We’re in the second part of this series Guardrails, and if you were here last week, or if
you joined us online last week, we talked about physical guardrails. Guardrails are things we
don’t pay much attention to and we don’t really think about them until we hit one. When we hit
one, it’s probably because we needed one. Now, you’ve seen guardrails your whole life and
you’ve avoided guardrails your whole life, but you probably didn’t know the definition, so I
want to give you the official definition of a guardrail because it sets us up for this entire series. A
guardrail is a system designed—system is a key word—it’s a system designed to keep vehicles
from straying (big word there), from straying into dangerous or off-limit areas. That’s what a
guardrail does. A guardrail is designed to take the impact, and in taking the impact, damage your
car, and in some cases damage your body. But the idea of a guardrail is to keep the damage from being as bad as it could have been and should have been. Because guardrails are placed on
dangerous parts of the road, bridges, intersections, curves, and oftentimes medians when we’re
close to oncoming traffic. The whole idea of a guardrail is to create a small accident to protect
you from a worse accident.
Now, the other interesting thing about guardrails (we talked about this last week) is that
guardrails are never placed in the danger zone. Guardrails are always placed two or three feet or
two or three yards away from the danger zone. In other words, if you were to rip up all the
guardrails in this city, it would give you extra space to drive, but unfortunately would put you
too close to what somebody considered a danger zone. You always find guardrails actually
within the realm of safety. So we began to ask the question last week, what would it look like to
have guardrails in other areas of our lives? What if there were guardrails in our relationships?
What if we had financial guardrails? What if we had guardrails in terms of our dating, our
morality, how we did business, our ethics, our reputation? What if we began to establish some
mental guardrails that, again, kept us a safe distance back from disaster relationally, disaster
financially, disaster in our business, disaster in our ethics or our morality? What would that look
like?
So we came up with our own definition of a guardrail as it relates to this particular
discussion. Here’s the new definition: A guardrail, in our discussion, is going to be a standard of
behavior, or you could even say a personal standard of behavior, that becomes a matter of
conscience—a personal standard of behavior that becomes a matter of conscience. So here’s my
goal for you in this series. I want you to personally begin to develop some behaviors, some
personal behaviors, which function as guardrails. By guardrail in our discussion I mean that
become a matter of conscience, that instead of doing things that you know are wrong and
tripping your conscience, to step back, establish some personal behaviors that trip your
conscience in the same way, and in doing so, keep us out of the danger zone in any area of life.
The truth is, as we said last week—your greatest regret—your greatest regret financially,
relationally, in terms of your health, any other thing—your greatest regret would probably have
been avoided if you had had guardrails in your life. So we’re going to talk about guardrails.
Now the thing to keep in mind is this: this is not something our culture is going to help
you with, because we live in a culture, as we said last week, that baits us to the edge of disaster
and then chastises us when we step over the line. It’s really crazy. We live in a culture that
morally baits us into things we have no business doing morally, and then once we do it, the
culture turns right around and chastises us. Our culture baits us into doing things we shouldn’t do
financially and then as soon as we do those things financially, our culture chastises us for being
irresponsible. So the only way to deal with that, we’re never going to change culture probably,
but the only way to handle that personally is decide, you know what, I’m going to resist the bait.
I’m going to resist moving myself to the edge of disaster, or to use “Christian Bible terms,” I’m
going to resist asking this question: How close can I get to sin without actually sinning?
Now, in my world, I get asked that question all the time. The question in my world
sounds like this: Andy, is it a sin to . . . (fill in the blank). And that’s always the wrong question.
The better question is this: in light of the fact that there is disaster out there somewhere, where
should I place the guardrail in my life? And can I place the guardrail in such a clear way that it
trips or triggers my conscience, red flags start waving, red lights start flashing, that cause me to
pause before I get too close to whatever it is. Because in our culture, here’s the thing: Everybody
agrees, whether it’s financially, morally, in your marriage, in your relationships, in your
reputation, everybody agrees that there is a place that we would say is too far; you’ve gone too
far. The question is how do you keep from moving in that direction in such a way that you know
you’ve kept yourself from moving in a dangerous direction. That’s what we call guardrails.
