I talked last week quite a bit about the people you naturally attract. It’s a chance for you to influence others for the positive—for individuality, risk, passion for God, etc.
But what if you attract the wrong kind of people? The truth is, some of the people I’ve attracted in my life are not necessarily the types of people I want to hang around with. A sportscaster named Charlie Jones said, “You will be the same person in five years as you are today except for the people you meet and the books you read.” Those people and those books will either take you closer to the person you want to be or further away from it.
1 Corinthians 15:33 says it like this: Stop being deceived: “Wicked friends lead to evil ends.”
Just because you attract a certain type of person, that doesn’t mean that’s the limit of who you’ll get to hang out with. You can choose who you want to associate yourself with.
In fact, you should choose your friends carefully. Certain people will be drawn to you naturally, but that doesn’t mean you need to accept each one. Choose carefully who you keep and who you lose.
I’m grateful for a wife who does this for me. There have been a few times in our marriage where she asks me about a certain friend, “What do you think about the way they talk to ______?” She’ll see something she doesn’t want to become part of my life, and she gently points it out to me.
I’m proud to say I’ve severed a few relationships based on her wise advice. It’s rarely that the person is evil. But if they are generally jerks or they bring me down, I’m happy to remove them from my life. That’s not who I want to to be in five years, so why would I spend my time with them now?
So my question for you is this: Who do you want to be in five years? Are your friends taking you closer to that or further away from it?
