The environment you find yourself in is key to growth in your life. If you are in the wrong environment, you won’t grow as well.
Last week Pastor Jonny looked at making sure we are regularly fed and encouraged. This week he brought us a message on being warm and having light.
34So now I am giving you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, you should love each other. 35Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples.”
(John 13:34-35)
Warm environments produce good growth. This is why gardens flourish in the summer and flounder in the winter. For the Christian, this means you need warmth on an emotional and spiritual level. Those types of warmth bring the best out in people.
In John 13, at the Last Supper, Jesus prepared His disciples for the trials ahead. But instead of merely dwelling on those trials and the coming persecution, He focused on reminding them to love one another.
Emotional warmth comes through love. Love produces a warm and engaging environment where families and communities thrive. But true love comes from God and starts with our relationship with Him. We need to spend time in prayer and Bible study and bask in the warmth that comes from the love of God.
In relationships, some people boost others with encouragement and some people drain others with problems. We could call these types of people “gainers” and “drainers”. We naturally enjoy spending more time with gainers because they bring the best out of us.
As Christians, we are supposed to be other people’s gainers and we’re also supposed to be a spiritual thermostat, setting the positive atmosphere in the room.
Encouragement is so important. When an overly-critical person criticises someone, experts say that for every 1 negative point, a person needs 8 positive points to make them feel better.
When we look at the rest of the world, especially on social media, we see that everyone is bringing everyone else down. As Christians, let’s be the people who lift each other up! Let’s be the gainers and the encouragers.
Just as a disclaimer, we’re not talking about constructive criticism/feedback here. Those things are helpful as they encourage growth. We’re talking about criticism that attacks for the sake of attacking. It often says more about the person doing the criticism (their unhappiness) than the person being criticised.
We need to be people of grace, pointing people to Jesus with truth and grace.
In addition to warmth, we also need light.
4The Word gave life to everything that was created,a
and his life brought light to everyone.
5The light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness can never extinguish it.b
6God sent a man, John the Baptist,c 7to tell about the light so that everyone might believe because of his testimony. 8John himself was not the light; he was simply a witness to tell about the light. 9The one who is the true light, who gives light to everyone, was coming into the world.
(John 1:4-9)
This is the very start of John’s Gospel and it mirrors the first chapter of Genesis. John wrote that Jesus is the Light and that darkness cannot extinguish the light.
We need to live in that light, the light of Jesus and the life that He brings.
Don’t live in the darkness, don’t let the Devil have a foothold in your life. Shine the light of Jesus into the darkest areas of your heart and turn from sin into the life that Jesus has for you.
When you flick a lightswitch on, darkness disappears and the room is filled with light. It’s the same in our walk with Jesus. As long as we stay connected to Jesus, He banishes the darkness in our lives.
As you mature in your faith, this will become more natural. The Holy Spirit will convict you of sin and call you to live more and more like Jesus.
We are called to grow as people. We need to be rooted in Jesus, fed by Jesus, receive the warmth of Jesus and the light of Jesus, and then we are to help create warm environments for others to grow in Jesus.