Now, today I want to talk about one specific area. I want to talk about your friendships.
Here’s the deal with friendship. At some point in your life you are going to find yourself close to
people—friends, people you work with, your amigos, your comrades, your posse—whatever you
call it, the people you work with. You’re going to find yourself in an unavoidable close
proximity to people who are moving in their lives in the opposite direction that you are. And
when that’s the case, you’ve got to have space or they may take you out, and all of us could tell a story about being taken out by people who had different values, different morals, whatever.
Now, this tension of moving in the opposite direction, of being too close to the wrong
people, this began for us in childhood. Your parents, if you grew up in the average American
home, your parents constantly freaked out about the people that you spent time with, didn’t they?
And you couldn’t understand it as a kid. Some of your parents actually moved you, didn’t they?
They moved you out of the neighborhood. Some of your parents took you out of a
specific school system. All of us had parents who said, “You can’t go to his house; you can’t go
to her house; you can’t spend the night there.” And we’re like, “But why? It’s so great. Their
parents are never home. We can do whatever we want to. Why wouldn’t you allow us to spend
time there?” And your parents said, “You just answered your own question.” And they would
just freak out about this. And it’s like they would’ve chosen our spouses; they would’ve arranged
our marriages. It was like they were just totally freaked out about the people we spent time with.
And you know why? Because your parents understood intuitively a very important principle: that
your friends ultimately influence the direction and the quality of your life. In fact, your friends
could actually determine the direction and the quality of your life.
Sandra and I have a really good friend and she told me this story. She said when she was
thirteen she was dating a guy who was sixteen and her mom just completely was freaking out
about it. And she couldn’t understand, because he was so hot, he was so cute, and he was sixteen. He could drive, and she was thirteen. None of her friends could get around; she had a chauffeur. And she couldn’t understand why her mom kept telling her to break up. She said one
afternoon—she was on the softball team and she was the pitcher and she’s actually pitching, and
right behind the backstop is her hot sixteen-year-old boyfriend watching her pitch, and she talked
about how cute she looked. And she said while she’s pitching, she sees her mom come around
from behind the concession stand, slide up next to her boyfriend, call him out, and they disappear
behind the concession stand while she’s pitching. She said, “I knew what was happening. My
mom was breaking up for me.” And sure enough, Mom doesn’t reappear, but boyfriend (exboyfriend) reappears and sits with this sad look on his face. And sure enough, after the game,
Mom informed her, “You don’t need to break up. I broke up for you.” Now, why would a mama
do such a thing? Because mamas understand when you get too close to people moving in the
opposite direction, you’ve got to have some space.
And now all of us who grew up with those crazy, overreactive parents, we’re doing the
same thing, except we have a huge advantage as parents now, those of us who are parents. We
have an electronic surveillance system. I don’t have to go anywhere. I can just go on Facebook
and spy. I can Twitter and spy. I can check email, I can check text, and I can check the phone
records. It’s awesome. We can just spy like crazy, and we do the very same thing and interfere
just like our parents.
A few years ago on vacation, my older son was upstairs. He was having a dreadful time
on family vacation because it was the family vacation. And so he changes his Facebook status to
“bored out of my mind.” That’s his Facebook status. We’re in Hilton Head. Immediately a friend
of mine in Atlanta sees it, texts Sandra’s brother, who’s on vacation with us. He walks upstairs,
and as Andrew is closing his computer, he says, “So you’re bored out of your mind?” See, that’s
awesome.
Now, why do I freak out like my parents freaked out? Because I understand that our
friends influence the direction and quality of our lives. See, here’s the thing about friendship.
