129. Who's Discipling You? The Hidden Influence of Friendships

Your closest friendships are forming you, whether you realize it or not.

The people you trust, confide in, seek advice from, and spend the most time with have a powerful influence on your marriage, your convictions, your business decisions, and even the direction of your faith.

In this episode, we examine the popular self-help phrase, "You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with," and ask a deeper question: What does Scripture say about influence? And what changes when God is removed from the center of that conversation?

We discuss how truth and deception can sometimes look remarkably similar on the surface, why compromise is often normalized through relationships, and how our friend groups can unintentionally disciple us into patterns that don't align with God's Word.

We also explore:
• The biblical meaning of influence and discipleship
• Why "almost true" ideas can be spiritually dangerous
• The impact of friendships on marriage, purity, and conviction
• What "unequally yoked" really means in everyday life
• Avoiding unnecessary stumbling blocks
• Why good intentions are not the same as righteousness
• How healthy Christian community strengthens us when life gets difficult

Along the way, we unpack Proverbs 13:20, Proverbs 27:17, Proverbs 22:24-25, Ecclesiastes 4:9-10, and 1 Corinthians 15:33 to build a practical framework for evaluating the voices shaping your life.

If you've ever gone to the "dump him" friend for marriage advice, struggled with friendships that pull you in different directions, or wondered how to balance loving people without being shaped by them, this conversation is for you.

Subscribe, leave a review, and share this episode with a friend who's doing a friendship audit.

Who are the five voices shaping you most right now?

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:40

Does friendship really have that big of an impact on the results of your life? Whether you're looking at marriage or divorce, success or failure in business, your walk with Christ and how close you can get to him or how far you can be led astray? What does the Bible really say about the power of friendships? Hi, I'm Danielle Venables, and welcome to another episode of the Counterculture Mama podcast. Today we're going to be going through a very common new age personal development coaching world saying, and we're going to respond with how does the Bible think and feel

Why Friendships Shape Your Outcomes

SPEAKER_00 1:20

about it. So I want to start this conversation with just a little bit of background about how the world and the word can look really similar and still be different. So I don't know if you've ever heard the expression, you are the average of the five people you

The “Average Of Five People” Idea

SPEAKER_00 1:45

spend the most time with. That is a phrase that was coined in the personal development space and has been repeated all across the industry. You've probably seen it in books, you've probably heard it from mentors and motivational speakers. It is something that has profoundly impacted how we look at personal development. It teaches the concept that if you want to be successful in business, then surround yourself with successful business people. If you want to stay small and hide from your business idea or your best self or whatever you're seeking after, then stay around other people who also fear being great, who also fear success. And this idea has really, you know, taken off in that space. And it's not wrong, right? Like there are a lot of topics that we cover on this podcast where maybe the Christian worldview conflicts with the ideas of the coaching industry or the self-help industry. And this honestly is not one of them. But what they have done is they have taken a biblical concept and they've removed God out of it, right? Instead of giving credit to God, they're giving credit to Tony Robbins or they're giving credit to some other motivational speaker. And this is where things can get a little bit complicated. And I just want to warn you, not because this particular phrase is problematic, because again, like I said, there is biblical backing for this belief. But you really do need to be careful with anything that comes from the world, because often what we'll do, so like backing up to the Christian worldview, right? There is a belief in a God, a benevolent God who created the universe, who created humans in his image, and then there is the enemy, there is Satan, right? And Satan seeks to kill and destroy anything that God deems good. And but what often we get tripped up about when it comes to this worldview is

