How Can I Be Friends with Non-Believers?

Jesus spent time with people far from God, yet He was never influenced by the world around Him. So what does it look like for Christians to do the same? In this episode, we discuss the two extremes believers often fall into—isolating themselves from non-believers or becoming so influenced by them that they compromise their faith. We explore how to build genuine friendships with people who don't share our beliefs while remaining rooted in Christ and living on mission.

Transcript

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So we have questions. The question is the evil. Let's look at it. Let's leave it. Let's go there. What's going on, Landed Podcasting, and welcome to yet another episode of what we love to call in this podcast studio. Let's go there. I'm your host, Ben Pucas, joined as always in the booth. He's more than a man, he's more of a myth and a legend. It's Russ, the Bus Williams, joining me in the podcast studio. Wish Russ had a mic so he can be able to talk to us because he's not a man of many words, but when he does speak, you listen. Just came back from Disneyland. We both just came back from vacation. And so we're rested, we're ready to go. We've missed you guys. And so we are diving into another episode of Let's Go There, where we believe in this episode, if you're just joining us for the first time, where we believe that honest questions, that the questions that keep us up at night, the questions that we wrestle through and we're trying to figure out in our faith, maybe questions that we're afraid to ask because they're either too simple or too complicated. Maybe we're afraid of the answer that we're going to get, where we ask those honest questions and we bring them into this forum, into this podcast studio, and we get to give you honest answers. And so I even just got to talk to someone the other day that is a new listener to this podcast and talking about how encouraging it's been to them. And first of all, we just want to say thank you. Russ and I, man, we're just in this podcast studio just trying to be faithful. And it's awesome that more than just our moms listen to this podcast, that people out there are not just listening to it, they're being encouraged by it. They're sending them to their friends, they're talking about it with their friends and their community groups. And so this is what I want to ask from you that if you are new to this podcast, if you are watching this, as you know, we're not trying to make this big. Like the goal of this is not fame, the goal of this is not fortune, which that's never going to happen in the podcast world anyway. Russ and I are gonna make zero dollars and zero cents off of this podcast. But our goal is to be faithful. And one of the things that we want is to have people be able to tune in that need this. We're not trying to get millions of people. We just want the people that are asking these questions that really there's not an outlet for them. And so one of the ways you can help is that if you are listening to this, if you can hit the subscribe button or any kind of follow button on any of the platforms that you're listening to, man, if a podcast is encouraging to you, would you just be able to send it to a friend? Send it to a family member, let them know that, hey, there is a resource out there for you. There are people out there that hear your questions and they want to answer them for you. And so if you're able to do that, that would be awesome. That would be awesome, and that would just be a huge benefit to us. But this episode is not just to talk about hitting subscribe buttons and getting people to listen in. This podcast is answering specific questions. And the question that we're gonna be answering today is a question in it's how can I be friends with non-believers? And that's a really good question because you think about the goal of the Christian life. Like we want to be effective evangelists, like we want to be able to proclaim the good news of calling people out of darkness and into marvelous light. Like we've talked before on this podcast that we get to partner with Jesus in calling people out of their graves, just like Jesus did with us. And that's exciting and we love it and we're all for it. But then we also wrestle with okay, how can I be in relationship with people who are non-believers and not be drugged down into living the life that they're living? There's people listening to this podcast that recently have just started following Jesus, and we have friends that we used to run with before we knew Jesus and doing dead things. And so it's like, man, I really want to share Jesus with these people, but how do I share Jesus with these people when they're living a life that's opposite of mine? Because one of the biggest problems that we have in the church is is when we look at this relationship that we have with non-believers, I would say the majority of people they don't wrestle with hanging out with people that don't know Jesus. One of the things we wrestle with the most in the church is we only hang out with people who do know Jesus. You know, you think that's the natural human instinct is to be around people that sound like us, that look like us, that believe like us. We work with believers, we go to church with believers, we do relationship with believers, we talk on the phone with believers, we go on vacation with believers. And then pretty soon it doesn't actually take long in the Christian life for us to now look around and realize wait a second, there's not a single person in my life that I'm in deep relationship with that doesn't know Jesus. And so if you've been coming to fellowship or if you have been tuning in online at fellowship, we've been in this uh in this series Acts of the Holy Spirit yesterday and today. And one of the big things is being submitted to the power of the Spirit. Last