Are You an Influencer or Just Influenced? (New Beginnings UMC)

When I was graduating from high school and people were talking

to me about careers, not a single person asked me if I

wanted to be an influencer. I'm not sure if anyone here got

asked that question. John, were you ever asked?

No, you don't. It's influencing it.

It is a reality that that is now a profession.

I don't. I still don't quite understand

that. But that's all right.

It's not my generation. There are folks out there who

knows. Gavin, do you think you might be

a social media influencer by career, one of these?

No, no, no. How about you, AJ?

You. You're going to be a social

media influencer. No, maybe not.

Did you say that's all right? Yeah.

You're going to be a social media influencer when you grow

up. No.

No. OK.

How about you going to be a social media?

No, no. All right.

We've got no future social media influencers in this crowd.

Except maybe Anne. I think.

I think you will. OK, Aiden, Aiden's going to do

it. He's going to lead the way for

us. The rest of us will will not be

that. It's weird to me that that's a

profession. The fact that it's weird to me

is nothing says nothing other than that I'm getting old.

But the simple reality is the question of whether we're going

to be an influencer or whether we're just going to be

influenced is something that every single one of us has to

wrestle with and deal with. And, and it's it's not a

question that stops that. It's true.

Wherever we go ongoing, it's a renewed question that we have to

keep asking ourselves, are we going to be an influencer or

just influenced. And I think there are some

respects is that this is one of the often untalked about aspects

of the story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and and

particularly of Lot's role and place in all of that.

If you recall, Lot and Abrahm were fighting over land for

grazing flocks, and Abrahm gave Lot the choice.

Lot decided to go to the Jordan Valley and pitch his tent near

Sodom. Abrahm lived in the land of

Canaan, while Lot moved among the cities of the plain and

pitched his tents near Sodom. When he did that, Lot could have

gone in with a particular mindset.

The mindset could have been, you know what, I know there's a lot

of things going on down in Sodom that they are, that there's a

lot of wealth, but there's also a tremendous amount of

indifference to the poor and the needy.

And even though they are very, very prosperous, they do nothing

to care for the vulnerable among them.

That's a problem. But because I've heard from

Abraham, well, Abrahm, then at that point I've heard from

Abrahm and I've traveled with him.

Abrahm left. We left our homeland because God

promised Abrahm to take him to a land that he would show it.

And God did. And God told Abrahm that all the

nations of the world would be blessed through him.

And I'm part of that promise. And I've seen it work because it

well, though it would not at that point because he hadn't

been captured, but he eventually did see it work.

He could have gone down to the Jordan Valley and said, you know

what? God has shown himself to be

powerful. God has shown himself to be

faithful. I want to, as much as I am able,

influence folks around me to faithfully follow God in return,

to live their lives God's way, including sharing the good

things God has blessed us with. Being a blessing to others.

That's that's the essence in some respects of God's promise

to Abram, that his life is about being a blessing to others, not

just accumulating blessings for himself.

That could have been Lot's mindset.

If it was Lot's mindset, we have absolutely no evidence of it.

What we do know, what we do know is this, that Lot failed to

influence his community or his family as he lived first in the

plains of Jordan near Sodom and then in Sodom.

He became a leader in the city. He was a judge in the city.

That's that's why he was at the gate.

That's what the leaders did. They stayed at the city gates.

They welcomed the gusts. They, they resolved disputes

that would people would bring to them when multiple leaders

gathered, they would make decisions.

And and that's what Lot became a leader in the city of Sodom and

yet failed to have any real impact or influence for good in

that city, and not just in the community, but in his family as

well. So let's talk about family

first, because that's where influence starts is how do we

impact our family and the folks around us?

And, and there's a lot. His family was small, His wife,

he had two. They had two daughters and they

had two sons in law. They weren't married yet, but

engagement, what we call engagement now, the promise to

be married was a much more formal relationship and that

part of the world in those days. So, so that's why they can say

that they were his sons in law even though his daughters were

not yet married to them, but very close.

Their families had already started the important process of

uniting. And when the angels told Lot,

God's going to wipe this whole area out.

If you've got any family here, go tell them so they can get out

too. And he goes to his sons in law

and they laugh at it. It's a joke to them.

This is crazy. Whatever Lot may or may not have

told them about God. And by this time got Lot had

seen it first hand when his whole family was taken as

political prisoners and God through Abram set them free from

that and brought them safely back to their homes.

But they laughed at him. They thought he was a joke.

When they're fleeing, they're fleeing.

And now it's just Lot and his wife and his two daughters.

They're fleeing. They're getting to the

mountains. They're turning back.

They're well, they're getting the mountains.

The destruction is happening behind them.

And Lot's wife turns back. And this is more than just she

just turned around to take a look.

The implication there in that is, is that she was yearning to

go back, that that she didn't want to lose the life she had

there. And this corrupt civilization

which was so intent on the wealthy being wealthy, that's so

indifferent toward the needs of the vulnerable among them.

And that's the life she wanted. That's the life.

She was already missing that life.

And then they get into the mountains and now it's just Lot

and his daughters, and they're the only ones left, and they

don't have their husbands anymore.

They've been killed in the destruction and they don't have

their mom anymore. And so they do unspeakable

things to their dad so that they can have children of their own.

