Do Your Friends Call You Up Higher?

I was minding my own business at lunch yesterday when all of a sudden my food plate was taken from me and a sombrero was shoved onto my head.

Yes, a sombrero. People pointed and laughed.

Yes, people at my table pointed and laughed.

Yes, I wrote down names.

It was a case of mistaken identity. I was the target of a birthday boy attack. I lost my food and the sombrero did a number on my photo-shopped hair. I don’t know which was worse.

Thankfully, it was not my birthday. I don’t need to add to my total. We eventually focused the sombrero onto the proper head and blessed him with bilingual singing and clapping.

The birthday boy was celebrating a birthday that begins with a 2. I was already a college professor before he was born. But we look the same under a sombrero.

Fellowship is powerful leverage in good times and bad. We must be intentional about work fellowship. Our off-times together are as important as any business meeting. Sometimes we just need to be around people who will point and laugh at us.

But the real message today is to consider the fellowship of people who are equally yoked. Some folks have a very poor definition of friendship.

“A true friend accepts me as I am.”

That doesn’t seem like much to me. The waiter who stole my food accepts me for who I am. My next-door neighbor accepts me for who I am.

I want to sit with people who call me to come up higher.

We all need people who will show us the way. I love having people in my life who cause me to think new and bigger thoughts. I have a strong desire to seek counsel from godly men and women.

Wise counsel provides spiritual leverage.

“Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law he meditates day and night. He will be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that brings forth its fruit in its season; its leaf will not wither, and whatever he does will prosper” (Ps. 1:1-3).