How Deception Mimics Biblical Truth

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we expect Satan to look like opposition. We expect Satan to say, okay, I'm gonna call anything that God calls good, I'm gonna call it bad. And anything that God says to do, I'm just gonna outright say, don't do it, right? And the reality is, and the Bible says this somewhere in Romans, I believe it's Romans 2 somewhere, where the Bible talks about how God wrote the law on the heart of man, and how basically our conscience is a natural sort of measure for what is or isn't good, and that is based on God's objective standard of good, right? Our creator wrote his law on our hearts, and that is our conscience. Now, don't get me wrong, consciences can be steered in wrong directions, they can be seared, they can be hardened, but in the actual design of the conscience, that was the intention, is that we would all have like a little bit of an inner compass, a little bit of an idea of like this is right and this is wrong, without necessarily having to learn a whole world view or learn, you know, the laws of the land, etc. So what Satan does, right? Like this was by God's design that in our hearts, in our original unfallen form, we would essentially agree with God's definitions of good and and evil, of righteous and unrighteous. But so what Satan's approach was, if you go back to Genesis 3, Satan's approach was not, oh, I'm gonna tell you that what God said not to do, you can just do, right? Because again, we have that inner knowing, that inner like inkling of like, oh, I shouldn't do that. That's not right. And so if someone comes along and teaches you like the complete opposite, right? It would it would be like if God teaches that murder is evil, which he does, and then Satan came around and was like, no, murder's really good. Nobody's going to believe that because we have that inner compass of like, no, murder's murder's wrong. Even if you don't believe in Imago Day, like even if you don't believe that we're made in the image of God, you can still see that murder is inherently and objectively wrong. So, but you know, Satan could come along and in his deception, because again, he's called the great deceiver, instead of saying, No, murder's good, it's righteous to commit murder. You should go kill everybody. What he could do is say, Well, yeah, murder's bad, but like, you know, that guy was like oppressing these poor people, and so therefore, like murdering him specifically might be righteous, you know. Thinking about, for example, Charlie Kirk, and applying the lens of critical theory, which is worldly, which is honestly not from God. By applying critical theory, right, critical theory is that there is the oppressed and there is the oppressor. And the oppressed are always the innocent, the victims, and the oppressor is always the evil one. And so it doesn't matter what values the quote-unquote oppressor is standing up for, for example, biblical Christianity, unitive marriage, unitive family units, et cetera, that Charlie Kirk stood for as he, you know, sought to evangelize. It doesn't matter that he was actually standing up for God's definition of good. What mattered is that certain groups of people felt oppressed by the words that he was speaking, and therefore the people who celebrated his death felt justified in celebrating his death. Even if we know that murder is wrong, they have this little like exception clause of, oh, except when you're an oppressor, except when you're a white hetero, cisgender male who, you know, doesn't have any visible minority status, you know. So therefore he's the oppressor, right? He's like the poster child of the oppressor. So therefore his murder was justified because he was speaking hate. Well, he wasn't speaking hate, he was speaking God's truth, right? So that is where things can get really led astray. But that's how Satan works. And I want you to, I'm I'm explaining this so that you can see that pattern that goes all the way back to Genesis 3, where it's like, did God really say, right? Like Satan didn't come in direct opposition where God said, Do not eat from that. And Satan's like, here, eat from it, right? He's like, did God really say, like, surely you won't die? Right? Like that was it was planting a seed of doubt. It was like, oh, like you can, it's not that bad. Like, you know, it's it's trying to sort of chip away at your conscience instead of outright defying it, because you can't usher in evil when it completely contradicts our natural calibration to God's law, to God's righteousness that that's written on our hearts, right? So I wanted to start off by saying this because this expression of you are the sum of the five or the average of the five people you spend the most time with could be an example of a way that Satan rips off of what God has already said or the principles that God, you know, established and can potentially use it in malicious ways. Now, I'm not going to argue that this specific statement is problematic, but you can take that statement, you can remove God from it and remove God's word from it, and remove God's heart from it, and all of a sudden you can, in theory, apply this in other ways that can actually cause more harm, right? It's like if you apply it to a context of where where the prize or the, you know, the goal is something unrighteous, then the entire thing is being used to propel you towards evil as opposed to to propel you towards righteousness. So that's a really important distinction. And I also bring this up to highlight, again, the deception and the tactics that Satan uses in order to pull you away from God, right? Because that's his goal is separation from God. And so even if, you know, your your friend group that you're hanging out with, it's like, oh, well, you know, we don't really align on this, or maybe they practice, you know, these things. For example, sex before marriage, right? If you read the Bible, it is very clear that sex is meant to be in the confines of marriage between one man and one woman who are married, and it's supposed to be, you know, unitive and procreative and you know, a beautiful thing that is shared only between two people. And instead, what has happened is Satan took

