Throughout my life I have heard that “actions speak louder than words”. Sometimes it might be worded differently, but the meaning is clear. This week I ran across a quote from Alistair Begg that put it into a Christian context. “When my children hear godliness coming from my mouth and then see wickedness coming from my life; I am pointing the way to heaven, while leading them to hell.”
Our influence goes well beyond our children. Sociologists have stated that the average person influences 10,000 people in some way during their lifetime. We may not know the names of many of those people because they are observing and listening from a distance. I may have exceeded that number because of my advanced age and the popularity of this blog. Some special people, like Billy Graham, have had a tremendous influence on the lives of millions of people. The question is this; are we influencing them in a positive or negative way?
Good news! There is a simple way Christians can always be sure our influence is positive. All we have to do is be obedient to God’s Holy Spirit within us. He will guide our actions and our words. He will never prompt us to set a bad example or use our words to hurt or negatively influence others. If you pay attention to and obey the Holy Spirit, those people seeking to label you in a stereotypical way as a hypocrite (or something even worse) because you profess Christ as your Savior will be disappointed. Even if they accuse you falsely after learning the truth, you can rejoice because the prophets and even our Lord was falsely accused as well.
I don’t know about you, but I’m looking forward to thanking people some day for the positive influence they had on my life without even knowing me; and then meeting all of the people I have influenced and finally learning about them. Until then, I will do my best to keep my influence positive and helpful.