The Flipside of Influence
Influence • Sermon • Submitted
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· 5 viewsWhile we strive for influence, we need to know we are being influenced.
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
When Vickie and I started in full-time ministry, my first church was 10 miles from everywhere. The church had pulled a trailer in and that is where we lived. With the trailer in place, they poured one sidewalk with steps into the trailer. It was the only entrance that allowed us to get into the trailer easily and leave.
Because there were snakes everywhere, one of the deacons loaned me a shotgun. "You might need this if you come across a snake." So, I kept it tucked in the closet out of sight but readily available if a forked-tongue devil slithered too close.
One day we came home, pulled the car to a stop, and shut down the engine. I got out of the car and started to go into the house when, at the base of the steps, on the concrete where I had to cross was a rattlesnake sunning himself.
The gun was in the house. I did not dare step over him. There was a back door but it was off the ground. I had no choice. I walked around the trailer, crawled up into the trailer, and came back with the shotgun.
Now, I had to get down. I carefully edged my way down, holding the barrel of the shotgun away, lest I became the calamity of the day. I went back around to the sidewalk, stood over him, and took aim.
Then, I broke out in a bad case of sanity.
I started to think that if I stood there and fired, I would get a face full of buckshot back from the ricochet. I took a step back and fired at an angle. The snake disappeared in the blast and I left a divot worthy of a bad golfer.
That's the problem with influence. It is buckshot coming back at us.
As we discuss influence in this series, we need to be aware of the flip side of our desire others. While we want to influence the world for Christ, others are attempting to influence us.
As much as we would like to think we are shaping others, we are being shaped. And that’s the flipside of influence. How do we deal with influences on us that may prevent others from feeling our influence?
Let’s look at the reality of this influence from someone we know well.
Discussion
Discussion
The Reality of Influence
The Reality of Influence
In the early chapters of Genesis, we see humanity unfolding. We come to the flood and watch Noah’s patience and faith preserve mankind in the ark.
And time passes and we come to the father of the faithful…Abraham. It is in the midst of Abraham’s story we find the connective tissues of influence.
Abraham has a nephew named Lot. Think about Lot. He has good bloodlines, related to Abraham. And, he made the journey with his uncle to this place unknown. He took a leap as well.
The time came when competing flocks created friction. Prosperity forced choices.
Abraham deferred the choice of land to Lot. And Lot looked at the good but lacked insight into the underbelly of his choice.
And Lot lifted up his eyes and saw that the Jordan Valley was well watered everywhere like the garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt, in the direction of Zoar. (This was before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.) So Lot chose for himself all the Jordan Valley, and Lot journeyed east. Thus they separated from each other. Abram settled in the land of Canaan, while Lot settled among the cities of the valley and moved his tent as far as Sodom. Now the men of Sodom were wicked, great sinners against the Lord.
It seemed innocent enough. It was a business decision. Surely, he could live in the land unscathed by the Sodomites.
But more happened. Influence never rests. Instead, it keeps pushing.
A raiding party from a rival chieftain came and captured hostages.
They also took Lot, the son of Abram’s brother, who was dwelling in Sodom, and his possessions, and went their way.
He stopped living in tents and moved into town. He became a prominent citizen, one of the town leaders. He and his wife had two daughters who grew to adulthood in Lot’s household.
But something was happening to Lot. He was changing, even so subtly. It remained hidden from view until a crisis.
It started with a visit from angels who had delivered the news of Sodom’s destruction to Abraham.
The two angels came to Sodom in the evening, and Lot was sitting in the gate of Sodom. When Lot saw them, he rose to meet them and bowed himself with his face to the earth
Lot could at least still recognize them as God’s messengers.
They told him of the coming conflagration.
Then came the coarse pounding on his door. The men of Sodom wanted to have their way with the angels. It was lewd, and violent.
Lot intervened. Surely he could reason with them. But it was not reason that Lot took to the door. It was his last shred of morality. Instead, he offered his daughter to the lust-filled mob. How far can a father sink so far?
“Leave…Now” was the angel message. Lot went to his sons-in-law to persuade them.
So Lot went out and said to his sons-in-law, who were to marry his daughters, “Up! Get out of this place, for the Lord is about to destroy the city.” But he seemed to his sons-in-law to be jesting.
Without realizing it, whatever sway he had over his own children had slipped from his grasp.
It was time to go but the town had gotten into him. He yearned to stay. But the angels refused.
But he lingered. So the men seized him and his wife and his two daughters by the hand, the Lord being merciful to him, and they brought him out and set him outside the city.
