With whom should you spend your time?

One of the things I believe in very strongly is the value of being a life-long learner.  There are various ways one can approach this: formal education that leads to degrees, attending workshops and seminars, taking courses at a community college to help develop areas that need improvement, reading good books, and spending time with persons who are ahead of us.  It is this last way that I want to focus on today.

I have read most of John Maxwell's books, and The 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth: Live Them and Reach Your Potential is one of his best.  I read it for the first time last year, and I'm currently re-reading it now.  One of the laws he talks about is the Law of Environment, and one part of this law is being intentional about whom you spend most of your time with.  He quotes Charles "Tremendous" Jones who once said, "You are the same today that you are going to be in five years from now except for two things: the people with whom you associate and the books you read."  I completely agree with that observation.

Maxwell then goes on to write that, "It is not always comfortable, but it is always profitable to associate with people larger than ourselves...What kinds of "larger" people should we spend our time with?  People with integrity.  People who are positive.  People who are ahead of us professionally.  People who lift us up instead of knocking us down.  People who take the high road, never the low.  And, above all, people who are growing."

In Proverbs 13:20 Solomon wrote, "Walk with the wise and become wise, for a companion of fools suffers harm."  Jones, Maxwell, and Solomon would all agree that if we want to be life-long learners one important way is to intentionally spend time with people from whom we can learn, and that will be people who are ahead of us on the journeys we are taking.

If you are a bivocational minister you should seek others who successfully travelled that road before you to learn from them how they managed the land mines associated with such ministry.  Bivocational and fully-funded ministers alike should want to spend time with people who grew their churches, not necessarily to learn the "secret to growing a church" but to learn the heart and soul of the minister who has advanced the Kingdom of God.  Each of us needs to spend time with people who have the gift of encouragement.  There are so many people and circumstances that drag us down that we need to be surrounded by people who will lift us up just by their presence.

We not only need mentors in our lives who can give us direction, we also need coaches who will help us grow by asking tough questions and holding us accountable to do the things we say we will do.  We need friends who will love us unconditionally, encourage us in the things we attempt, and also challenge us when they think we are going in the wrong direction.  We also need persons who will inspire us by their success.  When I am with someone who has enjoyed true success in his or her life it always inspires me that I can experience similar success in my life.  By true success I refer to one who became successful with integrity, who always took the high road.  I will admit it is not always easy to find each of these kinds of people nor is it always easy to spend time with them.  We really do have to consider it an investment in our future to take the time to identify and spend time with each of these kinds of people.  But, if we will I believe we will find it to have been a good investment that yielded a high rate of return.