Solomon’s Too Many Women Friends
King Solomon started out so nobly with such a fine request when God said, “Ask for whatever you want and I will give it to you.” He asked for wisdom to be a wise ruler. God was so pleased with that request He gave him wealth and fame and honour besides.
However, as often happens when we ride on the air stream of success, we soon take some mis-steps and end up tumbling into the gutter.
In Solomon’s case, he had a weakness for women. As he conquered the foreign kings around Israel, he usually worked into the deal, besides the heavy taxes he charged them, that he should get one or more of their princesses to marry.
I Kings 11:3 tells us that he had 700 wives of royal birth and 300 concubines. That’s a lot of women friends to love! (Or don’t wives count as friends?)
As he grew older they begged for altars and temples to their own gods and he yielded to them. This led not only Solomon but many Israelites away from worshiping the one true God. The Lord became angry at Solomon for this and promised to wrest the kingdom away from his son.
You can have too many friends, at least if they are of the kind that will lead you astray from God.
Some people have a great need to be liked, so they are friendly and outgoing and get excited whenever they make a new acquaintance who seems to admire them.
Yet such of us are in a unique danger of being misled by these new friends, if we do not have the moral stamina to stand by our convictions. Knowing this, it is better to limit our friendships to those few individuals that we know will not lead us astray but will strengthen our faith in God and us in our walk with Him.
Ultimately, making the Lord our Best Friend, and giving Him quality time to teach us through His Word and His Holy Spirit is the best safe-guard to keep us from going astray. If we know we are weak and easily swayed, we can give ourselves extra protection by avoiding time spent with those that disregard our Best Friend, the Lord Jesus. Let our motto be: I’ll be polite to everyone, but I’ll only associate informally with friends of my Best Friend, Jesus.
Leave the friendship evangelism to those who are stronger in faith and practice, or seek to grow and become more mature first yourself.