Leading Myself
How do we become a person of influence?
Jesus said in Matt 5:13-16
13 "You are the salt of the earth... 14 "You are the light of the world.
Then he gave a command... our memory verse for this week - lets say it together...
16 In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.
How do we do that? Last week we looked at this concept of "domino toppling" where one domino started a whole - amazing- series of events that was creative and demonstrated this concept of influence that all started with one domino that someone pushed over.
There is another aspect of the domino effect that is pretty crazy look at this...
when something extraordinary happens inside of us it produces a power that enables us to influence others - and that is what happens when we begin to lead ourselves. When we are able to lead ourselves, then we are in a position to influence others.
Jesus was the most influential person who has ever walked the earth, and he grew internally - in his own heart and mind - so that he was able to influence others. Lets look at this... lets read this together...
Luke 2:52
And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men. NIV
And Jesus kept increasing in wisdom and 1stature, and in afavor with God and men. NASU
So Jesus grew both tall and wise, and was loved by God and man. TLB
Jesus was the most influential person in history. God has wired our lives to make a difference in our world. Jesus shows us how we can become men and women of influence by building inside of each of us 3 characteristics of highly influential people. When we build these into our lives they can become like the Mentos that are dropped into those bottles of Coke and we have the power to influence others, because we are leading ourselves first.
You can only give what you have - you will only lead people to the level you have grown, you will only influence people to the extent that you influential integrity
Three characteristics of highly influential people who are able to lead themselves.
The first Mento is:
· I take responsibility for my character
Character is something not taken very seriously in our world today.
I must build the kind of life where I am taking seriously the kind of person I am becoming. By building character into my life I am developing a practical and spiritual wisdom that like fuel in the engine of influence, like a Mento. Character is the obvious effects of wisdom.
Luke 2:52
52 And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature
The only thing in the list that Jesus had no control over was how tall he would be physically, the word stature actually refers more to age - as he aged he gained in wisdom
Wisdom was something Jesus took seriously in his own life - He did not have the wisdom of God when he came as a man, He laid that aside to take on humanity, and he had to grow in it as a man. He pursued wisdom, he grew in character.
I want to give you a little recipe for building wisdom into your life:
Fear of the Lord + Knowledge + Skill X Discipline and a dash of suffering = Wisdom
Prov 9:10 "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.
Prov 4:7 Wisdom is supreme; therefore get wisdom. Though it cost all you have,a get understanding.
Jesus was the son of God and yet he knew he had to grow in wisdom. Yes he was the son of God, the one who made the world and everything in it, no one knew better than he did how the world was put together and how it worked.
He was the one who was with God in the beginning - no one knew the Father better than the son and yet as a man he had to grow in wisdom
Luke 2:46-50
After three days they found him in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. 47 Everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers. 48 When his parents saw him, they were astonished. His mother said to him, "Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you."
49 "Why were you searching for me?" he asked. "Didn't you know I had to be in my Father's house?"
Jesus was a learner - increased in knowledge that grew into wisdom. To grow in wisdom requires we grow - continue to grow in knowledge - it becomes who you are
Wisdom is the pursuit of Gaining ‘sense' of how life works in TRUTH - "chaakmaah"
"he has book knowledge but not a lick of sense"
Wisdom is not just the acquisition of information, but an understanding of how, why things work.
Wisdom is the ability to deal effectively with life.
Wisdom is the combination of knowledge, experience and suffering, the lessons of life learned at a high price. We learned from our mistakes. That is one reason wisdom comes with age, you have had more opportunities to suffer - and live through it.
Knowledge + Experience = Pragmatism - "I know the best way to get it done"
Pragmatism + Discipline and suffering = Wisdom "I know what it takes to get there rightly, in a way that will honour God and others"
To grow in character - Living the right ways for the right reasons and willing to pay a high price to honor God:
Committed to a higher model - Jesus - other Christ followers
Jesus was in the temple because he had to learn how to live from his heavenly Father.
Luke 2:49... "Didn't you know I had to be in my Father's house?"
