Watch Out for the Gutter!

I can so well remember years back when I was in high school how my life went south. I was a regular Sunday morning church attender and somehow felt that would keep me in an alright place with GOD. You see, what happened was I began to spend more and more time with other teens who, although they weren’t necessarily all that bad, they simply were not Christians. Initially, I went into the friendships believing somehow my shallow Christian behavior would offer a positive influence upon them; at least I had myself convinced of that, I think.

However, it wasn’t long before their negative influence had overcome my positive influence. Before long, I was doing the same stuff they were doing. Somehow, their ungodly influence had won out over the shallow Christian beliefs I had and I was wallowing in the same gutter they were in. It took me several years of doing that before I began to wake up one day. I began to look back at what I had been and then looked forward at what I had become and I have to admit I was really shocked by what I saw. Seems difficult to see a gutter-life when you are living in the gutter but when you begin to come to your senses things brighten up quickly.

I was reminded of the story of the prodigal son. He took off with a handful of money to a distant land. He lived it up. He did all the bad things his parents had warned him about. But before too long, life turned south for him. He ran out of money and right after that, he ran out of friends. He soon found himself in the gutter, living with pigs. Certainly, he had been living in the gutter for some time but it wasn’t until things got rough that he began to wake up to the fact.

It’s incredible how easy it is to fall into the gutter and get stuck there. In 1 Corinthians 15:33, Paul warned us that bad company corrupts good character. Unfortunately for some of us, that warning went unheeded. And its nuggets of truth proved to be so true. So, how do we go about maintaining our Christian walk in a sea of lies and deception? How do we keep from walking the edge of the gutter until we finally tumble in without even realizing it?

The Psalmist gave us a simple solution: “How happy is the man who does not follow the advice of the wicked, or take the path of sinners, or join a group of mockers! Instead, his delight is in the Lord’s instruction, and he meditates on it day and night. He is like a tree planted beside streams of water that bears its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers” (Psalm 1:1-3). 

In other words, refrain from making non-Christians your best friends and confidants. Delight in and meditate upon GOD’s Word continually. And your life will be blessed abundantly by GOD. Whatever that individual does will prosper. Get in the WORD to protect yourself from becoming vulnerable to becoming a gutter-dweller.