Make no friendships with a man given to anger, and with a wrathful man do not associate, lest you learn his ways and get yourself into a snare. Proverbs 22:24-25 (AMPC)
The friends you make are the friends that make you. As iron sharpens iron, so a friend sharpens a friend- Proverbs 27:17(NLT). Sharpening makes more intense or effective.
A disciplined and diligent friend will greatly effect the same traits on you and intensify them.
You’re exactly like your friends. You will never go beyond the circle of your friends.
Friends are not only people but also belief system, attitude, interests, mindset, and environment. You can be friends with negativity or a positive outlook, loneliness or companionship, inferiority or greatness.
John 15:14 (MSG) – You are my friends when you do the things I command you. You will always do or find yourself doing the commands or dictates of your friends either willingly or by compulsion. In other words friends influence. Friends of alcohol effortlessly carry out its bidding.
Scripture talks about friendship with the world. Here world doesn’t mean the earth we are living on and the things in it but rather the system of self-seeking and self-gratification that dominates the people’s sense of worth and value.
James 4:4 (NKJV) Adulterers and adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.
If your sense of worth and value is tied to how much you can get and keep for yourself you’re a friend of the world, you’re God’s enemy!
On the other hand if your sense of worth and value is in who God is in your life and who you’re in God then you’re His friend! Choose God as your best friend, hook up with His ways, bond with His instructions, and get acquainted with His Word. Then buddy up with like-minded people; those in whose life God is all in all.