AT LEAST get a personal appearance from him for my $80,000 and ten sets of clothes! Forget it! I'm leaving!"

Yep, that's us, today: "Hey God--You 'way up there wherever you are--do You know how great I am? Do You know how MUCH I put in the offering plate? Do You have ANY idea who my daddy is and my daddy's daddy was? Do You know how many times a week I go to church, how much I give to the poor, how many IMPORTANT friends I have?" Or "And You want me to go where? *I'm* not about to go to that itty bitty old rundown country church--*I've* got a doctorate in divinity, I DESERVE something better! Not ME !" How wonderful, for Naaman's sake, that he had good, really good, people around him. They said to him, "If the prophet had told you to do something expensive or big, wouldn't you have done it? So you should certainly obey him when he says simply to go wash in the river and be cured! Is it not more important that you are made whole, than what river it is?" Now if the people around Naaman had been like those we allow to influence our lives today, they would have said to him, "Well, who does that so and so think he is? Does he not know you are NAAMAN, high and mighty of the king of Syria?" Instead of encouraging him to do what was right and good, they would have "supported" him in his foolish pride and guess what? It would have cost him his healing! Thank God, they thought enough of him to tell him the truth! Can those around you tell you the truth? Can you HANDLE truth? Are they the kind to deal with you in truth? Or are they the kind to always tell you what you "want" to hear? What you "want" to hear is not always what you NEED to hear, did you know that? Ole' Naaman might well have liked it if someone had gone in the prophet's house and drug him outside by his heels, but that was not what needed to be done. The truth was, Naaman needed to get off his "high horse" of self-pride and self-exaltation and learn to obey. He needed a reminder of humility. We all do, from time to time! We ALL need reminding that it's God Who is in charge, not us! Including me, myself and I. Many times I have TRIED to tell God how to answer a prayer, or expect Him to use "my" solution. Praise the Lord, O my soul that He did not! I have NEVER had Him answer a prayer but that it wasn't the perfect way, despite how I thought it should have been done! You know, that's why we don't get some of our prayers answered: God will not do it the way we demand it be done. Guess what? He's smarter than we are. Oh, I know that's hard to swallow for some folks, but oh how my heart rejoices to know it is true!

Have you ever wondered what Naaman might have been thinking as he began to take those seven dips in that dirty old river water? It may have been, Dip one: "Oh, this water stinks! Ugh!" No change, dip again. Dip two: "This filth is getting all in my eyes, my hair, my ears..." No change, dip again. Dip three: "Nope, it's STILL there!" No change--not even a finger healed--dip again. Dip four: "Man, when am I going to see this start happening?" No change--dip again! Dip five: "How many more to go?" No change--dip again! Dip six: "What am I doing here? This is humiliating." No change--dip again................ Dip seven--come on, read it with me there in verse 14: �and his flesh came again like unto the flesh of a little child, and he was clean. And then we read, And he returned to the man of God, he and all his company, and came, and stood before him: and he said, Behold, now I know that there is no God in all the earth, but in Israel: now therefore, I pray thee, take a blessing of thy servant. II Kings 5:15. Not only had he been healed, he'd had an attitude adjustment, too!

Ole' Naaman had the "just right" kind of people around him, didn't he? They cared enough about him to tell him the truth. They didn't take his side: "Well Sir, I agree. I just don't see why that old prophet says you have to lower yourself to get in the Jordan River." NO! They said to him, My father, if the prophet had bid thee do some great thing, wouldest thou not have done it? how much rather then, when he saith to thee, Wash, and be clean? It is because of their influence on him that Naaman received his healing. They encouraged him to do what he needed to do, instead of supporting him in what he wanted to do. Do I need to repeat that? They encouraged him to do what he NEEDED to do, instead of supporting him in what he WANTED to do. You keeping company with that kind of people? Folks who will remind you of God's promises, or those who will defend your selfish stinking pride? Folks who love you enough to tell you the truth of the Word of God, or folks who fear you will embarrass them if you step out in faith for deliverance? Let me tell you, *Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend.* Proverbs 27:17.

If you have faith in God and His promises, don't be hangin' out with a bunch of doubters! All they're going to do is pull you down! They will be a hindrance to your Christian walk. They won't strengthen your faith--they will lessen it! When you need to be encouraged, are you happy with a so-called friend who wants to just go on and on about how worried you should be? Of course not! You want someone to lift up your spirits, someone to encourage you, someone to reassure you that God is still on the throne, don't you? And if it means you have to start "hangin' out" with different folks, think about it: which is more important? Your walk with God or your friends? Mark 8:37 asks us, ...what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? So who you hangin' with? Who are you allowing to influence you in your daily walk with God? What kind of an influence are YOU to your friends?
(all emphasis on scriptures, such as bold, underline or uppercase, is mine) "Who You Hangin' With?" Copyright © 2002 by Patricia Sikes. All Rights Reserved.

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