The company you keep
Proverbs 13:20, the Bible says, “He that walketh with wise men shall be wise, but a companion of fools shall be destroyed.”
Proverbs 27:19, “As in water face answereth to face, so the hearth of man to man.”
1 Samuel 10:5 reads, “After that thou shalt come to the hill of God, where is the garrison of the Philistines; and it shall come to pass, when thou art come thither to the city, that thou shalt a company of prophets coming down from the high place with a psaltery and a tabret and a pipe and a harp before them and they shall prophesy. And the spirit of the Lord will come upon thee, and thou shalt prophesy with them, and shalt be turned into another man.”
It is the company that you keep that will decide whether you will turn to another man or not. Your company decides so many things about you. In 1 Corinthians 15:33, the Bible says, “Be not deceived, evil communications corrupt good manners.”
It has been well said, show me your friend and I will tell you the kind of person you are. As a matter of necessity, if you partner with dogs, you will soon learn how to bark. If you partner with pigs, you will soon learn how to litter a place, even if the place was clean when it was handed over to you. If you partner with eagle, you would soon lean how to fly high. The hard fact about life that many of us don’t realise is that you become those you closely associate with, whether for good or for bad. Many major sorrows, many major setbacks spring out of relationship with wrong people. The company you keep may decide your destiny. Many of us need to break free from a particular company that has held us down. Because in life, the less you associate with some people, the more your life will improve. There are some people, the more you associate with them, the more your life would go down. If a fornicator is not a nuisance to you, then it is sign that you are a fornicator yourself. If a liar is not a nuisance to you, it is a sign that you are a liar yourself. If somebody who doesn’t want to do anything is not a nuisance to you, then you are a loafer yourself. If a drunkard is not a nuisance to you, then you are a drunkard yourself. If a womaniser is not a nuisance to you, it shows you are a womaniser too. If a smoker is not a nuisance to you, although you don’t put the stick in your mouth, you’re a smoker yourself. People who want to fulfil their destiny are very impatient with negative thinking and negative acting people.
Failure wants your company, but you would not have to go into the company of failure. You don’t have to let the failure enter through the door into you. The truth is that you become like those you’re associating with. Then as you grow in your life, your associations would change according to your maturity. You may have friends who would want you to move forward. You many have friends who want you to stay where they are. You may have friends who cannot help you to climb, but they want you to crawl. You could have friends who would choke your vision and your dream. But the bottom line is this and that’s the truth: any friend that you have that does not increase you will eventually decrease you. You have to now insinuate yourself from negative people with negative ideas.
But on the other side, no road is too long when you are in the right company. But you will get the worst of the bargain if you’re exchanging ideas with the wrong person. There are some people when you are with them; the time you spend with them is an investment. But there are some people; the time you spend with them is wasted time. There are some people who desire to marry, but anytime you’re in their presence, no Bible study, no prayer. It is only kissing, petting that he would do for hours. No plan about your future. You haven’t found a husband yet, he is an unfriendly friend. But the reality is that, bad behaviour robs us more easily than good behaviour. So some friendships are consistently negative and they hold potential negative consequences for your life. You must break such things. Anytime you notice that you are in the presence of somebody and you don’t feel godly, but feel ungodly, lustful (feeling as in you should commit fornication) or do evil, you better run away from that company. The person is a destroyer.
This is why, sometimes, by the time you get to know a person very well, you discover that the person is a total stranger to your destiny. Which company do you keep? What company are you in now? You must make up your mind that you must break from the company of the chicken and join the company of the angel. You must break from the company of those who don’t have anywhere to go and join the company of those who are going somewhere. You must break loose from the company of those who have re-written their family history in the negative way and join those who are rewriting it in the positive way. If your best friend is an unbeliever, then you should conclude that you are an unbeliever yourself. If something is working like a duck, talking like a duck, swimming like a duck, you would conclude that you are looking at a duck. Many are like this, yet they wonder what is happening?
We did not say you should not go and minister to unbelievers so that they can surrender their lives to Jesus. You can minister to them, but you must not join in their iniquity. Light and darkness don’t operate together. There is no relationship between the temple of God and Belial.
Note this beloved, there are some people who will abandon you and walk away from you at a stage in your life. There are some people who will separate by themselves without you quarrelling with them. Once you discover that somebody doesn’t want to stay with you, the best thing is to allow them to go. Stop begging them to stay. Stop attaching yourself to somebody who has detached already. Your destiny is never tied to anybody who has detached himself from you. When you’re a prayerful person and you’re working with God and somebody decides to break off, let the person go – it means that the person was not joined to you in the first place.
Extract by Dr D. K Olukoya. In; the mysterious power of the company you keep.
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