Who Do You Depend On

     I have been waiting to include somebody else in my falling stories. You know what they say; misery loves company! I can’t think of anyone I would rather include than the person who has added so many cute little sayings to my stories! Are you ready Dwayne? When we lived in Montana one of the traditions we adopted was buying a tree tag every Christmas Season. Our $3.00 tag allowed us to go into the forest and cut down an evergreen to be our Christmas tree. We would go as a family, with other family friends and walk through several feet of snow to find the perfect tree. We had to learn the hard way that trees look really little in the forest but when you get what your thought was the perfect size tree home; you find out you can’t get it in the house or get the trunk to fit into a tree holder! One Christmas we were walking up and down many hills. For some strange reason, Dwayne reached over and grabbed my arm and we interlocked our arms. This is something I never do; it takes all I have to keep from falling on the ice and snow let alone be hooked to someone else and have to rely on their sure footedness. However, Dwayne had only fallen once the whole time I have known him and I felt more secure with me on his arm than left to myself. I wish I would have remembered that the only time he has ever fallen was on ice and snow because within minutes of taking my arm, Dwayne slipped and started a doomed balancing act. Since I am an expert at recognizing the signs right before a fall, I started fighting passionately to release my arm from his grip. I could not get myself free from him! He went down and I went down with him! I was shocked! My steadfast pillar in life just took me down with him. He could have let go of me and saved me from this fall but he didn’t (Dwayne: Take all this with a grain of salt!). The moral of this story is that if you choose to depend on someone to keep you upright, you'd better be willing to fall with them as well!

     That lesson applies to our spiritual walk as well as our physical one. We are to be light to the world, to love the lost, to reach out to the lost; but we are not to live like the world. So, many times I see Christians spend time with their lost friends 24/7. Soon they act just like their friends and they lose their impact to witness to the very ones they care about. Do not mishear me. We need to become caring friends with the lost to earn the right to witness to them, but the majority of our time needs to be fellowshipping, learning, praying, and worshipping with our Christian family. I remember when Dwayne and I realized that we needed to develop some Christian friends. Those friends have been faithful and those friendships have lasted through many years. Many of our lost friends have now become Christians. We would have never grown spiritually without that change in our lives.
     Who are you holding on too? Are you sure they won’t cause you to fall? Do you need to develop some new friends? Are you influencing your friends or are your friends influencing you?

Don’t become partners with those who reject God. How can you make a partnership out of right and wrong? That’s not partnership; that’s war. Is light best friends with dark? Does Christ go strolling with the Devil? Do trust and mistrust hold hands? Who would think of setting up pagan idols in God’s holy temple? But that is exactly what we are, each of us a temple in whom God lives. God himself put it this way “I’ll live in them, move into them; I’ll be their God and they’ll be my people. So leave the corruption and compromise; leave it for good,” says God. “Don’t link up with those who will pollute you. I want you all for myself.”

2 Corinthians 6:14-17