Sexual Ethics And Worldly Influence

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that and you know, he inserted birth control, he inserted abortion, he inserted, you know, all of these different things to not only separate the procreative potential from sex, but to take it out of marriage as well, right? And so we call that in the world, we call that sexual liberation. Well, the Bible calls that sexual immorality. And again, it's not because we can't physically, like, it's not like we're physically not capable of doing that, but Satan also didn't outright, you know, go straight to no sex outside of marriage is good, right? Like he slowly eroded and chipped away at the whole worldview of like, see, here's birth control. I've made it possible to do it without getting pregnant. So there's sex without consequence or without, you know, the risk of bringing a child into the world. And oh, even if that fails, here's abortion, which is satanic child sacrifice, quite frankly. If you look into the roots of the abortion industry, but that's a story for another time. But you know, he takes that, he's like, it's okay, there's a plan B. So you can have sex with whoever you want, with as many people as you want. You don't need to worry about having a baby about it. It's not sacred, it's not special, saved for between man and wife. And I want to be very clear, by the way, that like my story was not one of waiting until marriage. I was raised Catholic, I knew I was supposed to do it. I did not do that. I had a kid at 17. I was cohabitating with my now husband for years before we got married. So I'm not saying this from a place of judgment or condemnation. I'm saying it from a place of clarity of like, oh, if I could have a do-over, I would have done it God's way because I see the consequences and the struggles and the challenges that I've had to face in my life for choosing to step outside of those bounds. And those boundaries are actually really loving. You know, I used to see them as suppressive, I used to see them as just something my parents said because they didn't want me to experience it, or you know, they were worried, but like it's okay, my heart can handle it, or, you know, whatever, right? Like there were all these stories that I was telling myself to justify those things. But I can see with hindsight the ways that those actually very much caused hurt, very much caused damage, very much caused struggles and challenges in my own marriage that would not have been there had we been pursuing sexual purity ahead of time. And you know, it it's it's one of those things, but the enemy likes to take what God created and he likes to distort it, he likes to defile it so that it no longer honors God. So while sex in marriage between one man and one woman is absolutely God-honoring and you know, actually reflects the gospel, this whole sexual immorality, sleeping around, even sex before marriage in a monogamous relationship, all of those things are separating the the pieces of God's design in a way that doesn't honor God anymore. And also doesn't honor ourselves, by the way. The Bible says that sexual immorality is the one sin that you not only commit against God, but you commit against your own flesh. And so that's important to pay attention to as well. But anyway, that whole that whole little sidetrack there, all of that to say that, you know, if you are a Christian and you are, you know, you believe the Bible, you go to church, you're, you know, committed to being obedient to God, he does call us to walk in purity outside of marriage. And so that is something though, that if you hang out with friends who aren't Christians, or even if you hang out with friends who are Christians, the world has had enough of an influence even within the walls of the church that people will look at you if you say you're saving yourself for marriage, or even if you haven't saved yourself from for marriage, by the way, even if you do have that in your past, you can still choose purity from today on, right? Like when you get saved, when you give your life to Jesus, you can say, okay, that's it. I am a new creation in Christ, as as Paul writes, and from this day forward, I'm gonna live as such. And you can choose a path of purity. But your friends, both within the church and outside of the church, by the way, there are a lot of people within churches that are not saving themselves for marriage anymore because again, Satan has convinced them that, oh, that's outdated, it's not that important. Look, you have this birth control, you don't have to worry about a baby, blah, blah, blah, right? Like there's all of that noise. But that's an example of the world influencing and discipling you away from God and away from righteousness. And the reason that this happens, obviously, God is like sovereign above everything, but as it stands right now, like 2 Corinthians 4, 4 says that, like it tells us that Satan is the God of this world, a the God of this age. And it says he has blinded the minds of unbelievers so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. And so if Satan is the ruler of this world, then he is going to have ideas, worldviews, institutions, false religions, all of these different things to lead you astray, to lead you off the narrow path and to be worldly, right? And Christians are called to be set apart. And so those influences find their way. And we're all worldly in some capacity, by the way. Again, this is not like judgment, but with that, you're gonna, if you're surrounding yourself with people who aren't saving themselves from marriage, whether they claim to be Christians or not, if they're not saving themselves, it's gonna be really hard for you to be the one person who's not engaging in that behavior, right? Same thing with if your friends are going out and getting drunk every weekend, and you're the one person who's like, I actually feel a conviction that, well, yeah, I might have a drink, I'm not going to get drunk. And that just isn't compatible, right, with the life you're trying to live, right? And and Paul warns us about this in 2 Corinthians 6 14, where he he tells us not to be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. I'm just trying to pull up the actual verse here, but basically he says, for what, let me see, do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common, or what fellowship can light have with darkness? And I want to caution you. I mean, for one, this context is relating to like an intimate relationship, but obviously, if you're in

