Glory to God! It’s the last Sunday of the year 2021 and we are truly grateful to God for his faithfulness to us throughout the course of the year, it’s been a year of numerous glorious achievements and accomplishments and we are thankful to God who carried us through the year.

Wrapping up the month of Radical Preaching, Pastor taught us on Vital Associations for Soul Winning, she began to teach from Proverbs 13:20 where we learnt that those who walk with wise men will become wise but the one who walks with fools is headed for destruction, Pastor illustrated this with a guy who has friends involved in fraud, he knows it’s wrong but rather than find his way out, he becomes jealous of them and asks them for money, in doing so, he is setting himself up for destruction, Pastor reminded us of what the Bible says in Zechariah 5:3-4 that there is a curse that follows everyone who steals into their homes and begins to destroy everything around them and so walking with such friends that inspire one into wrongdoing is setting oneself up for destruction.

Pastor taught that our friends and those we walk with can make us wise, leading us to make wise decisions and can also destroy our lives, the friends we keep can influence our paths in lives and so we ought to choose them deliberately, Pastor taught us to take ourselves seriously, to self reflect from time to time, check whether we are the ones influencing our friends or whether they are the ones influencing us, to check the effect of our friendships and relationships on our walk with God and make necessary adjustments, she charged us to be strong enough to insist on the word of God for our lives such that when we realise someone is not good enough for us, we are strong enough to cut off from that relationship so that it doesn’t not waste our time thereby wasting our life, she charged us to also ensure that we are spiritual friends to those we call our friends.

We learnt from the story of David’s son, Ammon, how he loved his sister, Tamar and began to get sick because he couldn’t have her, his friend, Jonadab foolishly advised him to rape her, even though he never had that idea before, he succumbed to the idea and that singular action cost him his life and destiny, with this, Pastor charged us to only choose friends that inspire us to walk in faith and in love.

We also saw examples in John 1 of how Andrew and John began to follow Jesus, Andrew excited at meeting Jesus introduced and brought his brother, Peter to Jesus, and Peter eventually became a right hand man of Jesus simply because of his association with Andrew, in the same chapter, Jesus found Philip and Philip went on to find and bring his friend, Nathaniel to Jesus, Pastor instructed us to only choose friends that are of eternal relevance to our lives inspiring us to pray, to study the word of God and to give more attention to the things of God.

Pastor rounded off her message reading from Hebrews 10:24 and admonishing us to provoke each other unto love and good works.