The thing that makes friendship so great is the thing that makes friendship so dangerous. When
I’m with a friend, I drop my guard. The reason we’re attracted to certain people is because we’re
all acceptance magnets. We are repelled by rejection, we are attracted to acceptance, and when
I’m with people who accept me, I drop my guard. When I’m with people who accept me and
when you’re with people who accept you, you are the most open to influence than you’ll ever be.
Here’s a huge principle. We can spend the rest of the day talking about this. Acceptance leads to
influence. Acceptance leads to influence. You’ve never heard it stated that way, perhaps, but
you’ve experienced this; you’ve seen your kids experience this. When I’m in an environment
where I’m completely accepted, I am open to the influence of the people around me. I close
down around rejection. I open up around acceptance. That’s what makes friendship so great; it’s
what makes friendship so dangerous. Don’t raise your hand, but I imagine the first cigarette you
ever smoked, you were with somebody.
Your greatest regrets don’t revolve around your enemies, do they? Your greatest regrets
revolve around being with friends. Some of the most addictive behaviors imaginable are
behaviors that we acquire, that we began as a pastime. It’s fun. We’re with friends. Some of you
who are single, you moved to this big city and you can’t understand why it is you are involved in
things that you used to criticize when you heard about other people being involved in them. In
fact, if you’re a Christian or religious person, you used to think some of the behaviors you’re
involved in were actually sin, and now you’re open to those things. You hear yourself defending
those things, and I promise you, it didn’t happen in a vacuum, did it? You got around some
people that were moving in an opposite direction and you got closer and closer and closer and
you are the one that changed directions.
A college student—and you had all this commitment, you love Jesus, yes you do, you
love Jesus, how about you? You were just like totally a church person, got the CDs, you’re going
to go change the world, and you’re toward the end of your freshman year and you’re like, “Who
am I? Who’s that kid in the mirror? Who’s that girl in the mirror? What happened to me?” Well,
come on. It’s not that you’re a terrible person. You just were swept up by a principle that’s true
for all of us, because this is not something that’s just an adolescent issue. This is a principle. This is true of all of us, that at some level, our friends influence the direction and the quality of our
lives. Our friends influence, sometimes determine, the direction and the quality of our lives. This
isn’t something we decide. This is just a principle. And it can work for you; it can work against
you.
One of the things that we’re reminded of every time we see a baptism video is how
powerful friendship is in a positive way. How many times have we sat in all of our churches and
all of our campuses and all around the world and listened to somebody tell a story about how I
was moving in one direction, my life was empty, I was hitting bumps, I was facing the
consequences of years and years of bad decisions, and then I met this guy, then I met this girl,
then I met this couple, then I met this group, and now here I am proclaiming Christ as my Savior.
And then at the end, what do they say? “And I want to thank, and I want to thank, and I want to
thank.” Why? Because friends have the power to influence the direction and the quality of our
lives. It’s a principle that never, ever goes away. But because friendship can be dangerous, we
need guardrails.
Now, you probably wouldn’t argue with any of that. You’ve lived long enough to know
how powerful that is. You’ve watched your cousins, your younger brother, younger sister, your
own kids deal with this. No one would argue with this. What is so fascinating is that there is no
better place I know to find this principle stated in an unmistakable way than in the Bible, and it’s
stated by the wisest man who ever lived, according to the Old Testament, and that’s Solomon. I
want to just show you one verse today and then I want to get very, very painfully specific about
some guardrails as it relates to our relationships. Here’s how Solomon essentially said everything
we’ve said so far. This is Proverbs 13:20. I’ve taught this verse many, many, many times
throughout the years to adults and to teenagers. I think it’s one of the key verses as it relates to
understanding a dynamic in relationships that is affecting you right now whether you’re a Bible
person or not, whether you’re a Christian person or not, a God-fearing person or not. This is just a dynamic that happens every single day and to recognize it, to accept it, and to learn to leverage
it sets you up for success in different areas of life. Here’s what he says:
Proverbs 13:20 (TNIV)
20 Walk with the wise and become wise, [That’s a promise.] for a companion of fools
suffers harm. [That’s a warning.]
