Do We Ever Learn?

Still continuing with the topic God and friends.

And we will use the same person, Jehoshaphat.

We are a generation later than when the same situation is replicated, this time with Ahab’s son in 2 Kings 3.

He asks the same question and our friend gives the same answer.

And as he did with the father he does with the son. He asks for a prophetic word.

You wonder why.

With the previous word that he dishonored to a rebuke from God, he still maintains alliances with God’s enemies, yet still pursues God’s revelation.

But I think the more pressing question is why was he always hanging out with friends with no regard for the God he served.

But that is what friendship really is

Your friends determine your spiritual temperature.

God’s revelation is irrelevant when it is tempered by friends.

Or have we forgotten Solomon who could trash two clear appearances of the divine.

Or Moses who for his loyalty to Israel messed his assignment.

In short, there is no spiritual insurance against friends.

A firebrand can be converted to a refrigerator by a friend or friends.

Why am I writing this?

I have never seen a believer getting into drunkenness or sexual immorality overnight.

That is why believers in schools and colleges are so on fire that they are always in this or that mission and will explode at the smallest spiritual infraction with no grey areas in their lives.

Let them get out of that ‘cocoon’ of like friends.

Then they get new professional friends and it becomes harder and harder to get enough time to attend church, let alone planning or even going for a mission.

Someone who attended an overnight prayer meeting almost every week finds it impossible to get time to pray when he is alone.

At least Jehoshaphat was better than that as he always sought God’s take on issues, though his friendships meant it was irrelevant what God said.

Sadly, it happens all the time.

It can very easily happen to you and me.

But it doesn’t have to. And the solution is not complicated.

Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the law of the LORD; and in his law doth he meditate day and night. (Psalm 1: 1, 2)

Are we together?