Lie #6: This Friendship is Different: It Won't Change Me

I want to share a story with you that was shared with me a while ago.

We'll call this girl Lucy.

Lucy moved to a new state and started attending a new school.

She prayed before she got there that she would be able to make new friends quickly.

And when she got to the new school, she was welcomed by a group of girls right away.

The only thing was, none of these girls were Christians.

They didn't have a relationship with God, nor did they want one.

She was scared to share her faith with these girls because they had been so nice to her, and she didn't want to lose their friendship.

Over time, she noticed, though, that her walk with God wasn't as strong as it used to be, and she wasn't sure what she should do.

Then her friends created a group chat.

She felt a tug to leave that group because the things that her friends were talking about were not good at all.

And she actually did leave it once, got asked why she left, and then she rejoined it because she didn't want the girls to think that she didn't care about them anymore.

This is when she reached out to me.

She asked, is this God telling me to step back or am I just making something out of nothing? Now, here's the thing.

Her friends, they were being nice to her.

They welcomed her.

And I love that they were welcoming.

That's not the problem.

These friends, instead of pulling her towards Jesus, were pulling her away from Jesus.

The problem with our closest friends not being Christians is that when we bring in close friends, we get comfortable with them.

When we get comfortable with them, we let our guard down.

When we let our guard down, we begin to take on their values and their beliefs.

We start to make small compromises that we don't really think about.

You start to say things that you normally wouldn't say or laugh at jokes that you wouldn't normally laugh at.

It happens so slowly and sometimes so slowly that you don't even realize it until you get to the place where you're asking yourself, how in the world did I get here? Good values are great, but they don't make you immune to other people's influence in your life.