Friendships and loyalty

“... who despises a vile man but honours those who fear the Lord, who keeps his oath even when it hurts...” Psalm 15:4
Continuing in Psalm 15, we come across the next characteristic of what a Christian – someone who has been clothed in the righteousness of Christ and is thus able to enter God’s presence – should be like. It concerns our friendships and our loyalty.
It is a natural thing to become like those people witih whom you hang out with most often. You’ll start to pick up their mannerisms, and before long you will also start to pick up the way that they think about things. Therefore it is important to make sure that we are spending time with people who edify and strengthen us, people who are on the same moral and spiritual wavelength – people, like us, who fear the Lord. That’s not to say that we can’t have non-Christian friends, but we do need to balance the time that we spend with them.
Christians should be known for their loyalty. Have you ever made a promise and then not kept it, for whatever reason? Maybe you arranged to meet up with someone, and then on the day decided not to because of the weather. Maybe you agreed to help someone with something at work, and then didn’t follow through. God didn’t do that with us. He promised to send the Messiah to die for our sins. When Jesus came, He could have used His divine power to get out of the situation. But He kept His promise, even though it hurt Him dearly. So then, we too should keep our promises. We should be men and women of our word.