Our Faith Is On A Collision Course With The Our Relationships Series

Introduction

Jesus has warned us in Luke 18:8 that when the end is near, He will not be able to find faith on the earth. And that could mean only one thing: Christian men and women's faith is going to come under attack and whatever that is that is attacking our faith may get the upper hand. 

Last week, we looked at the first thing that is certainly going to attack our faith and it is the world. The values of this world will try to sell themselves as the same as the values of our God. But they are not. The values of this world are a moving target, constantly changing, and the value of God are unchanging, constant. The values of this world will try to sell themselves to you by enticements. The values of God are laid out plainly in His Word, no enticements, and you need to make a choice to accept or reject them.

Today, we are going to look at the second possible collision course with our faith and that is the toxic relationships that we are in, and everybody has those relationships that we maintain. For this sermon, you need to do an inventory of people you are in relationship with, and you need to honestly evaluate if they are helping you to get closer to God, or are they trying to pull you away from God. And if they are trying to pull you away from God and your faith then they are toxic. Today, we are going to look at some of the characteristics of toxic relationships, and then you got to decide if you are going to maintain those relationships or are you going to let your faith win?

So, just as our faith is on a collision course with the world; our faith is also on a collision course with those relationships that move us away from God and from our faith.

SCRIPTURE TEXT REFERENCE

(20) Walk with the wise and become wise, for a companion of fools suffers harm. Proverbs 13:20 - NIV

My Only Point

If God wants to bless you, God sends people into your life that will be a blessing. If the devil wants to harm you, the devil will send people in your life that will harm you. Our job is to determine who those people are that is going to be a blessing and who are those people that is going to be harmful.

To discern who is going to be a blessing and who is going to be harmful greatly matters. In I Corinthians 15:33 we are told "Do not be misled. Bad company corrupts good character." You hang with the wrong people, they are going to bring you down, you are not going to bring them up. And since that is straight from the Word of God, we know that is true, and so if we are in those toxic relationship (those that bring us down) our fellowship with God is going to suffer and inevitably our faith will suffer. Those toxic relationships collide head on against our faith.

The great King David knew this, so he tells us in Psalms 1:1- (1) Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers,

Paul, the author of the majority of the New Testament, knew this when he instructed the Ephesians church in Ephesians 5:7-9 (7) Therefore do not be partners with them. (8) For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light (9) (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness, and truth)

So, I cannot stress enough how important to know the characteristics of harmful relationships. I want to share with you three of them today.

There are people in your life who knew you back when and they want to hold you in your past. Those relationships are toxic.

(17) So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. Ephesians 4:17 - NIV

I am not the same person I was before I knew Christ. Today, as I look back on my life before Christ, I don't even like the person I was before I knew Christ. I am so thankful that God saved me and made me a new creation and is changing me day by day.

But every one of us who are Christian have some family or friends that knew us back when we were not Christian, and they liked the way we acted back then prior to our salvation because we acted just like them. We might have gone out and partied with them; drank and smoked with them; used the same vulgar language as them; and had no regard for the things of God just like them.