week we got to talk about what it means to share the gospel and being submitted to the Spirit. And there's a lot of people that really struggle, and they're coming up to me and they're like, Ben, I really want to be a dangerous weapon for the kingdom of God. Ben, I want to share Jesus with people. I want to partner with Jesus and calling people out of the grave. But unfortunately, like there's nobody that I know that is like that. And the problem is, is how can we share Jesus and share the love of God with people who are far from God if we don't know anybody that are far from God? And so the first problem is when we talk about being in relationship with non-believers, the answer isn't we just avoid them altogether because when you look at the ministry of Jesus, Jesus didn't segregate himself from sinners. Jesus wasn't only hanging out with people who were following him, because really at the end of the day, when Jesus first steps onto the scene, nobody was following him. Everyone was following the old ways because no one knew about the love of Jesus. And actually, one of the things that Jesus gets accused of by the tax collectors, by the Mies, by the pastors of the community, is that he was a friend of sinners. And he didn't, they didn't say that in a good way. They didn't say that in, oh, good job, Jesus, you're doing a really good job of bringing the lost in. They use that as something against him. They're like, this guy is not a good leader because he's only hanging out with people who are sinners. He's hanging out in tax collectors' homes. These prostitutes are hanging around him. And you just seen, we've talked about this before. Jesus looks at those people and doesn't go, oh man, you're right. I shouldn't be hanging out with these kind of people. Essentially, Jesus shares parables and says, Hey, how about next time you see me hanging out with sinners? Why don't you get a chair and pull up a seat at the table because you're a sinner too? And so the answer to being in a relationship with non-believers isn't we just avoid them altogether because you see, Jesus, he is in close proximity with people who are non-believers. So there's one extreme. That's the one end of the pendulum, is that in order to not be influenced in a negative way, we just avoid them and isolate from non-believers altogether. That's not the answer. But then also when you see the other end of the pendulum, and this is probably where the heart of the question comes in when people are asking this, and this is probably where people are, is there's just a lot of immersion still with people who don't know Jesus. Like the opposite danger is is people fill their closest relationships with people who don't know Jesus. And this is why this is a big thing, and I want to make this very clear. When I'm talking about non-believers, I do not think non-believers are a disease. Like, we need to understand that. So, like if you're listening to this and you're a non-believer, I'm not saying you're a disease. I'm saying, man, we need to be in relationship and I want to share the love of Jesus with you. But we aren't called to avoid them. But this is what I want to talk about for a second. Like, and this is going to be offensive to some people, and that's okay because it's true. People who don't know Jesus, no matter how good we believe they are, no matter if they, you know, still go to church, there's a lot of non-believers that go to church. They they give, they, they, they partner with non-for-profits, they help old ladies cross the street. I don't know, they're they're just good people. Like you mow the lawn, you're like, oh, there's Jim Bob, he's a great guy, doesn't know Jesus. So whether they are a good person or not, if they don't know Jesus, this is the truth of the matter, and you can find it all throughout scripture. If people don't know Jesus, then they are dead. That's not, and you're like, that's offensive. That's what Jesus says. Because before Jesus, we were dead in our sins and trespasses in what's in which we once walked. And what can dead people do? Dead people can only do dead things. And so when I'm talking about not surrounding ourselves and being immersed with non-believers, I'm not saying that they're a disease, but when we immerse ourselves with non-believers, we underestimate the power of the community of people that we're doing life with because the people closest to us shape us. You know, I was a student pastor for 10 years, and one of the most common phrases, I don't remember where I heard it, actually I've heard it in tons of places now. One of the most common things that I would tell students is you show me your top five friends, and I'll show you who you'll be in five months. Like you get the five closest people that you spend the most amount of time with, you average all of those people out, and that's who you're going to become because we are incredibly influenced. In fact, it's a good thing that we're incredibly influenced because Jesus God made us in his design in Genesis chapter one and two, he made us to be in community with each other because he is in community with himself. And when we're surrounding ourselves with good things, with things that are filling us with life, that causes us to be people who are filled by life. But when we surround ourselves and are immersing ourselves with non-believers, we are immersing ourselves in death. We become like the people we spend the most time around. And so, like what we just talked about here, like God designed us to live in community. And so there's some people that are listening to this where, you know, I'm going to take a pause. Like, I'm thinking I'm going ahead a little bit in the notes. Like, this is what I want to say. We are all called to live in community. And I don't want us to be listening to this podcast and going, well, that's good. I'm not surrounding myself with non-believers, but there's