Each relationship that we have will nurture a strength or a weakness within us.

Jude 1

3 Dear friends, I wanted very much to write to you about the salvation we all share together. But I felt the need to write to you about something else: I want to encourage you to fight hard for the faith that God gave his holy people. God gave this faith once, and it is good for all time.

4 Some people have secretly entered your group. These people have already been judged guilty for what they are doing. Long ago the prophets wrote about them. They are against God. They have used the grace of our God in the wrong way—to do sinful things. They refuse to follow Jesus Christ, our only Master and Lord.

8 It is the same way with these people who have entered your group. They are guided by dreams. They make themselves dirty with sin. They reject God’s authority and say bad things against the glorious ones.

10 But these people criticize things they don’t understand. They do understand some things. But they understand these things not by thinking, but by feeling, the way dumb animals understand things.

16 These people always complain and find wrong in others. They always do the evil things they want to do. They boast about themselves. The only reason they say good things about others is to get what they want.

17 Dear friends, remember what the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ said would happen.

18 They told you, “In the last times there will be people who laugh at God and do only what they want to do—things that are against God.”

19 These are the people who divide you. They are not spiritual, because they don’t have the Spirit.

20 But you, dear friends, use your most holy faith to build yourselves up even stronger. Pray with the help of the Holy Spirit.

21 Keep yourselves safe in God’s love, as you wait for the Lord Jesus Christ in his mercy to give you eternal life.

22 Help those who have doubts.

23 Rescue those who are living in danger of hell’s fire. There are others you should treat with mercy, but be very careful that their filthy lives don’t rub off on you.

24 God is strong and can keep you from falling. He can bring you before his glory without any wrong in you and give you great joy.

25 He is the only God, the one who saves us. To him be glory, greatness, power, and authority through Jesus Christ our Lord for all time past, now, and forever. Amen.

Show me your friends and I will show you your future.

Influence: To have an effect on the actions, behavior, or opinions of others.

Who influences me?

Who am I influencing?

Who is in your circle of influence?

Do they elevate or deflate me?

Am I better because they sit in my circle?

Proverbs 3:9 - Honor the Lord with your wealth and with the firstfruits of all your income.

1 Corinthians 16

1 Now about the collection for the Lord’s people: Do what I told the Galatian churches to do.

2 On the first day of every week, each one of you should set aside a sum of money in keeping with your income, saving it up, so that when I come no collections will have to be made.

Romans 12

1 Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship.

2 Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

Is my circle straining me?

Is my circle strengthening me?