Unequally Yoked And Avoiding Stumbles

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an intimate relationship with somebody and you're gonna marry them, they would count as one of your five closest people. Like that's just that's just a given, because two shall become one, right? So, but I think we can apply that more broadly as well to what business do we have with people who are doing all of the things that God calls evil? Like, what is what is the point, what is the benefit to us spiritually, emotionally, physically, to be living in a self-created world, right? Like the people you allow into your bubble, the people the even if you just take the the expression of the five people you spend the most time with, like those people are like your inner, inner circle, right? And so, like, what is the purpose of the people in your inner circle engaging in behaviors that you yourself don't agree with? Like, what is what is the point in hanging out with those people just to not engage in the things that they're engaging in? Or do you get sucked into the things they're engaging in, even if you have conviction otherwise? And when and when you have conviction otherwise, or when the Bible tells us otherwise, and we are called to obey, it's really important that we're not putting ourselves in positions to stumble, right? And and Jesus even talks about this. I can't remember where exactly, but he's he's talking about like, you know, if you're if your eye causes you to sin, then like scoop it out. If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off, right? Like he's saying, like, don't give yourself unnecessary stumbling blocks, right? Because we do, we are fallen humans, we do have a propensity to sin, we do fall to temptation. And so, why even give Satan the opportunity to invite us to stumble by putting ourselves in those situations? So, yes, your friendships matter. And I say the same thing about people who you know maybe don't have the word of God in their heart, you know, like the the part that makes this really difficult is like there's a lot of people with really good hearts and a lot of people with good intentions, right? But good intentions. Do not equal righteousness. And unless you are tethered to God's objective morality, there are gonna be things that you get wrong. Because Jeremiah Jeremiah, I believe it's Jeremiah 17, says the heart is deceitful above all things. So, like, yes, you can in general have a sense of common morality, whether that comes from society, because governments actually used to help dictate morality, not so much anymore with a lot of the laws that that are passing now. They definitely do not reflect God and biblical justice. But there was a time in the world where the laws of the land were very similar to the laws given to us by God through the Bible. But, you know, people can still have a sense of right and wrong. Like I said, like the the law of God is written on our hearts, it is in our consciences when they haven't been defiled. And so there can be people who generally do abide by their consciences, so therefore that kind of aligns with God's law, obviously, because again, he wrote the law on their hearts. But there's always going to be little bits and pieces where the world has discipled them in a way that could lead you astray, right? So even if you're surrounding yourself with quote unquote good people, and I mean I don't need to use quotes for that, but just you know, from the Christian worldview that we all sin, we all have the capacity for evil, right? That's where the air quotes came from. It's not saying that your friends aren't good people by worldly standards. But when we're surrounding ourselves with people who are good by worldly standards, we're still not surrounding ourselves by people who are good according to God's law necessarily, right? There is common grace. People who don't believe in Jesus are still capable of goodness and love and compassion and all of those virtues because of God's common grace that He gives to everybody. But at the same time, we need to be really careful because there might be like a little bit of astrology or a little bit of tarot or a little bit of yoga or a little bit of even just beliefs about relationships that don't align with scripture. That's actually one of the biggest places that we see discrepancies between the way that the world does relationships and the way that God advises we treat relationships and our spouses and one another, etc. So you have to be really careful about not being misled, where it's like it looks mostly good. Again, this is one of Satan's tactics is like have it look like the truth, have it feel like the truth, but just be a little bit off. And as long as you're a little bit off, then you're not fully, you know, in obedience to God, and therefore, you know, you can get led astray over time, right? It's like the analogy. I believe this was in atomic habits, maybe when I read that like years and years ago, but the analogy where if you change the trajectory of like the direction of a plane's nose by 1%, then by the time you fly to your destination, you're thousands of miles from where you intended to be. And so it's really important to just be aware of the types of people that you're surrounding yourself, because if they are worldly in any of these ways, and if they don't know God and they don't love Jesus and they're not getting into scripture and learning the word and learning how to be better disciples, and again, none of us are perfect, but it's like, which way is your heart oriented? And it's either oriented towards Christ or it's oriented towards the world. And if it's oriented towards the world, then there's going to be certain false doctrines that Satan has twisted that feel good and righteous that miss the mark because that is what Satan does. He takes what God has created and he counterfeits it and he imitates it so that it's easy to fall for. And then that is where we get led astray, right? It's the wolf in sheep's clothing. You're not deliberately delivering yourself to the wolf, it's the wolf in sheep's clothing. So I'm just gonna go through some of the scriptures that talk about this exact concept. The first one is Proverbs 13:20 says, Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm. Pretty straightforward. So if you're still hanging out with those friends that are, you know, partying or having like these absolute hot mess relationships and you know, just engaging in things that you don't want in your life, I'm not saying to dump them as friends. I do believe that like our job as Christians is to reach lost people. But it might be like, is that my top five? Like, is that the one that I want to go to with everything? I want to go to when I'm struggling in my

