Chapter 29
Make Friends with Those Who Love God
TELL me who some of your friends are. What are their names?—
It is good to have friends. They are people with whom you like to spend time. You like to talk with them and do things together.
It is also important to have the right kind of friends. How can we tell if they are the right kind or not?—
Well, who would you say is the most important person in our lives?— It is Jehovah God, isn’t it? Our life, our breath and all good things come from him. We never want to do anything that would spoil our friendship with God, do we?— But did you know that our choice of friends could spoil that friendship?— That’s right. So we need to choose friends carefully.
The Great Teacher showed us how to do that. He had the right kind of friends. He said: “You are my friends if you do what I am commanding you.” Why was that?— Because everything that Jesus told people came from God. So Jesus was saying that his friends were people who did what God said they should do.—John 15:14.
This does not mean that Jesus was not kind to people who were not busy in God’s service. He was. He would even go to their homes and eat with them. Some people who heard about this said that Jesus was ‘a friend of sinners.’ But was this really true?— —Matthew 11:19.
No, it was not. Jesus didn’t go to their homes because he liked the way they lived. He visited them so that he could talk to them about God. He tried to help them to change from their bad ways and to serve God.
This happened one day in the city of Jericho. Jesus was just passing through on his way toward Jerusalem. There was a crowd of people there, and in the crowd was a man named Zac·chaeʹus. He wanted to get a look at Jesus. But Zacchaeus was very small and he could not see because of the crowd. So he ran ahead along the road and climbed a tree in order to get a good look when Jesus went by.
When Jesus came to that tree he looked up and said: ‘Hurry and get down. Today I will come to your house.’ But Zacchaeus was a rich man who had done bad things. Why did Jesus want to go to the house of such a man?—
It was not because Jesus liked the way that man lived. He went there to talk to Zacchaeus about God. He saw how hard that man had tried to see him. So he knew that Zacchaeus would probably listen. This would be a good time to talk to him about the way that God says we should live.
What was the result? Zacchaeus changed from his bad ways. He gave back money he had no right to take, and he became a follower of Jesus. It was only then that Jesus and Zacchaeus became friends.—Luke 19:1-10.
So, if we learn from the Great Teacher, will we ever visit with people who are not our friends?— Yes. But we won’t go to their house because we like the way they live. And we won’t do wrong things with them. We will visit them so that we can talk to them about God.
But our close friends are the ones with whom we specially like to spend our time. We have seen that for them to be the right kind of friends, they must be the kind that God would like. But how can we tell if they are?—
Well, one good way is to ask them: Do you love Jehovah? Some of them may not even know who Jehovah is. But if they want to learn about him, we can help them. And when the time comes that they love Jehovah as we do, then we can become close friends.
There is another way to find out if a person would make a good friend. Watch the things that he does. Does he do unkind things to other people and then laugh about it? That’s not right, is it?— Is he always getting into trouble? We wouldn’t want to get into trouble with him, would we?— Or does he do bad things on purpose and then think he is smart because he didn’t get caught? Even if he didn’t get caught, God saw what he did, didn’t he?— Do you think that persons who do such things would be good friends?—
Why not get your Bible, and let’s see what it says about how our companions affect our lives? The scripture is at First Corinthians chapter 15, verse 33. Do you have it?—
It reads: “Do not be misled. Bad associations spoil useful habits.” That means that if we go with bad people we are going to become bad. And it is also true that good companions help us to form good habits.
Let’s never forget that the most important person in our life is Jehovah. We don’t want to spoil our friendship with him, do we?— So we must be careful to make friends only with those who love God.
(The importance of the right kind of companions is also made clear at 1 John 2:15, 2 Chronicles 19:2 [2 Paralipomenon 19:2, Dy], Psalm 119:115 [118:115, Dy] and 2 Timothy 2:22. Read those scriptures together.)