“You will be the same person in ten years as you are today except for the people you meet and the books you read,” writes Og Mandino in The Greatest Salesman in the World.
How intentional are you about who hang out with?
Sometimes we don’t see how the people in our lives affect us. Yet, the impact they can have on our lives can be so significant it can radically change us for better or for worse.
In the 1930s C.S. Lewis was part of a small circle of friends and colleagues with J.R.R. Tolkien, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams, and others. They called themselves the Inklings.
They regularly discussed any number of issues, from philosophy to literature and beyond. They also read to each other from manuscripts they were working on.
These peers greatly influenced each other and their work. They were the first audience for beloved titles like The Lord of the Rings, The Screwtape Letters, and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.
The Bible stresses the importance of friendships like these, relationships that provide us with guidance and wise counsel so that we can grow in maturity.
Proverbs says,
- “The way of the fool seems right to them, but the wise listen to advice” (Proverbs 12:15).
- “As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another” (Proverbs 27:17).
Conversely, the Bible warns about the negative impact some friendships can have on us.
Proverbs 22:24-25 urges,
Do not associate with a man given to anger or go with a hot-tempered man, or you will learn his ways and find a snare for yourself.
Clearly our friends and peer groups matter.
As Christians, we should be intentional about building peer groups that help us grow in all areas of our lives. We should be people committed to helping each other.
This can happen in both formal and informal contexts.
There are a number of formal Christian CEO and leadership forums like Convene, C12, Pinnacle Forum, and 4word which bring tremendous value to their members.
Yet even in our informal relationships we should be intentional about the people with whom we spend a significant amount of time.
Whether formal or informal, our intentional relationships are important because they help us become productive, creative, and purposeful.
Through these relationships we can bring about flourishing. This is God’s design, because he created us to live and work in community.
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So what kind of relationships and communities should we seek to build?
Michael Hyatt in a recent blog recommended instead of random relationships, we should work to create communities that helped everyone involved achieve their goals together—like Lewis and the Inklings. He goes on to suggest why intentional relationships are invaluable in at least three areas:
