This post is a personal situation I’m going through and would appreciate any input from my brothers, sisters in Christ and fellow friends in recovery. 

There is a man at work who wants to pursue a friendship.  He is a manager and has been awesome with helping me have a “voice” at work during times when I was having some issues with getting more shifts, more tables, etc.  Essentially, making more money.  Because of his input to the higher ups, on my account, I have made awesome money this week.  I am grateful.  Very grateful.

Now mind you, I am not naïve.  I know that this “friendship” he wants to pursue will develop into stronger feelings.  Feelings that I am not ready for.  He knows I am a Christian.  He is not a believer.   He does not make fun of my beliefs (to my face anyway), but I have heard him scoff at the very mention of Jesus Christ and God.  He made a comment yesterday about the church crowd coming in for lunch.  He mentioned that “these people go to church and act all ‘good’ yet it’s obvious one of them is a homosexual”.  I looked at him and said, “God loves everybody.”  Someone gave him a little card about salvation, and he laughed and said “can you believe they gave this to me?”  And threw it away.  He knows how I feel about God and Jesus, and I was offended.  It hurt my feelings.  But I didn’t let him see that. 

I was contemplating getting a second job, and was very torn about this decision.  Reason being, I don’t want to shoot myself in the foot and have my current job be upset and take me off the schedule all together.  I do appreciate this man’s input and advice.  So I went to him for advice.  He knows the restaurant owners better than I do and he told me they wouldn’t like it, especially with the busy season coming.  There is always another person wanting my job.  So I decided to not go for the interview at this other restaurant.  I was up in the air about what to do.  I prayed boldly about it. 

My first thoughts are to seek God with my decision making and what choices to make.  But I wasn’t positive of what to do and thought maybe God was opening a door for me to make more money.  But I had never got a clear cut answer from God if this was His will or not.  I had to make a decision within 3 days.  So I sought other advice.  And I believe I made the right decision now by cancelling the interview.

Now back to the whole “friendship” thing.  He kept pressing me into talking about how we feel about each other.  He says I’m running away from myself.  This was my response to that comment, “I am not running away from myself.  I am very confident in who I am, but at this point of my life, I am focusing on myself.  I don’t have the emotional or mental room for others right now.”  This is the truth.  I found myself thinking too much about this man, when I should be filling my thoughts with Jesus.  I was very uncomfortable allowing an unbeliever from the opposite sex filling my thoughts.  I could tell it was wrong.  The Holy Spirit was grieving about this and I felt it. 

So today I put an end to it.  I told him we can stay work friends and that’s it.  He was very polite about it and backed off (at least for now). 

Here are my questions:

• When do we seek human advice from man when we aren’t hearing from God, especially if we need an answer within a deadline?
• We have to work in a world of unbelievers, how dangerous is it for us to follow their advice about our careers?
• God works through people, do you believe God also works through unbelievers to bless us?  Why do you believe this?
• How close are we to get to an unbeliever?  Should we develop close friendships with them?
• Should we have an attitude of “us” and “them” ?