a lot of people that are listening to this podcast that also are not surrounding themselves with believers. They're not just isolating themselves from non-believers, they're isolating themselves from everyone. Like God made us to live in community, people. And so before we even begin to continue on with this conversation, if you're listening to this podcast and you're not in community, I really want to challenge you to get into community. People that challenge us spiritually, people that encourage us in God's word, people that pray for us, people that hold us accountable, people that when we're at the end of our rope, we can make a phone call at 2 a.m. and they're at our house and they're here to process with us, they're here to love us, they're here to pray for us, they're here to lead us down the road. And the road that we're on, that's Jesus talks about, is a narrow path and it will be hard. And so as a believer, we cannot do life by ourselves. We can't do life only with non-believers, but we also can't do life by ourselves. We have to run alongside other believers because Hebrews 13 20 is so true. Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise. Do you want to be wise? Walk with wise people. Do you want to be disciplined? Walk with disciplined people. Do you want to be someone who's obsessed with Jesus and desperate for his kingdom to come? Surround yourself with people who are desperate for Jesus and desperate for his kingdom to come. But at the end of Proverbs 13, which is so key in what we're talking about, is how do I do life with non-believers? Is whoever is a companion of fools suffers harm. And so when we're surrounding ourselves with life, we get defined by life. When we're surrounding ourselves by death, we become defined by death. People around us influence us, and what we need to understand, and this is just so key, and it's right in the middle of this, and I want this to be in the middle of this so we can understand this. Community, hear me say this, is not optional for spiritual growth. It's not. Do you want to grow? Do you want to look more like Jesus? You cannot, it will not, it has never happened in isolation. That's like trying to make a recipe, a a world-class recipe from Gordon Ramsey, and not following every single step in the instructions in the recipe. It's like, well, I'm gonna change flour for this, and I'm gonna change sugar for this, and I'm not gonna do two teaspoons, I'm gonna do five teaspoons. Like, God has given us a design. And we see very clearly in scripture, like you want to grow, you want to be the most dangerous for the kingdom of God, like be in community and be in community with people who are going to challenge us and make us look more like Jesus, because at the end of the day, your inner circle matters. Now, with that being said, there's a difference between influence and intimacy. You see, I think all of us, we we kind of view those things at the same that in order for me to have influence, I have to have intimacy with someone. Intimacy is like I fully know them and they fully know me. Like it legitimately means like two people fully knowing each other. The word in Hebrew is actually yada, it's fully knowing all of me and all of you together. And in order for us to have influence, we don't need to have intimacy. Like we see at the end of the day, Jesus had influence around a lot of people. He had the crowds, he had 5,000 people that he fed food to, he had 4,000 people that he fed food to, he had the crowds, he had all of this influence, but we see all of those people were not the people that he was intimate with. Jesus also had the 72 that he sent out. Jesus also had the 12 disciples that he spent the most of his time with. Jesus also had the three, Peter, James, and John, that he spent the most amount of his time with. Like Jesus had different circles, and and the deepest part of the circle are the people that knew Jesus the best, the people that Jesus was walking the most intimately with. And then that intimacy kind of decreased as it went out. And by the time it got to the influence, Jesus loved those people. Jesus loved the tax collectors, Jesus loved the prostitutes, Jesus welcomed outsiders better than literally any person that's ever lived on the face of the planet, so much that probably that was part of the reason why he was killed. Like that was a blasphemous thing for a teacher, for a rabbi to be with those people. But Jesus was not intimate with those people. But what Jesus would do is that he was running with his intimate 72, 12, and 3 so that he can have influence over the thousands. And what's so cool is as the thousands started to come to know him, we now see in the book of Acts, those people got brought into intimacy. And so there's a difference between those. Like his closest circle consisted of people that were not going to keep him from pursuing his mission. His closest inner circle actually ran with him the most to keep him on the same mission. And so we what we have to ask ourselves in this, you may be wondering, like, do I have influence with or do people have influence in my life and intimacy in my life that shouldn't be there? I think the questions that we have to ask is who has access to your heart? Like, man, when when you're at the end of your rope, when you're needing advice, who are you running to? Who shapes your decisions? Who influences your thinking? And when you answer that question and you think about those people and you look at the life that they live, one, we have to ask ourselves, do they know Jesus? And if the answer to that is no, then what's happening is whether you know it or not, or whether you like it or not, you're inviting death into your life. The advice may sound great, but they don't have the power of the Holy Spirit in them to give sound advice. And so every once in a while they may, you know, throw mud against the wall and