Be a good steward of your influence.

While studying about stewardship, I came across an interesting article by Rick Warren and thought of sharing it, as I found it very insightful. Do you know everything you have is a gift from God? From your health, your life, your salvation, your freedom, your friends, your family, your opportunities to your career God expects you to make the most of the things He gives you which is stewardship. In simple English, Stewardship is “management.”

God expects us to be an influence and use it to make positive impact, In our schools, In our communities and in our generation. On this particular post, I’ll focus on why we ought to manage our influence. So, what is influence? Influence is not popularity as many think; influence is the power or the capacity to have an effect on the character, development, or behavior of someone or something, or the effect itself.

Let me use a simple illustration to bring my point home, if you have a small garden outside your house, there is a tendency you’ll have to water it every day with pure water and not contaminated water. If you dare try to use contaminated water with harmful chemicals to water your beautiful flowers, they will die right!!!

So, what kind of influence do you possess when people come into contact with you??Do they get encouraged, inspired, challenged positively or do you mislead people, intimidate them or do you make them feel inferior???. If you are an encourager and always see the best despite of challenges, people will always appreciate spending time with you, reason being, you always speak life and hope.

Please take note:-What we need in this world is positive influence. There are problems that need to be fixed and causes that need to be advanced especially the cause of telling the whole world about Jesus and we need every Christian to be influencing the world on Jesus’ behalf.

You should always desire to be influential. In fact, it’s quite selfish to say, “I don’t really care about the rest of the world. I don’t care about helping anybody else.  I’m just thinking about little “ me.” In fact, Jesus commands that you use your influence for good in this world. You were put here to be an influence for good. God wants you to do that. Someday we’re going to give an account to God of how well we influenced others for good and for God.

In Matthew 5:13-16, Jesus says, You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men.“You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house.Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.

Why does God want us to be the salt of the earth?

Salt seasons

It improves taste

It preserves.

Above are three simple yet important things, God wants you to do with your life for such a time as this. God wants you to season the world with His truth, love, hope, In order to make the world tastier and not flat. He wants you to improve the world ,He wants you to preserve it and to keep it from going rotten. We are assigned to influence the world ad not the world influencing us. Jeremiah 15:19 This is how the Lord responds: “If you return to me, I will restore you so you can continue to serve me. If you speak good words rather than worthless ones, you will be my spokesman. You must influence them; do not let them influence you!

Jesus doesn’t want you to waste your influence. You don’t buy a lamp and then hide it. You don’t get a light bulb and then never use it. In the same way, it’s wasteful to refuse to use your influence.

To be a good steward of your influence, you need to do at least three things:

1. Recognize your influence. Stop and think about who you influence, and how you best influence them. Take inventory of your experiences, your talents and abilities, your passions and interests. And think about the people you seem to connect with the best. Realize that you do have influence and you simply need to recognize it.

2. Exercise your influence. Influence is like a muscle, use it or lose it. Most of us have far more influence than we’ve ever imagined. The influence that you have can be incredibly more powerful if you and I would just take the simple step of being a little more intentional about our influence.

3. Maximize your influence. There are only two legitimate reasons for expanding your influence. One is ministry and the other is mission. In other words, you expand your influence in order to help more people and to bring more people to Jesus. Any other reason for expanding your influence is illegitimate, self-centered, and selfish. On the other hand, there is almost nothing that God will not do for the person whose ultimate goal is the glory of God.

I have penned down Influence Positively which I believe is a good read to connect with this particular post.

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ReinaBeaty