Or, but a companion of fools will eventually suffer harm. That’s a warning. Top half of
the verse is the promise. Here’s what he promises: He promises that wisdom (and I’ll explain
wisdom in a minute) wisdom is contagious. If you surround yourself with people that the Bible
would consider wise (I’ll explain it in a second), it’s contagious. You will by nature of proximity
become a wiser person simply by being in the company of—walking with means doing life
with—the wise.
Now, according to Scripture, a wise person is a person who understands that all of life is
connected. By connected, that means that what you do today, what you decide today, what you
think about today, will influence who you are tomorrow—that what you did yesterday will
impact your experience in life today—that all of life is connected. There are no isolated events.
There are no isolated thought patterns. There are no isolated relationships. There are no isolated
eating habits or exercise habits or lack of habit—that all of life is connected. So the wise person
makes decisions based on not simply today, but on tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. And
the Scripture teaches here and in other places that this is contagious, that when you’re with
people who live as if life is connected, who make decisions as if life is connected, that it will
impact the way you view the world, the way you make decisions, the way you view your body,
your health, your morality, your business, your reputation, your family—everything. Life is
connected. That’s the promise, but here’s the warning.
The warning is not if you are a companion of fools you’ll become a fool. And this is
where we get tripped up because we assume that if I spend time with the wise and that’s
contagious, then that means if I’m a companion of fools that I’ll become a fool. That’s not what
Solomon teaches. This is a very subtle thing that will help you diffuse your defenses against or
your resistance against this verse. The warning in the verse is this: that the companion of fools,
the person that does life with fools, and I’ll define fool in just a minute, is a person who will
eventually be impacted by the behavior of the fool.
That means you may spend your entire life with fools and never see the world the way
fools see the world, never behave the way fools behave, but eventually the shrapnel of the
explosion of their lives, the devastation that will occur in their lives will impact you whether you
ever adopt their way of thinking or not. And here’s why that’s important. Because some of you,
some of us, maybe many of us have defended unhealthy relationships this way. We’ve said, “But
I’ll never do what they do. I’ll never think the way they think. I’ll never participate in the things
that they participate in; therefore I’m safe.” And Solomon says you’re dead wrong, because the
companion of fools, whether they ever adopt the lifestyle or the mindset of the fool or not, will
eventually be harmed by the outcome of the fool’s behavior. You have seen this. I have friends that will never walk again because of this principle. They were with the wrong people at the
wrong time and they consequently suffered the consequences of somebody else’s bad decision.
It’s what scares you to death as a parent. It should scare you to death for you as an adult.
Here’s what a fool is. The Bible says a fool is a person who knows the difference
between right and wrong but doesn’t care. I know the difference between right or wrong but I
don’t care. You say to a fool, Don’t you know where that’s going to lead? And they say, Yeah.
Well, doesn’t that bother you? No, it’ll work out. In fact, the Bible says don’t even try to correct
a fool because a fool will just laugh at you. They don’t care. You can’t give a fool new
information. You can’t say to a fool, don’t you know that if you continue to do this, that it will
destroy your marriage? A fool isn’t going to go, “Oh, I didn’t know that. Thank you, thank you.”
He doesn’t care. That’s a fool. The Scripture teaches, and most of us have already experienced
this, that if your companion, your group, your posse, your amigos, your gang is led by and full of
people who just don’t care—they live as if life is not connected, today is not connected to
tomorrow, this year is not connected to next year, and last year has nothing to do with my
behavior or my world view this year. They live as if life is disconnected, and the Scripture
teaches that the companion of fools eventually faces and experiences the consequences,
oftentimes of somebody else’s decision. The companion of fools eventually suffers harm.
