Take care with your associations

Proverbs 22:24-25 (NLT)

24 Don’t befriend angry people or associate with hot-tempered people, 25 or you will learn to be like them and endanger your soul.

It is the law of friendship that we accommodate ourselves to our friends and be ready to serve them, and therefore we ought to be wise and wary in the choice of a friend, that we come not under the sacred tie to any one whom it would be our folly to accommodate ourselves to. Thought we must be civil to all, yet we must be careful whom we lay in our bosoms and contract a familiarity with. And, among others, a man who is easily provoked, touchy, and apt to resent affronts, who, when he is in a passion, cares not what he says or does, but grows outrageous, such a one is not fit to be made a friend or companion, for he will be ever and anon angry with us and that will be our trouble, and he will expect that we should, like him, be angry with others, and that will be our sin. [Matthew Henry Commentary]

Mike Cosper in The Stories We Tell (Crossway 2014), pages 48-49 writes:  A few years ago I met with a church member who was struggling with sexual sin with his girlfriend, as well as a porn habit. We talked through a variety of means for him to prevent and resist temptation—certain habits of prayer, adding content monitors to his computer, committing to less time online, moving the computer out of his bedroom, not taking his girlfriend to his apartment when no one was home—and he sincerely, earnestly made all of these commitments.

As the conversation was ending, he said, "Are you going to see such-and-such movie this weekend?" It was a gritty new film that featured gangsters, prostitutes, and strippers, and if the advertising was to be believed, would be sexually charged. I searched for words for a moment, until, "Are you kidding me?" fell out of my mouth. My friend seemed surprised at my response, and began to replay the question in his mind, wondering why I was frustrated.

 "We've just spent an hour talking about ways to reshape your life so that you aren't in a place of sexual temptation, and you're going to see that movie?"

"Oh," he said, relieved. "It's fine, man. Movies don't affect me like that."

I shook my head. I had a genuine, but limited, sympathy for the guy. … Most porn addicts take a slow path toward stuff that's hard-core, and in comparison to his drug of choice this movie seemed downright tame. What he failed to see—and what many of us fail to see—is that our consumption of media has cumulative, life-shaping effects.

The Bible tells us not to befriend people or associate with hot-tempered people for they will lead us into danger. The truth is we must always be on guard who and what we associate ourselves with in life. For unless we carefully guard our hearts we have a tendency to follow others into danger. Jesus told us, “Wherever your treasure is, there the desires of your heart will also be.” So be careful of your associations and who you are willing to follow; for the wrong choice can lead you places you don’t want to go!