Choose Your Friends Wisely

May 6, 2019 2621

If you’ve lived for a bit and you look back on your life, you can see how important your friends have been in shaping who you are today.

Prince Moses of Egypt was a grown man. He’d spent all his life in the royal palace and in the circles of high power. I can imagine that these were circles of jealousy, intrigue, and betrayal. Prince Moses’ environment was hardly the place to learn true friendship.

To be useful to God, you have to be his friend. God wants no slaves. He just wants friends. Although Moses had a bad temper and saw himself at the centre of the universe because of his privileged upbringing, God saw potential in him. But before God could use him, he had to teach him what it meant to be a true friend.

That’s why God allowed Moses to be dramatically removed from the royal palace of Egypt and dropping in the desert as a fugitive. There, he was found by a man called Reuel (Exodus 2:18), who took him in and brought him into his family.

It’s no coincidence that Reuel’s name means, “friend of God.” Because Reuel was himself a friend of God, he was able to teach Moses what real friendship was.

I’ve discovered that true friends are more precious than gold. I’ve also learnt that it takes time to both discover them, and to learn to love as a friend. That’s why Moses’ lesson in friendship took 40 years. That’s how long God had Moses in the desert, learning what friendship was, before he could reveal to him what his great mission in life was.

Reuel, also called “Jethro” was much older than Moses. In fact, Moses had married Reuel’s daughter. Sometimes our best friends can be much older than us. In fact, my very best friend is everlasting, and he wants me to become part of his family as well.

God wants us to learn what it means to be a true friend.

Because of all the lessons he learnt in friendship, Moses himself went on to become a great “friend of God” In fact, he was such a great friend of God, that God spoke with him face to face (Ex 33:11).

In life, it’s very important that we choose our friends wisely. Our friends have the power to “make us” or “break us.” The Bible says,

Become wise by walking with the wise; hang out with fools and watch your life fall to pieces (Prov 13:20, MSG).

Of course, this doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be kind and spend some time with people who might actually be fools. What it does mean is that you need to think carefully about who you spend mostof your time with and whose advice you listen to the most. A Spanish saying goes, “Tell me who your friends and I’ll tell you who you are.”

So, choose your friends wisely. Above all, make sure that Jesus is your best and closest friend of all. Because, above anyone else, he has proven his eternal friendship to you at Calvary. No other friend on earth could ever improve on that.

– Eliezer Gonzalez

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