it sticks and it's good advice, but so many times it's not going to be the advice that you need. It's not going to be the thing that you need to do. And so the people that you answer that question to should not be pushing you away from Jesus, they should be helping you pursue pursue Jesus even more. You know, and and I think one of the big things that we have to do as we wrap up this podcast is that is that as you're answering that question, I know that there are probably people that are listening to this that are going, man, like there are people in my life that I've made a part of my inner circle that don't know Jesus. And one of the things that you may need to do is you need new playmates and you need to new playground. One of my friends, JP, talks about change your playmates, hit change your playground, change your playmates. You know, there was a guy that came up to me uh a few months ago and he was just really struggling. He goes, Man, like I started following Jesus uh a few months ago, which is awesome. We all celebrated that. And he's like, But man, like I can't seem to let go of my past life. I I'd go weeks without parting, I'd go weeks without doing the things that defined me before I knew Jesus. And it was awesome. I'm following Jesus wholeheartedly, and then it seems like I just go right back to doing the things that I don't want to do. And I started asking him questions and started to realize that the friends that defined his life before he knew Jesus are still the same friends that he is surrounding himself with now. The guy was struggling with death because he was surrounding himself with death. Every weekend he kept the same environment, he kept the same playground, he kept the same playmates. And sometimes what we need to understand, and this is going to be hard to understand because it can seem so unloving, because yes, we need to surround ourselves with non-believers, but in order for us to be effective for the kingdom of God, we have to be effectively following Jesus. And sometimes the thing that we need to have freedom, sometimes freedom requires changing your environment. And sometimes, and a lot of times, for people that just started following Jesus, sometimes the best thing about changing our environment is changing the people that we hang out the most around. And that doesn't mean that we push those people out of our lives, but maybe for a season we need to separate ourselves from them and say, you know what, I love you, man, but I follow Jesus now. And I don't want to party, I don't want to do the things that defined me before. Like I love Jesus and I want to do other things now. I want to do things that are that are that are defined by life. And man, I want to invite you into intimacy in a in a relationship with Jesus. Because as we've talked about, dead people produce dead things. Like non hear me, yeah, but that also, like, but my friends don't do that. Non, that doesn't mean they're not kind. That doesn't mean that they're not generous, that doesn't mean that they're not wonderful people. But what simply what we're saying is if you surround yourself with people who are defined by death, you will then find yourselves being surrounded by death. And this is also what we need to understand, too. I I heard this from somebody the other day. Not in my notes, so this is new. People that go to fellowship, you know that phrase well. Sometimes people, when they're surrounding themselves with non-believers, they say things like, Well, I can be surrounded by them because I'm trying to share Jesus with them. Like, like they're gonna stay in my life because I'm gonna share Jesus with them. And this is what I want to ask you in that. One, are you continuing to hold on to death? And are they are they leading you to life or are they leading you to death? And I'm gonna say, if they're in your close circle, whether you want to or not, they're not leading you to Jesus because they don't know Jesus. But here's another question I want to ask the people that use the excuse of, well, I'm doing evangelism to them. Are you really doing evangelism to them? One of my least favorite phrases in the church, and this may get me in trouble, rest of us, uh, is share your testimony and use words when necessary. And I hate it, it makes my skin crawl. You know why? Because nobody, hear me say this, not a single person ever has ever been saved by watching you live a different life. That is not what saves. They don't see that and go, wow, my friend is living a different life. I'm gonna start following Jesus now because so many people don't know what it means to follow Jesus. So many people don't know that Jesus died on the cross for their sins. So many people don't know that that they're not hated, but that they're loved and that they're pursued and that Jesus is all for them. And so, are you really sharing the gospel with them? Because in order to be uh someone who's a witness, you have to witness. In order to be someone that shares Jesus with someone, you have to be able to share the gospel with them. And you know what? The gospel is incredibly offensive, people. For people that are living in sin and for people that are living in death, you're looking them in the eye and you're saying, you are defined by death. And so as we're living in this close proximity with people and we're using the excuse, like, well, I'm just evangelizing to them, are you really evangelizing to them? Like if you're claiming being on mission, are you actually on mission? Are you actually sharing the gospel? Because if you're never sharing the gospel, like we're just baptizing it with compromise. We're just trying to cloak ourselves and saying, I'm doing a holy thing, I'm doing a thing for Jesus, but really in reality, we're not doing anything for him. We're cloaking death with life. And that is one of the greatest. I'm and I know I'm getting passionate about this, but