Friday, May 7th, 2004 - A Friendly Balance

I wrote an email to a dear friend sharing something God recently reminded me of and impressed me to share. I am impressed further to include it here.

Jesus hung with the greatest sinners all of the time - the sick need a doctor, not the righteous (Mark 2:17). Since we follow Him in every way, we are also called to reach the world of "sick people" out there - the Great Commission spells this out explicitly in case we hadn't gotten the picture from the rest of Scripture.

Now, we shouldn't hang with only non-Christians because we aren't God incarnate, we are called to fellowship/community, and most people just simply don't rely on God enough to do that (a sad truth). We would eventually get dragged down by those we hang around instead of spreading Jesus' love to them so much that they all become Christians by the Holy Spirit's influence through us.

It is hard (especially in the Crusade setting) to not go to the other extreme and have all friends be strong Christians. While this lifestyle is fun, uplifting, and encouraging to spiritual growth, it is definitely not God's intention nor the way He lived on earth. Our lives will not bear fruit to the unbelieving world if we don't interact with the unbelieving on a consistent and intimate level.

So, we are called to have a good balance between strong Christian, younger Christian, and non-Christian friends. Those who have been given strong gifts of maturity in faith and a heart after God's heart are especially blessed, because they are prepared to reach all three of these groups. Even though the Holy Spirit can use anyone, He very often chooses to use those whom He has prepared.

God spoke a lot to me through this too - He has really used Duluth to show me that I have not held a very good balance in my friends. The reason I became so comfortable was that I was always surrounding myself with Christians, especially strong and mature ones.

And that was the end of the email (I copied and pasted, yet I hope it all made sense here too). I remain amazed that God has to teach things to me many times; much of my recent revelations has been stuff that I already knew and had just forgotten. It has been rough up here lately, and my constant prayer is that God will break me (mostly of laziness and what I call "floatsam") and shape my heart more completely like His and in love with His.

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