You know what? In the next three minutes, you could stand up here and tell a story,
couldn’t you? You’ve seen that. This is not new information. But because we forget, and here’s
the thing, because we think we’re too cool, too smart, too slick, too rich, too connected, too, too,
too … that somehow we’re going to be the exceptions to the rule, but it’s not the case. Now,
listen. If you have friends who don’t care about their lives, they are not going to be very
concerned about your life. If you have friends or a group that is not taking care of themselves,
they will not take very good care of your self. If you have friends that aren’t concerned about the
health of their marriage, they are going to share little concern about the health of your marriage.
If you have friends or a group that doesn’t care too much about their reputation, they certainly
aren’t going to work very hard to protect your reputation. If you have friends or a group that are
careless with their finances, they will be equally careless with your finances. If you have friends
that could care less about their physical health, they are not going to be on the lookout for your
physical health. If they’re not taking care of themselves, they’re not going to take care of your
self. Which means, whether you ever think like them or not, whether you ever behave like them
or not, you are in a dangerous, dangerous place, because the companion of the people who could
care less eventually suffers the consequences of the behavior of the people who could care less,
whether you dip into their behavior or lifestyle or not.
Now as I’m talking, for some of you, faces are coming to mind and you’re thinking, how
did he know? I didn’t know. Solomon knew, thousands and thousands of years ago he knew.
This is a principle. This is not a decision. This is not something that you violate. This is
something that you ignore and ultimately pay for, or you leverage to your benefit and
consequently you’re rewarded for it. So in light of all that, in light of the fact that none of us are
really exceptions to this rule, I want to suggest some guardrails. Now, I made these up. None of
these are in the Bible. If you say, Well, that’s just his opinion, you are correct. This is just my
opinion. But it is my very informed opinion, okay? It is my opinion after listening to the most heartbreaking stories you could imagine—by watching my own life, by watching the parents of
some of my children, by talking to strangers, by talking to people I’ve known for years and years
and years, crying with people, weeping with people I draw these five suggestions from the fact
that if most of the people I had talked to had had one or more of these five guardrails, they
would’ve avoided some of the greatest heartbreaking experiences of their lives, and I want that
for you.
Now, as I’m giving these to you, some of you are going to push back in this way. You’re
going to say, Andy, that doesn’t sound very compassionate. That doesn’t sound very loving. That
doesn’t even sound very Christian. What would Jesus do? Do you think Jesus would have
guardrails? So I want you to take all of that concern and I want you to set it aside for five
minutes and then I’m going to come back to that. I just want you to know ahead of time, I
understand that concern. I don’t want anything to get in the way of you processing these
suggestions. I don’t expect that you adopt all five of these. I think it’d be a great idea if you did.
These are some of the things that Sandra and I do and we encourage our kids to do, but I just
want you to listen, because my goal for you is not that you do these five things. My goal for you
is that you recognize the danger and the pitfalls of friendship, and that you establish some
guardrails that keep you safely back from some oncoming traffic, because in our world that’s just
unavoidable reality.
Here’s the first one. I think your conscience should just light up. I mean, this is like, bam,
guardrail. Your conscience should light up when it dawns on you that your core group isn’t
moving in the direction you want your life to be moving in. You should just light up when it
dawns on you that your core group isn’t moving in the direction you want your life to be moving.
When it dawns on you, You know what, my value system, what I want for my marriage, for my
kids, for my finances, for my spirituality, for my health is going this way and most of the people
I spend time with are going this way. When that dawns on you, you should be concerned. Here’s
what we normally do. It dawns on us, but we say, but I’m no worse for it. I’m not developing any
of those habits. But when it dawns on you that opposite direction—close proximity—that should
concern you. It should concern you to the point that you do something about it, that you not wait
until there’s a problem. This is one of the reasons we’re so crazy about community groups here,
starting point groups. This is one of the reasons I’m constantly saying, please don’t spend years
and years and years sitting in rows. I want you to get in circles. Community group—our whole
small groups strategy is an attempt to help you jump-start some new relationships with some
people that are moving hopefully in the same direction in which you’re moving, because the
challenge of this whole process and the challenge of this whole principle is, Okay, but Andy,
these are my friends. These are the people I do life with. These are the people I work with. These
are the people I play tennis with. This is my fraternity. This is my sorority. And I’m not arguing
with you, but this is my group. This is all I have. I just want to encourage you to take some
proactive steps, to be intentional about finding yourself an additional or another group of people.