this is why. The devil is a liar, and the devil wants us wrapped in chains. Hey, here's the deal. If you just started following Jesus and you're surrounding yourself with a bunch of non-believers, like the devil loves that. The devil does not want you to live in the light. So he being a father of lies is going to cloak that in holiness and goodness and be like, no, no, no. You need to keep being surrounded by those people so you can share Jesus with them and then making you never share Jesus with them in the first place. And so, man, if you're surrounding yourself with non-believers, do not just surround yourself with those people, but find people that are in like-mindedness with you. And really, what the goal is, is the goal is just finding a healthy biblical balance. And when you want to look at balance, just look at Jesus. He didn't push non-believers away. He he was there, he had influence over them. And so if you don't know a non believer, like I really want to challenge you, find a way to know them because they're there. You may feel like, no, I'm living in a Christian town. You know, we live in Circe, Russ and I do. And there are what, Russ, twenty four thousand people in our town. I think that's what the last census showed. 23,000, 24,000. And the census showed that out of those 24,000 people, 11,000 of the people that live in our church town. We live in a very Bible town. I mean, there's a church on every corner. There's sometimes two churches on every corner. You trip on a Mexican restaurant and you fall into a church in Cersei, Arkansas. Russ is laughing and shaking his head. Because it's true. But there's 11,000 people in that church town that don't know Jesus. They're there. And you know what? They're not far either. Because that's the beautiful plan of Jesus. That's part of the church. That's what's so beautiful about the church is that he puts us around a bunch of people that don't know him. They're in your workplace, they're in your neighborhood, they're in the restaurants that you go to. And so, man, have the biblical balance. Don't just surround yourself with believers because that's not good either. But also, Jesus had influence over them, but he did not have intimacy in them. They did not speak into his life. They did not help him make decisions. They were not wise counsel for him. He was not hanging out with them and sleeping next to them and eating next to them. Like he was doing that with people that were like-minded. So yes, he had influence, but no, he did not did not have intimacy. And so there may be people that are listening that you're listening to this. And one of the things that is keeping you from living the most dangerous life for the kingdom of God are the people you're hanging out with. You're like, why can't I be holy? Well, it's because the top five people you hang out with the most aren't causing you to be holy. They're not making you better. And then the last thing is there are some people listening to this where you're like, ha high five, I'm not surrounding myself with non-believers. They're not in my close circle, but you have nobody in your close circle. And if that's the case, I would say that's just as much death as surrounding yourself with a bunch of people who are non-believers. Isolation from everybody, I would say, is the same thing, if not worse, than immersion with people that are dead. And so, man, you're listening to this. You're like, you're not in community. I really want to encourage you to get in community. It's not an either or, it's a both and. And we need to be in community with other people. We need to be in community with believers. And so, man, as we land this plane, like what I want you to ask, again, I'm gonna say it one more time. Who is influencing you the most? Like, I want you to actually think about that as we finish out this podcast. Who's influencing you the most? Write those names down. Maybe text those names. Maybe you've never actually called it out to say you're in my community. And you may just need to text them and be like, thank you so much for having influence in my life because you love Jesus and I want to love Jesus just like you do. Or there may be some people that are not in that inner circle that now, as you're thinking, you're like, wait a second, I know this person and I want a faith like this person. I'm gonna text this person and say, hey, is it cool if we do more life with each other? Because I see the way that you run with Jesus and I want to run with Jesus like that. I want to encourage each other, I want to admonish each other, I want to pray for each other, I want to study scripture with each other. Like you have to ask yourself, who's influencing you the most? Do you have godly community? Who am I intentionally trying to reach with the gospel? Who do I have influence over? If you can't answer that question, then man, start writing some names that you want to be surrounding yourself with so that you can run with the people you have intimacy with to share Jesus with them. And then the last question: Am I influencing the world with the power of the gospel, or is the world influencing me? So, man, as we dive into community, as we talk about community, the question we have to ask is who do we want to be like? Do we want to be like the world or do we want to be like Jesus? And so, man, thanks for tuning in to this episode of the podcast. If you have any questions on this, man, feel free at the end of every episode you see, if you got questions, you can put them. You can also ask more questions about this. We want to dialogue with you guys. This is not the uh end of the conversation, this is just the very beginning of it. And so, man, thanks for tuning in. We're now a double digit podcast. This is now exciting. We're super excited to be doing this with you guys. And so we will see you guys next week. But until then, rust the bus and Pucus out.