What Scripture Says About Company

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relationship, I want to go to when I'm trying to remain pure when they themselves aren't doing it. Like, no, probably not. So that's like again, the place where like Bible-believing and obedient Christians would make better company to help disciple you in the right way. In the same way, Proverbs 27:17 said, iron sharpens iron and one man sharpens another. So, again, it's like we are meant to point each other back to Christ. We are meant to point each other back to the word, we are meant to encourage each other with biblical advice. How many times has it happened? Maybe not to you personally. I don't know your life, I don't know your story, but how many times have you gone to a friend to complain? Not even to complain, but to to vent or to seek support because you're having trouble in your marriage or even your relationship. Like, think back to high school if you need to, where you know, you were having a tough time with your boyfriend and you you went to a friend and we all had the dump him friend, where it was just like, oh, just dump him, just dump him, which by the way, I'm kind of the dump him friend when it comes to just boyfriends. But, you know, if if you keep that dump him friend all the way through into your 30s, and now you're married, and your husband is maybe doing some things that are bothering you, or you're going through a rough patch, which by the way happens to every single person who ever gets married, in part because we're all imperfect people and we're all gonna disappoint other people at some point in time, and in part because once again, Satan seeks to destroy what God puts together. God joined together man and wife to become one flesh. So, of course, Satan is going to target that. But if you are having some tribulation in your marriage and you go to your dump him friend and vent about that, well, what advice are you gonna get? Oh, just leave him. You deserve better. You know, it's I I got divorced and it was the best decision I ever made. You know, you're gonna get stories like that. And like, is that really what you want? Or do you want to go seek godly counsel from maybe couples who are 20 years older than you, who have been married and gone through the challenges and the trials and came out on the other side, who are gonna point you back towards God, who are gonna point you back towards the covenant that you made before God to honor your husband and to love him and until death do us part, and who are gonna give you the practical tools to walk through it and pray and repair and take accountability for your own side of the street. Like who you go to for those things matters and it directly impacts the outcome of your marriage, right? It impacts the outcome of your life in a very big way. Next one, 1 Corinthians 15, 33, do not be deceived, bad company ruins good morals. We touched on this already, but it it keeps coming up. Proverbs 22, 24 to 25, make no friendship with a man given to anger, nor go with a wrathful man, lest you learn his ways and entangle yourself in a snare. If you hang out with people who are always angry, or who are always the victim, or who are always, you know, in a certain emotional state, in a certain emotional worldview, and they don't have the ability to like walk through it with wisdom, and their their default is just their default, eventually it's gonna rub off, right? You're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. Ecclesiastes 4, 9 through 10 says, Two are better than one because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. This one is like so important. And I am in two life groups through church, and I have seen this play out so beautifully, like over and over again, and it's like making me emotional, even thinking about it, because that's literally what we do for one another. We are all on a path of pursuing Christ, and at the same time, we are all on a path where we have challenges, we have struggles, there have been health challenges, there's been financial challenges, there's been, you know, marriage challenges, there's been all kinds of different things that have come up in everybody's lives. And we pick each other up, we pray for one another, we guide each other back to God, we offer scripture for comfort,