Because as strong as you are and as disciplined as you are, the companion of fools eventually
suffers harm. So, if all of a sudden it dawns on you, you know what, I’m kind of the lone ranger
and I don’t really have a safe group, that should concern you.
Here’s another one. Your conscience should light up when you catch yourself pretending
to be somebody other than who you know you are. Your conscience should light up when you
realize when I’m with this group of people, I pretend. When I’m with this group of people, I try
really hard to fit in. When I’m with this group of people, I kind of ignore certain values, I ignore
a certain world view, I do this a lot when in my heart I’m going, “Huh?” But I just find myself
kind of moving away from who I really am. And some of you have been warned about this.
Some of you men, your wives have actually said, “When you’re around them you’re a different
person.” That should bother you. That’s a guardrail. That’s an “oh, my goodness, I’m moving in
a dangerous direction.”
Some of you ladies, your husbands or some of your girlfriends have said to you, “After
you’re around them, when you come back, you’re kind of like a different person. I’ve noticed
that when you’re with them, you’re not yourself.” That should bother you. But if it doesn’t, it’s
because you say, Well . . . an excuse. That’s understandable. It should bother you. This should be a guardrail. If you notice, if you hear “I’m not myself,” you should think about that. Because
chances are, there’s a person or there’s a group of people that are playing to an insecurity. And
because they’re playing to that insecurity, in your attempt to feel better about you, you’re
pretending to be somebody you’re not. That’s so extraordinarily dangerous. It should bother you
to the point that you pull back, that you draw back and that you get some perspective and begin
to rethink. Some of us can remember our parents telling us this. I remember specifically my dad
saying to me, “Andy, when you’re with them, you don’t act the same way.” And, of course, I
was very defensive, but he was absolutely right. I was around a group of people where I wanted
to fit in and I was willing to compromise my personality. I was willing to compromise my whole
approach to life. How dangerous is that?
Here’s another one. Your conscience should light up when you feel pressure to
compromise. Let me say this one a different way. When what has never been a temptation before
suddenly becomes a live option, it should scare you to death. When you feel real pressure, when
you begin considering behavior you have always considered off limits, not when you do the
behavior, when you find yourself seriously considering, that’s the guardrail. That’s when
something inside of you should light up and you should say, wait, wait, wait, wait. That’s a
behavior I can’t continue to move toward. And some of you—this is subtle, it’s very subtle—and
we begin having conversations with ourselves, don’t we? And we begin to talk ourselves into,
and we begin to dumb down our conscience and we begin to withdraw from the people who we
used to agree with in terms of certain behaviors or habits or lifestyles. But when you begin to
consider something you previously thought was off limits a live option because of people you’re
around, that should just light you up. That’s a guardrail. That’s two or three yards away from
something that you know in your heart you’re probably going to regret.
Here’s another one. Your conscience should light up when you hear yourself saying, I’ll
go but I won’t participate. Well, I’ll just go but I won’t participate. I’ll just be in the proximity of
it. Here’s Solomon’s warning. It’s not necessarily that you do what they do, but you’re there
when they do it. That’s the danger zone. You say, but I’m not going to—fill in the blank—
whatever it is. Solomon would say that’s not even the point. A companion of fools suffers harm
because when the fool suffers harm, you’re just too close and you never know when it’s going to happen. You never know when they’re going to be busted. You never know when they’re going
to be a little too drunk. You never know when they’re going to say something that gets
associated with you. You never know when they make a financial decision that you’re pulled in
on. You don’t ever know. When you hear yourself thinking, when you hear yourself saying, I’m
going to go but I’m not going to participate, that should be a guardrail. That should be a wake-up
call. That should be a red flag. That should be a warning that you’ve got to stop. You need to
reconsider.
