Picture this: It’s 9pm in the Dominican Republic. It still feels at least a few hundred degrees outside, and you are ready to be home. You finish walking home from your ministry contact’s house and you walk into your room. And you smell it… and it smells bad! Somewhere on the smell meter between B.O. and that musky, sitting water smell.
We quickly look at the conditions of the room, and they are perfect; the window is open to release the smell of three guys living together. The fan is on to keep the air circulating, supposedly removing the bad smells. What is it?
After an off and on investigation of the room, I hear Christian say that his shirt from the day was stuck to the intake side of the fan. So we were circulating the smell of a shirt from 12 hours worth of Dominican Republic sun and sweat through the room.
So what is my point?
The conditions in the room were right. But sometimes we need to look not only at what is feeding us (spiritually, emotionally, etc.), but we also need to look at what is feeding the things that are feeding us. The fan was producing a bad smell because that is what it was being fed. It is impossible for it to provide anything different.
The room smelled bad because all the air coming through the fan had been tainted by the smell of a rather rank shirt. In our lives we have a really important choice of who we let speak into us at a deep level. If we choose a support system that is tainted by the people or things in their life, then we are going to get a whiff of those things through them.
To put it another way, I don’t think anyone would choose to get marriage counseling from a man who has been divorced five times, and has seven kids with six different women. Obviously that is a bit of an exaggeration, but you know what I mean. We have a choice for who we allow to speak into our lives. Don’t make that choice lightly.
We need to pay attention to everything we can about the people that we trust enough to take advice from. Their experiences WILL affect the way they support you. Even if it is someone that fits the conditions perfect, or is a great person of God, we need to be aware that a person who is feeding on junk will just spread more junk.
Moral of the story: Be aware of who you allow to talk into the deep parts of your life, understand where they are coming from, and what might be influencing them. It is always a good idea to have a support group of multiple people to bounce ideas around with. Above all pray and use the most reliable support system out there, the Bible. There is some pretty good stuff in that book!
“The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but a wise man listens to advice.” – Proverbs 12:15
