March 21 2018 – Click here to listen
One way to live a better life is to avoid being in the wrong place and/or wrong situation. An alcoholic will have a much tougher time giving up the booze if they continue to hang around bars. The same holds true with drug use. If you hang out with drug users, it will be a far greater temptation to give them a try, than if you do not even know anyone who uses drugs, and/or where to obtain them. If you wish to quit smoking, it is easier to quit if you spend your time somewhere that smoking is not allowed. If you have a tendency to lose your cool and say something un-Christian when exposed to brash, loud-mouth, obnoxious people, it is best to avoid New York Yankee fans, especially after they get lucky at the end of a game and pull out an undeserved win in the World Series.
As for raising kids, I think the single biggest responsibility a parent must accept is making sure their kids are not running with the wrong crowd. I actually forbid one of my kids to hang out with one kid in particular, and I refused to allow this scumbag to even set one foot on my property. I told him in no uncertain terms what I would do to a certain part of his anatomy with my foot if I ever as much as caught sight of him at my house again. I made the same promise to my son if I saw him in this kid’s presence “ever” again. He was bad news and I was adamant that he would not influence my kid. At the time my son did not think too much of this, especially because when this occurred, he was practically grown and a sophomore in college.
My son ran into him at the Florid-Georgia ballgame, and found out that after he had quit hanging out with him, this punk had gone on to drop out of school, got hooked on drugs and had been strung out on cocaine for years. Now he has ended up with a menial job, and unfortunately has indeed turned into the loser that I predicted that he would be. My son now has a greater appreciation for my guidance, albeit, he is still hard-headed. Many parents would not think of forbidding their college age kid from hanging around with someone that they like. I suggest that if you love them, you will do your best to help them avoid trouble.
Hang out with people who love the Lord, and go to places where you can have some good clean fun and you are less likely to have problems. The Bible instructs us to be CAREFUL when choosing friends. Jesus made this point in graphic terms when He went as far as saying if your eye leads you astray, you should gouge it out, rather than let it lead you to your own eternal destruction.
I think that friends can make you or break you, particularly if you are an impressionable, peer-driven teenager. Think about it.
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Proverbs 12:26
The righteous should choose
his friends carefully,
For the way of the wicked leads
them astray.