They fled. His wife, whose heart was in Sodom, glanced backward and became a salt pillar.
Out at Zoar, he could see the fires light up the night sky. His home was gone. His wife was gone. But it would claim even more.His daughters would conspire against him.
Come, let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him, that we may preserve offspring from our father.”
Thus both the daughters of Lot became pregnant by their father.
In the end, any shred of morality he tried to keep for himself and teach his family vanished.
Sodom had won.
Influence moves on sock feet. You never hear it and many times you never see it, until its fruit sprouts in your life.
Paul was right.
Do not be deceived: “Bad company ruins good morals.”
Bad apples ruin good ones. Moldy bread spreads the mold to good slices.
Whether we want to admit it or not, our surroundings affect us. What goes into our minds comes out in our lives.
Lot chose his environment. He chose his friends. He chose his city. He chose everything but the unintended consequences.
He never thought it could happen to him. And we don’t think it can every happen to us as well.
So, it sounds like the answer is to get away from it all. Find a mountaintop in Idaho, build a cabin on it. Disconnect the internet, junk the satellite dish on the roof and threaten anyone who comes toward the cabin.
That does two things. The first is it keeps you and I from influencing anyone else. Salt in salt shakers don’t make food better. Lamps under bushels cast no light.
Second is that it doesn’t guarantee anything. In Matthew 4, Jesus in alone in the desert. But he’s not alone. The devil is there. And then, he is there with all of his humanity. He feels hunger. There is the human need to prove we are someone. And then, we all want to avoid pain.
All become the cracked open doors of the devil’s influence.
But Jesus repels all the darts coming at him.
It’s over. Not on your life!
Luke tells us:
And when the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from him until an opportune time.
It was only a temporary reprieve. Influence is the steady drip of spiritual torture.
But there is a reason for the influence we feel on our lives.
The Reason
The Reason
There is a need in humanity that creates the influence we feel.
Peter reflects on why persecution is coming to the Christians.
so as to live for the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for human passions but for the will of God. For the time that is past suffices for doing what the Gentiles want to do, living in sensuality, passions, drunkenness, orgies, drinking parties, and lawless idolatry.
Christians are distinct. Their lives are the diamond against black velvet.
Therefore, they have a problem. Worldly people want to bring Christians down to their level. It creates equality.
With respect to this they are surprised when you do not join them in the same flood of debauchery, and they malign you;
The reason for the abuse of the dissonance. When someone exhibits higher standards, ones of purity and integrity, they want to bring them down to their level. That way they are the same as us. And…by extension…we are as good, or bad, as they are.
When I was a boy, my mother enrolled me in an archery class in the summer to keep me busy. I loved it and I got pretty good at it.
But as I reflect on it, as soon as you saw the target, the bulls-eye at the center drew your attention. You never saw the green grass on the other side of the target. Instead, you focus on the ideal, the perfect. Dead center and that’s what you aimed for.
Someone has said “the arrow does not seek the target. The target draws the arrow.”
Christian influence gets attacked because it threatens people, even those who reject that notion.
If the world brings us down, it destroys our influence with them.
So what is the remedy to this situation?
The Remedy
The Remedy
The remedy comes in two forms.
The first is recognition.
One of our basic flaws is we ignore the simple issue that forces are working on us.
Paul warned the Corinthians about the internal influence in their church.
Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump?
He says the same to the Galatians.
A little leaven leavens the whole lump.
It is the small unseen particle of spiritual ferment that begins to work. It is silent.
Unless you recognize the leavening taking place in life, soon it overwhelms.
Jesus warned Peter of the pressures upon him.
When Jesus started talking of death, death on the cross at the hands of the Jewish leaders, Peter wanted to hear nothing of the defeatist attitude. He turns and rebukes Jesus.
But Jesus fired a warning volley.
But turning and seeing his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.”
He said, “Satan is getting to close to you.”
But it wasn’t over.
And Jesus said to them, “You will all fall away, for it is written, ‘I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered.’ But after I am raised up, I will go before you to Galilee.” Peter said to him, “Even though they all fall away, I will not.”
Jesus told them the truth. The moment in the garden would come and fear would overwhelm them. They would run for their lives.
Again, Peter would have none of it. There was no way under heaven he was going to become a turncoat.
But Jesus wasn’t finished with his warning. It suddenly became intensely personal for Peter.
And Jesus said to him, “Truly, I tell you, this very night, before the rooster crows twice, you will deny me three times.” But he said emphatically, “If I must die with you, I will not deny you.” And they all said the same.