It is only the fool who thinks that everything they do is right and done in the right way
Prov 26:12
12 Do you see a man wise in his own eyes?
There is more hope for a fool than for him.
Seeks honest evaluation
You need people around you who will tell you the truth about your character, but if you are not willing to seek their evaluation out you will rarely receive it. If someone has not given you honest feedback about your character, perhaps you have not sought it out.
Ps 139:23-24
23 Search me, O God, and know my heart;
test me and know my anxious thoughts.
24 See if there is any offensive way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting.
For us to grow in a particular area of life we must have evaluations. We don't just grow in character and wisdom on our own, we have to be challenged and evaluated.
I have been working on growing in a particular area of my life where I want to gain more influence and so I have asked some people to honestly evaluate me in that area on a regular basis. When I have tried to work on that area before without effective evaluation, it was only an area of my life that I talked about and didn't change in, but with evaluation I can grow and change.
Willing to work to change & grow
Grow in discipline. Growth takes work, effort, intentionality.
Jesus spent time working at learning and growing, it took effort. He could have been doing other things, but growing as a person, growing in wisdom was important to him.
Means we may have to give up play time to go to a seminar
Or give up sleep to learn to pray and hear from God
Or give up our own pride to ask for and receive an honest evaluation
But we will have to work at it if we want to grow and gain influence like God wants us to. So the first characteristic of highly influential people is they are willing to take responsibility for their own character.
The second Characteristic of highly influential people is
· I stay under the direction of the Holy Spirit
When you see a person who is willing to live under God's direction in their life it is like another mento that has just dropped into a bottle of Diet Coke
Jesus had to learn how to hear and respond to God as a human.
Luke 2:52
52 And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men
Isn't it interesting that Jesus had to grow in favour with God - He didn't already have it and he didn't assume he had it either. Yes God loved him but love and favour are not the same things.
He had to learn to listen and respond to God's Spirit - he had to be willing to trust God and move in faith,
He grew in it - it didn't just ‘come up on him' he didn't just wake up one morning and have some spiritual epiphany and all the sudden he was in some new spiritual dimension that gave him great insight and power.
Key Issue in finding favour with God is obeying God -
To know how life really works under the will of God is Wisdom
and a willingness to live under His authority and will is gaining God's favour.
Doesn't this give you a new insight to Jesus' baptism when God said "this is my Son in whom I am well pleased"
I hope you read the story of David over this last week...
In the story of David - 1 Sam 16-17, the Israelites were facing the Philistines and the Israelite army was afraid of their champion giant Goliath.
David asks "
1 Sam 17:26
Who is this uncircumcised Philistine that he should defy the armies of the living God?"
Davids older brothers who are in the army get angry with him and tell him to shut up and go home, but David ignores them and keeps talking to anyone who would listen, finally, word gets to Saul, the king and David tells him:
1 Sam 17:32-37
32 David said to Saul, "Let no one lose heart on account of this Philistine; your servant will go and fight him." (that does not look like the picture of wisdom from a human perspective, but from God's view it makes perfect sense)
33 Saul replied, "You are not able to go out against this Philistine and fight him; you are only a boy, and he has been a fighting man from his youth." (Pragmatism - knowledge and experience - don't send a boy into battle)
34 But David said to Saul, "Your servant has been keeping his father's sheep. When a lion or a bear came and carried off a sheep from the flock, ( His knowledge) 35 I went after it, struck it and rescued the sheep from its mouth. ( David's personal experience with knowledge) When it turned on me,(David knows the price of his experience and knowledge - he has a had a mad bear running after him, he has wrestled a lion and he knows what their claws can do) I seized it by its hair, struck it and killed it. 36 Your servant has killed both the lion and the bear; this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, (David is applying wisdom here) because he has defied the armies of the living God. (David is commited to obeying God) 37 The Lord who delivered me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine." (His confidence comes from a higher place - His personal relationship with God - so He can be that Red Domino that exerts influence and starts things happening)
Saul said to David, "Go, and the Lord be with you." (God's favour is going with him)
David was willing to obey God when the Israelite army was still shaking in their sandels. David knew how to kill something greater and stronger than he was, and he had the experience and scars to prove it, and more than that - he had the confidence of God who he was following.