Here’s the last one. Your conscience should light up when you hope the people you care
about most don’t find out where you’ve been or who you’ve been with. Your conscience should
just light up when you find yourself hoping the people you care about the most and who care
about you the most don’t find out where you’ve been or who you’ve been with. Now listen
carefully. Not because you would have to defend anything you did—that’s the cliff—but because
there’s something just on the inside of you that just kind of tenses up when you think about them
knowing where you’ve been. When you are already in your mind creating a defense just in case
you ever have to have that conversation, that should bother you so much that you take a giant
step back. Culture says it doesn’t matter who you’re with and it doesn’t matter where you are as
long as you’re not—fill in the blank. Wisdom says if it bothers me that the people I have respect
for and love the most would know who and would know where, that’s a limit, that’s a red flag,
that’s a guardrail.
Now, other than the fact that it’s really quiet in here, this is just reality for all of us, isn’t
it? And this is unusual, and this creates stress, and already you’re thinking, Okay, how do I
explain to her and how do I explain to them, and how do I unravel and how do I … It’s very,
very complicated. That’s why most people don’t do it. But you know people, and maybe you’re
one of those people, who wish you could go back a year from now in time and have done this
then. Because once you face the consequences of being around the wrong people in the wrong
place at the wrong time, once you experience the consequences of being lured off the edge
morally or financially or some other way, then you would be willing to go back and risk all kinds
of embarrassment, all kinds of awkward moments, have all kinds of awkward conversations, in
order to turn back time, in order not to be where you find yourself because you didn’t do this.
Now, here’s the deal I want to address now: It doesn’t sound loving and compassionate.
Aren’t we supposed to have friends that are different from us? Absolutely. If you’ve been
attending this church or listening online for very long, you know we’re all about this. We built
this church for people who were far from God and trying to figure it out. We built our churches
all over the place because that’s our mission. That’s what we’re all about. But here’s the thing.
Never confuse compassion with wisdom. Never confuse or polarize the idea of compassion and
wisdom. Compassion will never require you to make an unwise decision about yourself. And
when you use compassion or love as an excuse, you are lying to yourself and it is misguided
compassion. There is a lot, a lot, a lot in our culture of misguided compassion. There is no
conflict between compassion and wisdom. When you find yourself saying, Andy, I hear what
you’re saying, I think all that’s true. I’ve kind of felt the rumblings. Yeah, actually things have
become a live option that never were before. But I love this person, I love these people, I care
about these people. Absolutely. But here is God’s will for you, and you can read this in the New Testament, because Jesus modeled this over and over and over. The best thing you can do for a
person you love, the best thing you can do for the friends that you have compassion for is to stay
on this side of the guardrail so that when they crash you’re healthy enough to actually help them.
Some of you have already experienced this, because you’re like the Bible person in your
office. You don’t get invited to stuff, right? You’re like the Christian in your fraternity and they
say, Hey, would you like—no, you wouldn’t like to. Just, you stay. Here, you guard the fraternity
house. We’ll be back. You’re just known as the “no” person. Don’t ask him (or her), he’ll just
say no. He’ll have a verse. You’re just kind of that person. But you know what some of you have
already experienced? When all your “fool” friends, because they didn’t know any better, drop off
the edge, who do they want to talk to—the rest of their “fool” friends that are parachuting off the
cliffs with them? No. They come creeping into your office and creeping into your dorm room
and call you up late at night and text you, Can we meet? You’re the go-to person because you’re
healthy. And in that moment, you have the potential for extraordinary compassion, extraordinary
help, extraordinary insight, and extraordinary wisdom. Do not confuse compassion with wisdom.
