You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. James 4:4
Most people seek to have friends who are like them and like who they are. Very few people really like to be alone and without friends. It is very easy for someone to be a friend with someone else who has the same likes and dislikes.
When there are differences in desires, there is often fighting that goes on causing disunity and problems.
James cuts down the believers who are being friends with the world. He points out that being a friend with the world, is being an enemy with God.
Every believer is to be set apart as different or unique. They are not to blend in like everyone else. The ultimate home of the believer is heaven, not this earth. Their focus is in eternity, not just the here and now.
Most of the world is focused upon self and the here and now. It is all about what one can get for himself at any cost.
Too often believers want to be friends with those in the world and begin to compromise their standards with God. They begin to accept sinful activities in their lives as though they were acceptable to God.
At the moment a believer begins to be friends with this world, they become an enemy to God. The focus of the world is selfishness and sin. Believers are supposed to be focused upon God and eternity, not self and this temporary world.
Acting as the world does makes one lukewarm, one that God will spit out. Either a believer is a friend of God or a friend of the world, but never both at the same time.
You must be willing to ask yourself who you want to be friends with. God will not force you to be friends with Him, however, if you are friends with the world, you will be God’s enemy.
As a believer, you are to flee all sin. The world will want you to walk in sin with them, to be like them or else they will hate you. In the same way, God wants you to be like Him, or you will be His enemy.
Make a choice today as to who you will be friends with–God or the world.
Today I pray that you will know Jesus as your Savior; that you will choose to be friends with God; that you will live as God called you to live; that God will strengthen you to not be friends with the world; and that God will fill you with Him so that you have all you desire and need.
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