Daily Devotional for Monday February 7, 2000

Who Do You Hang Out With

(2 Thessalonians 3:6)

Who do you hang out with? Professional football player Ray Lewis is in jail in Atlanta, charged with double murder. There has been a lot written and only time will tell if he is guilty of the crimes. One thing has come out, and that is his choice of associates. If he is not guilty of the slayings, he is very guilty of hanging out with the wrong people. Many in the church have taken this verse from Paul's letter to the church at Thessalonica and have used it to say Christians should separate themselves from the lost. I totally disagree with that philosophy. Jesus was the one that told us we are the salt of the earth and that we are to let our light shine before men. I have always contended that our loudest witness is not what we say, but how we live. We have an obligation and responsibility to God to share the love of Christ and the Good News with the lost. We also have an obligation to be aware of the people we hang out with.

We can accomplish our God-given responsibility to witness without hanging out or being closely associated with the wrong people. We do that by witnessing and living correctly before these people in public and social settings. Hanging out is defined as being close friends and spending lots of time together. I am a firm believer that we should not abandon our friends who are lost, but we don't have to be as closely associated with them as we were before we found Christ in our life either. After all, those who are lost are going to want to be places, doing things that as a Christian you can no longer do. That fact alone will begin to separate you. Abandon them, cut off all communication with them . . . no. But you can never go back and be with them, hang-out with them as you once did because you now have different priorities in your life that they don't have.

I write this because this problem exists at all stages in life. It is most pronounced amongst young adults in junior and senior high, but is just as much a problem for those in college and even adults in the business world. Peer pressure knows no age. It is with us our entire life. The key to this problem again is in your personal relationship and commitment to Christ. Once you have made that commitment, you simply cannot go to the same places or do the same things you once did. That will keep you from associating with old friends and acquaintances who are lost and still living in a world of sin. Your associations with those people will be less frequent and in places where you are not going to have to possibly compromise your walk with Christ. In many instances, your old friends may simply not want to be around you because your new life reminds them of the sin in their own life. Do what you can to keep the communication lines open, because there will come a day, just as it did in every life that accepted Jesus, when you want a better way to live.