Influence

By Julian Newman
        

Recently author, speaker and good friend Sean Smith said, “..the church has largely lost the ear of a generation.” Ironically in the midst so much ‘Christian’ noise, our voice in relation to our impact is more of a whisper (and whimper) than a shout.

Though we have Christian radio, TV, music, movies, T-Shirts, merchandise, and so much more, we don’t have near the influence that would seem appropriate for a people that claim to be connected to a Cosmic King and Creator of the Universe. So the question is…Why? What has happened to our influence? Though there are many answers to this question, I believe two answers sum up the problem.

Answer #1: The church has stopped living a life of sacrifice.
Somewhere along the way we’ve bought into the ‘American Dream,’ and neglected God’s Kingdom dream. Rather than living as soldiers and citizens of an enduring heaven, we’ve become civilians of this terrestrial sphere building earthbound kingdoms that don’t matter. This mindset is reflected in how we spend our time, our money and what we (and our children) aspire to be. But Jesus never called us to make ‘Today’ the primary focus of our lives.

He taught us to live here on earth with an eye looking toward heaven. That’s why His disciples boldly embraced hardship, extreme resistance and painful persecution. They realized that every sacrifice they made in the name of Jesus would only increase their heavenly reward.

With this mentality they toppled kingdoms, transformed cities and turned the world upside down (Acts 17:6). Jesus super-sized their influence because they were willing to lay it all on the line.

Answer #2: The church is largely a conquered people.
In His last hours leading up to the cross, Jesus said, “The ruler of this world comes, but he has nothing in Me” (John 14:30). Jesus was making a formal declaration of what His life already confirmed: Satan could scream, howl and spectacularly assail Jesus, but he couldn’t beat Jesus because he had zero influence on Jesus’ life.

Zero influence meant zero impact.

Unfortunately in the present day, most Jesus followers can’t come close to making a similar claim. Yes, it’s true that we can’t attain Jesus’ sinless perfection. But that isn’t our problem. Our problem rests in not accessing the victory that Jesus provided by allowing Satan to have authority over us. When we harbor secret sin, secret vices and unconfessed issues, we make room for the Devil’s influence over our life.

We can’t have power over darkness if we allow darkness to have power over us.

James the servant of Christ writes in chapter 4 of the book bearing his name:

“Submit to God, resist the Devil, and he (the Devil) will flee from you.”

Notice that it says, “submit to God” before it speaks of resisting or fleeing. Without submitting and obeying God, we can’t resist, and the Devil won’t flee. We can quote scripture, pray all night and sing worship songs the rest of the day. But if we aren’t submitted to God, we can have no authority over the Devil.

It would do us well to regain a spirit of sacrifice, a renewed hatred for sin, and a restored vision for eternity. With the right Kingdom values in the right place, the modern church’s influence will rise once again.

Not influence to dominate, but to serve. Not influence to condemn, but to love. Not influence to embarrass, but to embrace.

To those that are greatly influenced by God, will be granted by God the privilege to greatly influence their generation.

We only have one life and one chance in which to change the world.

Let’s seize it…by seizing Him.

Scripture Of The Day: "Let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven." - Matthew 5:16 (NIV)

Julian Newman is a husband, father, writer, artist and storyteller who serves as Lead Pastor of Renaissance Church in the greater Sacramento region. He has passion for creativity, innovation, leadership, outreach and evangelism, mentoring, the arts, reading and teaching the bible. Find him at http://www.diaryofadreamer.com…