Live Free with Josh Howerton - Walking With the Wise | Ep. 12 | Tuesday February 21, 2023

Episode Date: February 21, 2023

Are your closest friends people who pick you up or pull you down? It’s important to understand the significance of surrounding yourself with people who will point you toward Jesus and the life He has planned for you. If you’re going to walk in a new direction, this is an episode you won’t want to miss! For more information, visit lakepointe.church/dailydrive

Thanks for tuning in to today's Daily Drive with Lake Point Church, a daily dose of God's word for your morning drive. When the word, not the world, becomes the majority of your week, your life will start to change. For that reason, our prayer is that God will speak to you through today's devotional. For more digital content to feed your faith, visit lakepoint.comit. And now let's dive in to today's devotional. Hey, what's up everybody? Hope you having a great day today. My name is Mike Brough, and we're grateful you spend a few minutes with us today.

We're all on a journey just talking about walking a new direction in 2020. And to do that, so far we said that you've got to map your route. You've got to download a new playlist, and you've got to find a partner to walk with. And we left off yesterday talking about the value of finding someone or a group of someone's that you can walk this life with. And here's the key, walk this way verse. we saw yesterday. Proverbs 1320. Whoever walks with the wise will become wise. Whoever walks with fools will suffer harm.

I have one tattoo. I actually lost a bet with my son, and he told me he was going to get a tattoo. I said, you were such a needlewimp. You're not going to do it. The day you do it's the day I do it. He texts me from the tattoo place, went, your move.

Oh, man. So I had to get one. So I got a small one on the back of my calf. It's my life. It's my life verse. But when I was getting the tattoo, a guy there, a guy went to the tattoo play, kind of followed me there. I thought, who's this guy to follow me to the tattoo place?

He was a guy from church that saw that he knew I was going there because he had a buddy that worked there. He wanted to see me get it. He wanted to see me in pain, I think. And he goes, I want to show you a tattoo I have. It's a verse that you talked about one time on a Sunday. And on his shoulder, he had Proverbs 13, 20, whoever walks with the wise will become wise.

Whoever walks with fools will suffer harm. And he said, I got to tell you our story. Me and the tattoo artist, he talked to his friend. He goes, we've been fools most of our life, man. We were drug addicts. We were using all the time. We were partying all the time. We were just fools.

And together, we all suffered a lot of harm. And then his wife came to faith in Jesus Christ. and started going to church. And she started changing. And now all of a sudden, we were walking with the wise. And we eventually gave our lives in Jesus too. And now we're becoming wise too.

So I had to put Proverse 1320 on my shoulder. Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise. It's like the question I left you with yesterday. Who are you walking with these days? Now to be sure, you should never walk through life with an air of judgmental thinking that you're better than other people. I'm too good to walk with you. But still, make sure your closest friends,

the ones you surround yourself with are people that can pick you up and not pull you down. Our daughter Jody, some of you heard us, hardly talk about her before. But when she was in high school or junior year of high school, she was walking down some really destructive roads, down some dark paths. She eventually came to her senses,

and she surrendered her life fully to Jesus Christ. And she had to make some changes in her life. And one of the hardest changes she had to make, one of the biggest changes she had to make. She had to decide to get a whole new set of friends. She needed to make a radical break. And she asked to be homeschooled her senior year with a couple of other girls who also wanted to make some significant changes in their lives. They had a graduating class of three. They fought over who was valedictorian.

And she never had a whole ear than now attitude with her old friends. She would just explain to them that I'm just trying to walk down a different street because that other street was taking me to a bad place inside myself. You can go to a church service. You can listen to something like this, and you can say, you know what? Yeah, yeah, you're right, man. I'm going to walk down a different street. But then you can run back to the same old crowd

that pulls us right back down into destructive habits. Galatians 5-7 reminds us, you were running the race so well. Who has held you back from following the truth? And maybe the truth is who you're running with is slowing down your progress because the Bible tells us bad company corrupts good character. If you really want to get well, you might have to change schools. You might have to walk away from that gang.

You might have to break it off with that boyfriend, that girlfriend. You might have to change who you hang out with on weekends. You might need to get a whole new circle of friends that will pick you up and not pull you down. If you're going to walk a new direction, you can't really worry about what the old friends are going to say about you. Because chances are down deep inside they're. wish they were as courageous as you are. Just play your life to an audience of one. His approval is the only one that counts. He's the one that's working in you to mold you into a brand new person,

the person he meant for you to be all along and help you walk a new direction. Whoever walks with the wise will become wise. So let's find some wise people to walk with, or perhaps we might become that wise friend that gets somebody else on the right road today. Have a great day. We'll see tomorrow. Thanks for tuning in today. For more biblical teaching and worship, join us for our church online live weekend services on Saturdays at 6 p.m. and Sundays at 9.30 and 11 a.m. Central Standard Time. For more information, visit lakepoint.com. Church slash daily drive.