All the time in church we hear about watching our surroundings and about how being “un-equally yoked” is bad, but do we honestly understand what all this means?!
I had a friend once; he was a really good friend of mine and he knew things about me that not many people did. I met him when I wasn’t a Christian, so when I became a Christian; he didn’t. That tore the strings of our relationship a lot. We still remained friends but the bond of “best friends” had been broken when Christ stepped in and took that spot in my life.
This friend came to me one night and asked me to pray from him because he was going to court. I asked why and he began to tell me about how this girl at my school took a nude picture of herself and sent it to this boy she liked; he then sent it to everyone he knew. My friend happened to be one of those people; he got the picture and sent it to someone else. The girl whose picture it was found out about the mass message with her body on it and she pressed charges. My friend got caught by the authorities and was dragged to court; found guilt and had to face the consequences for his stupidity.
I’m telling you this story because it has to do with surroundings. My friend chose to be friends with that boy who sent the picture around. In making that choice my friend also added the boy’s whole group as friends. Due to one chose of being acquainted with one person; my friend to go to court and he had to deal with all of that.
You may think that you’re friends are amazing and wonderful and they may be too, but I know that I thought that about some friends I used to have and they turned out to be complete idiots. They were actually going to let me get raped at one point, luckily I had a real friend with me who told me what was going on!
It is so important to be immensely careful as to who you “yoke” yourself with because that one decision can either satisfy you or destroy you. What does “yoking” with someone actually mean?! A yoke is a frame fitting the neck and shoulders of a person, for carrying a pair of buckets or the like, one at each end. Imagine if you were the person carrying the two buckets on your shoulders; if one bucket is full to the rim with rocks and the other is only slightly full of water; one side would be much heavier and it would be a lot more work than both being equally full of water. If you are in a relationship (friendship or otherwise) and one person is a Christian and another isn’t then the load becomes heavy and hard to work out. You become very frustrated very easily.If you do not watch your surroundings then you will get caught up and swept away.Well, I can tell you and tell you all this useful information over and over, but that will never mean that you’ll actually listen or that you’ll actually apply it. I have been in plenty of relationships; enough to know that being unequally yoked completely sucks and all it results in is frustration (applies to friendship as well.) Take it from experience and don’t be stupid.

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