Christianity is the Great Sieve:

A sieve is used to filter out unwanted items.

For example, if you put sand and stones in a sieve, then the sand would go through and the rock (because they cannot pass through the small holes in the sieve) stay in the sieve to be tipped out into a bucket and thrown away.

When we have discovered God and we want a different life, we take up our cross to follow Jesus with “all things become new” in our mind, and we go through many positive changes in our life.

One day we come to the realization that our values have changed, and that we still have people in our life that will hinder our spiritual growth. A wise thing to do is to put each one of our friends through the test by dropping them into the sieve and seeing if they measure up, or will they need removing from our life.

The good people who live and think like you will pass the test and go through the sieve, and the people who are not good for our life should be removed because they will do us no good. This could be family, friends, relations, work mates, anyone.

Once we discover that we are a different person then we need to help God set up our future by removing human obstacles and then following God’s guidance.

Be not deceived: evil communications corrupt good manners.

We can try to influence them but if they are not interested then we are doing our own life a great harm by hanging on to people who are like a heavy anchor who will eventually drown us in their foolish ways.
Moving on without them is the wisest thing to do even if it hurts to do so.

Be brave, and determined to remove those who don’t measure up.

It is a good influence that we are looking for, and we want people who will encourage our spiritual growth, and people who share unconditional love that we want in our lives from now on.

All the best from
James M Sandbrook.
9th of February, 2014.