Life Groups And Real Christian Support

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we, you know, check in with one another, we like show up for each other and in a way that's not, you know, before I joined a church, I was very much like everybody's pretentious, it's shallow, you know, you show up, you put on your Sunday best, you look all put together, and then you go home and go back to your regular life where you're, you know, sinning and fake, and and it's just all hypocrisy, right? It was like kind of my my mindset before I joined the church. And then I got into these life groups and I I met these people, and the depth of connection that we have with one another is like come as you are. Uh, on the weeks where it's great and all you have is praises and you can just share what's going well in your life, that's amazing. And when things are hard and you're struggling, and you're in tears, and you don't know what to do, and you're lost, we literally pick each other up, we carry each other's burdens. They're not heavy, by the way. And and we just we pick each other up, we lift each other up in prayer, we we check in, like it's just a thing, but we're always guiding people back towards God, towards the ultimate truth. And that's really what lifts people up more than anything, is just that comfort that like God has got you, and we've got you, right? Like, we get to be that extension of God where it's like we can show up, we can support you, we can talk you through this, we can give you practical advice if you need it, we can give you spiritual advice, we can just sit with you in the discomfort of like, yeah, this sucks and it's hard, but you're not sitting here alone, like I'm here, and that's that's amazing, right? And so that's really where the power of like being aligned with the people that you spend time with really comes in, is like are they going to guide you and support you in your worldview, in the direction that you're heading? If you want to be obedient to God, if you want to seek Him, if you want to live righteously, if you want to be sanctified, if you want the Holy Spirit to work through you, are these people going to encourage you in that direction, or are they going to encourage you in the opposite direction under the influence of the world and Satan? And I'm not, again, I'm not saying that to tell you to stop being friends with these people. I have a lot of friends who are not yet saved, who I love dearly, who I do believe are genuinely kind-hearted people. And I have no intention of cutting them off. I have no intention of not being their friends anymore. But the level of proximity compared to and the level of like intimacy they get for like what is going on in my life is completely based on are you going to disciple me closer to Christ? Or are you going to disciple me into worldly thinking? Like, oh, you're going through a rough patch in your marriage, you should get a divorce, or oh, you know, your job is is stressful. So, you know, go treat yourself, or you know, whatever. That that's not a very good example. But, you know, it's like the self-indulgent, you deserve so much better. And I'm I'm not saying that we don't, but at the same time, it can cross a line into being entitlement, it can cross a line into just building more resentment towards your spouse or your job or your circumstances, which really isn't helpful. Instead of having somebody say, All right, let's pray on it. Let's pray for discernment, let's pray for next steps, let's pray for that new job. Like if your job is stressing you out, let's pray for an opportunity to come instead of just recklessly, oh, you deserve better, you should just quit. Right? That can lead to financial ruin. So there again, some of these examples are weaker than I would have liked, and I probably should have like really put some thought into these examples before hitting record, but I hope you're kind of picking up what I'm putting down in terms of like you can predict what you're gonna get based on the people that you surround yourself with. You can predict what kind of support you're gonna get, you can predict where your mindset will be, you can predict where your success will be. There was a period in my business where I was surrounding myself with other friends who were also struggling to get their businesses off the ground. And every week it was the same thing. We would get on the call. How are you doing? Oh, I'm struggling with this, I'm struggling with that, the clients aren't coming in, I'm stressed because I have to pay my coach, and you know, I haven't made the money yet, and you know, all this stuff. Now, the alternative in that case