There are plenty of people who have read books about killing their particular giants but have never done it. They may speak eloquently and with confidence but they don't have the character to face the challenges and their influence is limited
The highly influential people display the marks of the Character of God that is built into their lives
I must remember, I am a servant of the Lord, he is the one building influence into my life, not what I am doing on my own.. so we must stay under his direction and when I do God provides me opportunities to influence others.
David gained in influence because he was aware of what God was doing and how God wanted to use his life and over his lifetime David influenced a whole nation.
Question for you to think about: In what ways is God lifting you up and giving you opportunity to influence others in significant ways?
Like Jesus, David knew what it was to grow in favour with God, regardless of what others around him were saying or doing - He was going to obey God and stay under the direction of the Holy Spirit - he knew how to distinguish God's voice when pragmatism was all around him and was willing to follow God's directions.
The third characteristic of a highly influential person is:
Here is a third Mento that will bring about great influence in another persons life.
· I build an encouraging personality
Luke 2:52 And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men
Jesus had to grow in favour with others around him.
Mark Twain
"Really great people make you feel that you, too, can become great"
All highly influential people have an encouraging personality. They have a personality that naturally leans towards helping others, developing others.
Even if it doesn't come so naturally, they work at it and develop this personality skill of encouraging others. We have all been around people who seem to suck life out of you. They are the ones who consistently say "NO", "You Can't", instead of helping you discover how to say "YES"
David experienced that in our story, He had some brothers who told him "NO" wanted to hold him back, put him in his place, keep him from doing what God had lead him there to do.
1 Sam 17:29-31
29 "Now what have I done?" said David. "Can't I even speak?" 30 He then turned away to someone else and brought up the same matter, and the men answered him as before. 31 What David said was overheard and reported to Saul, and Saul sent for him.
Then David goes out and slays the giant Goliath and sets a new political course for Israel as a winner - he lifts the spirits of the whole nation
1 Sam18:5
5 Whatever Saul sent him to do, David did it so successfullya that Saul gave him a high rank in the army. This pleased all the people, and Saul's officers as well.
Let me ask you - when a person around you is in trouble or down, are you quick to offer encouragement.
A good working definition of encouragement comes from the word itself -
En - inside
Courage - ability to face challenges with confidence
Ment - the procees of...
Are you in the process of putting courage - the ability to face challenges with confidence - into people.
We often mistake encouragement with flattery - making someone feel better about themselves, building up self-esteem - and often we have been conditioned to receive flattery as a cheap substitute for encouragement, it is like eating a candy bar for dinner, it may taste good, but it doesn't last long and after a while it develops something that has no strength.
Some people do not achieve influence because they have a personality deficit. You can acquire power without personality, but you can not acquire influence without an encouraging personality.
David was a master of putting courage into the Israelite people and he gained great influence - Under David's leadership he reunited a politically fractured Israel and it grew in world dominance
Prov 12:18
18 Reckless words pierce like a sword,
but the tongue of the wise brings healing.
Prov 16:24
24 Pleasant words are a honeycomb,
sweet to the soul and healing to the bones.
We can certainly see this in the life of Jesus - he attracted many large crowds of people to listen to the words he had to say.
He consistently brought life to people, healing and hope to people,
No one in all of history has had the influence on humanity that Jesus did. He knew how to lead himself to be a person of great influence.
Jesus says "You are the salt of the earth".. "You are the light of the world"...
So "let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven."
Jesus knew he had to grow in wisdom and in favour with God and man, and he did it. This growth did not happen by osmosis or some spiritual epiphany, but with intentional effort to build his character, to stay under the direction of the Holy Spirit and to grow an encouraging personality.
Next Steps for you today
Which of these three characteristics do you need to take initiative in? Are you willing to ask God to bring someone into your life to help you do that?
Memorize Luke 2:52
Read 1 Peter 1-5 this week
Ask God for someone (____________) to share your faith with this coming week