There’s no conflict. They’re hand in hand. Drawing back from a relationship may be the most
compassionate thing you ever do for that person. Drawing back from a group of friends may be
the best act of friendship you ever express. There is no conflict, but we leverage misguided
compassion all the time to stay in relationships we have no business being in.
If while I’m talking, you know, you just hope no one elbows you, you’re not going to
make eye contact with your husband or your parents—I’m talking about that since you’ve been
warned, this isn’t the first time, you wish you had not come today, you wish you’d watched
something else at home, you’ve been tempted eight times to turn this off, or you’re doing the
other thing where you keep thinking about all the friends you wish had heard this—no, no, this is
about you. Here’s all I want to say. Last week we looked at a verse that said, hey, let’s face up to
what we know God’s will for our lives is. Remember that? Let’s face up to what we know God’s
will for our lives is. In this moment, and it’s going to pass in just a second, in this moment you’re
being forced to face up to what you know God’s will for your life is.
As soon as this message is over and as soon as you walk out the door or you get offline,
it’s gone. You go right back into the world you’ve been in for a long, long time. So the question
is, in this moment, will you face up to what you know in your heart is true? It’s your heavenly
Father who’s calling you to a place of safety because he loves you, not because he dislikes your
friend or your fiancé or whoever it is that’s come to mind.
If you choose to do nothing with what you’ve just heard, then here’s what I would bet. I
bet one year from now you will wish that you could come back to this day and respond
differently to this principle. So here’s what I want us to do: if you’re here and you’re resisting
this and you know it’s true but it’s too complicated, and how and what and I’ve gone too far,
they won’t understand, and you’re right but I’m not going to do anything—let’s play a little
game. Let’s pretend it’s a year from now and now you have memories that you’re going to have
a hard time ever moving away from. Now the relationships are way more complicated. Now
you’ve gone off a couple of cliffs. Now you’re hiding things from your husband, hiding things
from your wife, and now you’re kind of connected and it’s just gone too far. It’s a year from now, and you’re thinking to yourself, Oh, I wish I could go back and respond differently. Let’s
pretend that the magic fairy showed up and she said, if you’ll just click your heels together three
times, we’ll take you back in time and you’ll be able to redo it. And all of a sudden everything
gets really hazy and you hear Wizard of Oz music and—boom—here we are! And this is your
second chance, and you get to do it right and you don’t have all those consequences and all that
junk and all that complexity and all that lying and cheating and trying to rescue your reputation.
Here we are! This is your opportunity. Let’s do something with it. You’ll never regret that.
People don’t regret guardrails. They just don’t. It’s confusing at times, and it’s complicated at
times, and I’m sure you can come up here and ask me a question and I’d say, I have no idea how
you handle that one. All I know is this: If while I was talking a face surfaced, a group surfaced,
it’s because your heavenly Father loves you and loves them. And here’s what he knows: He who
walks with the wise, she who walks with the wise becomes wise, but the companion of fools
eventually, inevitably suffers some kind of harm.
So if you were your heavenly Father, what would you say? Would you say, Hey, get as
close as you can. Be careful. Drink responsibly! I heard another one this week about gambling:
“Know when to quit before you start.” Isn’t that catchy? How helpful is that? It’s true. It’s great.
But it’s like, get as close as you can, but know exactly when to quit before you start. No, no, no,
that’s not how you handle that. It’s knowing how far away to stay before you ever think about it.
That’s what your heavenly Father is baiting you to. So here’s my question: will you do what you
know you need to do with what you just heard? Will you establish some relational friendship
guardrails? Because friendship is awesome. It’s always dangerous, because he or she who walks
with the wise will become wise, but the companion of fools will eventually suffer harm. Your
friends will influence and possibly determine the direction and the quality of your life. Let’s pray
together.