Business Mindset And Friendship Momentum

SPEAKER_00 37:54

would have been other new agers who maybe were manifesting more money, so I'm not saying that that's like would have necessarily been better, but it probably would have gotten me better financial results, honestly. But again, like we have these emotional attachments to our friends, and we don't want to make new friends because it's comfortable where we're at. They like, oh, they get it. And again, like success in business is is a bit of a different beast, but it's just another example of the way that the people you surrounded yourself with they do have an impact. And I like I said, I probably would have struggled a lot less in my business if I had surrounded myself with people that were like, nope, I'm gonna get up, I'm gonna do the thing, and I'm gonna do it again tomorrow, instead of struggling this week, yeah, struggling again this week, yeah, the money still hasn't come in, blah, blah, blah. Like, it just that's that's human psychology, it's the way that we are wired, it's the way that we take on like these subconscious beliefs. And so it's just really something to be aware of. And like I said, it's something that like I think the self-help industry and the Bible both agree on is like pay attention to who and be discerning about who you're really spending time with. And I would go even a little bit farther because in the personal development industry, it is very much geared towards like find the most successful person that you can. And I would say my advice is find the most godly person that you can and the most hardworking, but the most like in integrity hardworking, right? It doesn't matter if they're a billionaire if they don't abide by the same values that you do. But there is so much power in both mentorship and fellowship in alignment with your beliefs, your convictions, your morals, and ultimately like making those decisions and cultivating those things is like a very important piece of your growth as a Christian, your growth as a mom, as a wife, as a human, as a functioning member of society, like it really does make a difference, and it also changes like the ripple effect of like the impact you have on other people when you talk to them, which is a whole other like podcast for another time, but it really does like the way that you surround yourself will alter the way that you show up, and when your the way you show up gets altered, then it alters the impact that you have on the people that you encounter, whether they're major interactions or small interactions, you know, it just it changes so much, and it can have a bigger effect than anything that you will ever even notice. So that pretty much wraps up this topic, at least for today. I feel like there's so much more that could be said about it, but yeah, I just want to encourage you to like really look at and think about like, am I surrounding myself with godly people or am I in the same friend group because it's comfortable? Am I stretching myself to go to church, to meet people, to join a life group, to say hello to the person who has kids the same age, you know, to the woman who has kids the same age who's sitting in front of you? Am I, you know, practicing courage and walking up to

Audit Your Inner Circle And Grow

SPEAKER_00 41:29

the old married couple where the husband still has his arm around his wife, you know, sitting in the pew at church and asking them, like, what's your best piece of marriage advice? Or am I shying away from those things and keeping the status quo in my life and, you know, not growing and challenging myself in that way because it's more comfortable to just keep the friends I already have that I've been carrying along in my life since high school. These are really things that you can sit your sit with. And again, it's not saying like don't be friends with these other people, because obviously these other people also can benefit from your transformation, from seeing how your life is going well, from seeing the joy and the hope that God has given you. So I'm not saying to isolate from those friends, I'm just saying for your inner circle, for the people that you spend the most time with, it would probably be wise to do a little evaluation and to gain closer relationships with people who are walking in the same direction as you are. And nowadays, with the internet and you know, all of the opportunities that we have to meet people without even leaving our homes, as well as church, again, I encourage to actually go and just be bold and introduce yourself to somebody and you know see where things go. But even if you don't do that, like we live in a digital age where you can meet people so easily, you can meet like-minded women who at times don't even live in the same town as you. Both of my life groups are online. Like, I don't even, I don't even have, you know, I have one devout Christian friend in my local area, and everyone else is online. But you know what? We we text all the time, we are in group chats, we get on calls, and it has been the biggest blessing in my walk. So I'm gonna leave that with you, and I hope to catch you in the next episode.