Wrong Environments

Have you ever considered how much your environment is affecting your walk with God?

In this episode of Running Our Race, we talk about the importance of recognizing the environments we place ourselves in, and what those environments are producing in us. Scripture warns us that “bad company ruins good morals,” but our environment goes beyond just the people around us. It can include the places we remain, the voices we listen to, the situations we entertain, and even the spiritual condition of the soil where we're trying to grow.

Through Psalm 1 and the parable of the sower in Matthew 13, we see the difference between being planted where we can flourish and trying to grow where our faith is constantly being choked out. And through the lives of the prodigal son, Jonah, and David, we're reminded that sometimes our greatest problems begin when we find ourselves somewhere we were never supposed to be, or leave the place where God called us to remain.

The prodigal son eventually came to his senses and realized he didn't have to stay where he was. Jonah ran in the opposite direction of God's instruction. David remained home during a season when kings went to battle, and what followed changed the course of his life. These stories challenge us to examine not only what we're doing, but where we are while we're doing it.

Reflection Questions:

• Is your current environment helping you grow closer to God or slowly pulling you away?
• What kind of “soil” are you allowing your faith to grow in?
• Are there people, places, habits, or influences affecting who you're becoming?
• Have you gotten comfortable somewhere God never intended you to stay?
• Is there an environment you know God is calling you to leave?
• Where do you need to become more intentionally “planted” so that you can grow and bear fruit?

"He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither." — Psalm 1:3

You can have a good seed and still struggle to grow in the wrong soil. Sometimes moving forward in your race means recognizing that the environment you're in is affecting the runner you're becoming. Pay attention to where you're planted, who you're running with, and whether your surroundings are helping you move toward God or away from Him.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of Running a Race. Today's episode is titled Wrong Environments. Now, when we talk about wrong environments, I personally went back to uh 1 Corinthians 15 33 where it says, Do not be deceived, bad company ruins good morals. And I also went to Psalms 1, 1 to 3, where it says, Blessed is a man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers, but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers. Connecting those two verses, uh, it refers a lot to how Um basically the the circle around you has a lot to do with who you become, basically. Because you know, when you think about morals, it's ha how a person turns out, and then when we see that they don't hang out with people who are wicked or sinners or sit in the seat of scoffers, this person prospers. So part of being in the right environments, it affects our future outcome. Whereas when we're in the wrong environments, we can turn out to be someone who we don't even recognize. When I thought about this, I also thought a lot about sewing, about planting. I thought about the ground, right? Because wrong environment, you know, obviously we can take it into a nature standpoint where when the ground is wet, it's not as good for the traction of a runner because you can easily slip, or if you don't have the right shoes for the type of terrain that you are running on, right? Because, for example, in track people use spikes, but when you're in cross-country, you have more of like an R all-terrain different uh kind of style. Even when you go hiking, you wear different kinds of shoes because of the ground that you are stepping on. And so, um, I'm not gonna really read all of it, but I do have a diverse uh the sowers, and when they threw the seeds on the soil, you know, not all of them. Only, I believe, one, the very last one, it says, Other seeds fell on good soil and produced grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. I could take this a lot of ways, honestly. Uh, one of the biggest ways that I've seen this parable is uh through evangelizing, you know, sometimes people aren't ready, they're not ready to let go of their old environments to be able to produce fruit, you know, to grow out of the soil. But we can also take it from the standpoint of, you know, sometimes people are called out, but because their roots aren't planted in in the right ground, and we could say firm foundation, even one of the songs, right? Um, which ties in more with the parable of uh being built on a rock, but um we could say if there's not a firm foundation, because when we think about roots and they go down, they they take a hold. When we don't have that, Christians, it's very easy for us to sway. Here in one of the verses it says other seeds fell among thorns and the thorns grew up and choked them. In the end times it's said that, you know, false teachings will rise up, false prophets, and if we aren't rooted where we're supposed to be with the truth in the Bible, it will be so easy for us to be choked up, and so we can't be listening to the wrong things, we can't be listening to the wrong uh messages. We have to be very careful in these times of who we're listening to, who we're giving our time and attention to, and because if not, it could lead us to bad morals, uh not prospering. So then on Tuesday, I was listening um to my pastor, and he was referring to uh the prodigal son, and the prodigal son, it says in Luke 15, 17 to 18, but when he finally came to his senses, he said, How many of my father's hired men have more than enough food? While I am dying here of hunger, I will get up and go to my father and I will say to him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight. Here, when we think about it, he took his the inheritance early on, before he was supposed to, because technically you take the inheritance after someone passes away. Second, he went, he spent all the money, and then he's in in the midst of pigs, you know, and he he's starving. He's not in the right environment. But he came to his senses and he was like, yo, like, I have a better life waiting for me, or I had a better life, and what am I doing here? And so this is someone who was in the wrong environment because of their own decisions, because they maybe they listened to a friend and they were like, Hey, go ask your dad for his inheritance early on and go do this and do that, and he wanted to live the lifestyle that other people in the world were living instead of living the life he was called to live. And we also think about devil. I'm not gonna read all of it, but it in Ezekiel 28, verse 13 to 16, it says all of these things that he was doing when he was in heaven, what he was dressed in, and all of these amazing things that he had. And I was reading this and I was just I was like, bro, like he was really living the life. And it says you were blameless in your ways from the day you were created till unrighteousness was found in you. And so that's when he was cast from the mountain of God and destroyed from the midst of stones of fire, and that's when he was placed into the wrong environment, the environment that he was never called to be in. He was meant to be up with God, and because of his unrighteousness, he was cast away. I also put uh down Jonah, who fled to Tarnish from the presence of the Lord to escape from him because he didn't want to obey God. So he found himself in the wrong environment. Uh many of y'all may know the story. Um, he got eaten by the fish, he was in his belly, and basically he ended he ended up doing what God wanted him to do in the first place, but he ended up running away, right? Two of these people already, you know, they they ended up realizing, hey, what I did was wrong, let me go back. And so the last person I want to touch is David. I'm not gonna read the whole thing again, but it's 2 Samuel 11, 1 to 2. He was when he remained at Jerusalem. And then he looked out his window and he saw Bathsheba. Now, when we think about that, if he would have gone away to battle when he was supposed to go battle, he would have never fallen in this sin. Sometimes when we're called to do things and we are supposed to go do things and we refuse to do them, sometimes God allows those things to happen to us, these bad things to happen to us, because we disobeyed, and it wasn't because he wanted to let those bad things happen to us, but it was our own negligence and our own disobedience that brought us to that repercussion because we ran away from what we were supposed to do rather than doing what God told us to do, and we would have been blessed, we would have been prosperous. It ruined our morals by going and listening maybe to what someone our friend said, Hey, go out and do this. Man, don't go to battle. You've been battling your whole youth, you know. Like, why would you go to battle? You're a king now. Sit back, relax. Jonah, why would you listen to the to what God says? Maybe it's not even God talking to you. These are things that sometimes the world, people, friends, whoever can tell us, and we stay in wrong environments when we were called to do so much more. So at the end of the day, uh, we have a decision to make when we're running our race. Do we want to stay in the wrong environments or do we actually want to listen to the word of God and go out and do what we were called to do? And so that's all I have for y'all today. I pray that it blesses your life, and I pray that it inspires you to not run away from God's calling and stay in wrong environments, but go out and actually run your race and do what you were called to do. And I'll catch y'all in the next one.