Today’s episode of The Royal Family Podcast is all about friends, which of course got my wheels turning in directions that weren’t strictly geared toward those Brits across the pond. But, feel free to check out today’s episode here.

—

“The righteous should choose his friends carefully, For the way of the wicked leads them astray.” (Proverbs 12:26)

Think about the people closest to you. Really think. From the above passage we see that it is crucial to the faithfulness of a child of God that we choose our friends carefully, lest we be led astray by the wickedness of their hearts. We all know how easily it is to be influenced by our closest friends – our family, our spouse, our kids, our co-workers. Psalm 1:1 shows us the dangers of being around negative influences:

Blessed is the man
Who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly,
Nor stands in the path of sinners,
Nor sits in the seat of the scornful;

The man in Psalm 1 is a blessed man because he was not caught up in the sin of others. He was not led astray by their wickedness. Clearly, he chose his friends carefully (Prov.12). But the opposite man, a man who started off nearly walking with those who were ungodly, that man eventually stands with the sinners and finally is sitting down participating with them. Friendships open a door of influence: either of evil or of good.

So who are your closest friends? In the digital age in which we live, many of us have hundreds and thousands of “friends”. Those closest to us may not even be people we see on a regular basis. They may not even be people we know in person at all! There are so many of us who read a certain person’s blog religiously, or we follow closely the every move and tweet of a celebrity or popular acquaintance. But we are being influenced all the same.

We must be careful as God’s children to guard our hearts. The heart is such a tricky thing, establishing connection and feeling even when we don’t mean to. We become attached to characters in a TV show and cry when they leave the show or are killed off! We “pull for” celebrity couples we’ve never met. We hear a song and it instantly takes us back to a certain moment in our lives when we felt a certain way. Our hearts are easily accessed, and we must be on guard, because there is one out there looking for a way in – a way to get in and destroy you (1 Peter 5:8).

So again I ask, who are your closest friends? Who are my closest friends? What influences me the most on a day-to-day basis? Is it the worldly gossip of a tabloid? A denominational blog that has a lot of good points, but a lot of things that are making me rely less on truth and more on feeling? Is it a certain band who only uses bad language sometimes, yet the words pop up in my head even when they’re bleeped out on the radio? My heart – your heart – it’s fragile! Don’t let something or someone worldly be the greatest influence on it.

The Bible still says it, “Do not be deceived: “Evil company corrupts good habits” (1 Cor. 15:33).  May we ever be mindful of the influences of our friends, both real life and digital, and may our greatest influence always be Christ.