Who is your friend?

 

Adulterers and adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. - James 4:4

 

Christians living in this world have a lot of dilemmas to face. We have to live in this sin cursed world. There is no way out of that. We have to be a witness to this world and in order to be a witness we must have friends who are in and of this world.

But we have to do that without being friends with the world and its systems. The world system are at odd, they are in conflict, in fact they are at war with each other and we need to choose which side we are on. We can’t jump back and forth. We can’t serve God and the world. We need to decide which we will follow. As Elijah told the people ‘how long are you going to go back and forth’ and as Joshua told the people ‘choose you this day who you will serve.’

The start of a new year is always a good time for pause and reflection. It’s a good time for us to reflect on whether we are friends with God or riends with the world. How do we know? Simple enough – which are we most in fellowship with? Where do we spend most of our time? We do we spend our down time? Where are our thoughts during those quiet times? Are our thoughts showing God as our friend or the world as our friend?

Who do we really want as our friend?  Who is going to be the true friend to carry us into eternity?