You don’t know how much pressure you are under Peter. In a few short hours, the pressure will collapse your allegiance.
Peter did not seem to think much about this. He believed it could never happen to him.
And yet, in a courtyard around a charcoal fire, he spit out the words of denial without thinking.
The pressure pushed him to traitor.
Our problem is two fold. One is that we don’t believe that the pressure is that real. But the second is worse. We don’t recognize our weakened condition. We are not as strong as we think we are.
The story is told of a teenager who started hanging out with the wrong kind of friends. His father admonished him. “You need to stay away from them. They are no good.”
“But Dad,” he replied, “I am just trying to be like Jesus. He was a friend of sinners.”
And his father, without missing a beat told him, “That’s fine, but you aren’t Jesus.”
We are constantly feeling the bombardment of words, images, relationships, and ideas. No one is immune.
So, the words “be careful are important.
We must heed Paul’s counsel.
Therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall.
Knowing is half the equation. The remainder is resistance.
We tend, like Peter, to believe in our willpower.
But don’t you grow tired? Usually temptation doesn’t send an engraved announcement proclaiming date and time of arrival.
What you have at the moment is what you have to use.
Part of resistance to influence is replacing that perverted with the innocent.
Paul would continue with the leaven problem:
Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed.
You clean out the leaven.
We get our tradition of spring cleaning from the Jews at Passover. They were instructed to sweep their houses of all the yeast.
We need to periodically sweep our lives of things creating problems.
Take an inventory.
What Facebook friends pull you down or mislead you? Do you need to have them?
What about websites you visit? Do they it bring you closer to Christ or sow discord in your heart?
What about media? When you fire up Netflix, what does that latest “have to see” binge-worthy series do to your spiritual senses.
Remember, we get most of our influence, like Lot, by moving to close to Sodom. We don’t end up living in Sodom. Sodom lives in us.
The principle is simple. It is the force field. Two forces on each side. The force that is greatest and strongest will prevail.
Think of two guys sitting at a table when one challenges the other to arm wrestle. They lock palms and go to town. The one who has the resources to prevail will win.
When influence pushes, we have to push back harder. That usually means we need a rather large spiritual friend.
Have you eaten your spiritual Wheaties? What goes into your life to fortify influence for good and repels influence for evil?
One is fellowship of the saints. We become like who we are around. We can put good leaven in our life. It can grow. We change for good when surrounding ourselves with people who influence us for good. If we are going to be influenced, might as well make it positive influence.
Second is what the anchor holding your life steady. A weak anchor means that in storms, there is nothing to hold.
The psalmist said:
Oh how I love your law!
It is my meditation all the day.
The law was his meditation. He is not talking about sitting cross-legged on a cushion.
Instead the word “meditation” means to go over in your mind. It is repetitive. In fact, it is used also of the constant complainer.
It is not necessarily more information. It is drilling deep into the heart and letting God’s truth shape and frame the values we use for living.
Resistance is avoiding what makes us weak and doing more of what makes us strong.
While that is easy to say, it is hard to do.’
Conclusion
Conclusion
As much as we wish otherwise, influence flows both ways. The world tugs at us as we try to rub off on it.
The only issue is whose is stronger in your life. People watch Christians struggle with the same problems they do. They want to see if Christianity works under pressure.
If we have learned nothing else in the last 12 months, it should be this. Things spread. The bad spreads with the good. And if the good is not overcome by evil, it can infiltrate through the world.
How do we maintain our influence under the forces exerted on us.
Know Yourself. Who are you? Where are you weakest? What is coming at your life right now? The person most at risk is the one who believes he is immune. Get real with what’s happening in your own heart.
Know Your Holes. We don’t have to bolt the door to keep our the flies and mosquitoes. Instead, you can have a screen door. It lets the air in without the pests. But, if it has a hole in it, that’s where the fly comes in. What are the holes you have in your life? What’s unguarded, allowing information in? Fix the holes. Plug them up and keep the world at bay.
Know Your Reason. Many times people lose their influence because they forgot why God gave them life. The reason for your spiritual life is important. Why did you become a Christian? What has it done for you? These answers can do much for you.
We need to remember that our influence can be powerful.
In 1962, an outbreak happened at a girls’ school in Tanzania.
One girl started laughing. Soon, it spread from girl to girl until 95 of the 157 students could not stop laughing. It got so bad, the school had to close because it could not control the laughter.
It lasted 18 months, closed 14 schools and affected over 1000 students.
We pray that that kind of Christian joy can overcome this world and its pressure on us.