Lot had no influence for the good on anyone, as far as we can

tell. It seems that instead of Lot

influencing his family, that his family simply adopted the

culture that they were in, the culture that was around them.

Get what you can for yourself, who cares about others.

Lot had no influence, no influence in the community, no

influence with his family. And why was that?

I think it's because of the reasons why Lot went there to

begin with. Lot was negatively influenced

because he was focused on the wrong thing.

You remember why Lot went to the Jordan Valley, why he pitched

his tent near Sodom. Lot looked around and saw that

the whole plain of the Jordan towards Zohar was well watered.

It's like the Garden of the Lord, like the Garden of Eden,

like the land of Egypt, the most prosperous nation in the world.

So Lot chose for himself the whole plain of the Jordan and

set out to go. E Lot went to the Jordan value.

Lot went to Sodom because he wanted to get in on the

prosperity that was already there.

He didn't go to be a blessing. He go, we went to get a blessing

to get something for himself. He was chasing wealth, he was

chasing status, he was chasing prosperity.

And so instead of going to that area and saying how can I be a

blessing here, he went to that area because he wanted the

blessing of that stuff. He wanted to get in on the

wealth too. And because of that, instead of

influencing the people around them, he just adopted the

culture. He was influenced by the people

around him. Let's get a counterexample here.

Anyone know the name Eric Little?

Do you know that? Anyone know that name?

I've had one person do. If you if you like old sports

movies, there's a movie from the 70s called Chariots of Fire,

which in my humble opinion, one of the greatest sports movies

ever made, one of the greatest movies ever made.

That's just my opinion. That's not a thus saith the Lord

thing. It's a true story about and Eric

Little is one of the main characters in the in the movie

Eric Little at the opening of the movie.

He is, he is in university and this is in the 1920s, nineteen

20s. He's in the University of

Edinburgh and Scotland training to be a missionary to China.

But he's also a tremendous athlete and he's played in

multiple games for the Scottish national rugby team and he's

very fast and he competes in track and field and he's very

successful. He's so successful that he makes

it on to the British Olympic team for the 1924 Olympics that

it will be held in Paris Now his sister and some of his friends

are very disturbed by Eric's. What they see is obsession with

sports, and they believe he's being distracted, that he's

losing his focus, that that he should be focusing on his

mission work, not on these silly games and not on the glory and

the fame and the publicity and the status and the position that

can come from being a successful athlete even then, even at that

time. But Eric assures them that he

hasn't lost his focus. They're not so sure.

But the test comes after he makes the team.

They're actually travelling to Paris by ship when the word

comes out Eric qualified to compete in the 100 meter dash.

That's what he's going to be competing in.

The only event he's he's he's scheduled to compete in the 100

meter dash. And they find out on the ship on

the way there that one of the preliminary heats for the 100

meter dash is on a Sunday. And one of the key tenants and

Eric's, you know, tradition of Christianity is observing the

Sabbath. And you don't do anything but

worship and spend time with family on the Sabbath, nothing

else. And so here's the test.

Is Eric going to be an influencer or will he be

influenced? And he declares at that point

that he will not compete on the Sabbath and therefore he has to

withdraw from the 100 meter dash.

This, he was one of the favorites.

This does not go over well with the British and the leaders of

the Olympic team. And they bring Eric in to have a

discussion with him to really to browbeat him.

And and they use all of the power at their disposal.

high-ranking people, people of wealth and position authority,

including the Prince of Wales, the Crown Prince of England is

there to persuade Eric to compete for the sake of national

honor and dignity. We're going to watch a slide.

You're probably, we might need to restart this.

The it's pretty quiet. You might need to push up the

volume a little bit above normal for us to hear this,

particularly at the beginning. So let's watch this

conversation. Lord Birkenhead has advised us

as to your attitude towards your participation in the 100 meters

heats little Or would your non participation be more accurate?

It would say yes. We were also consulted as to the

correct manner in which to approach the French.

Something we just can't allow to happen.

Going cap and hand to the frogs of all people, simply out of the

question. Simple matter of national

dignity? Little being a patriot, I'm sure

you understand. Well, I must say so I felt it

was an impractical suggestion from the start.

Why did you say so man? As an athlete, you value economy

of effort. I wanted to run.

I was desperate not to try anything.

Well, all that being understood, we decided to invite you in for

a little chat to see if there's any way that we can help resolve

the situation. There's only one way to resolve

the situation, that's for this man to change his mind and run.

Don't state the obvious, Gadagan.

We have to explore ways in which we can help this young man to.

Reach that decision. I'm afraid there are no ways,

Sir. I won't run on the Sabbath, and

that's final. I intended to confirm this with

Lord Birkenhead tonight, even before you called me up in front

of this inquisition of yours. Don't be impertinent, Needle.

The impertinence lies so with those who seek to influence a

man to deny his beliefs. For the country, little We're

appealing to your beliefs in your country and your king, your

loyalty to them. Yeah, here in my day it was King

fest, God after. Yes, and the War to End wars

bitterly proved your point. God made countries, God makes

kings, and the rules by which they govern, and those rules say

that the Sabbath is His, and I for one intend to keep it that

way. Mr. Liddle, you're a child of

your race, as I am. We share a common heritage,

common bond, a common loyalty. There are times when we're asked

to make sacrifices in the name of that loyalty.

And without the my allegiance is worthless.

As I see it, for you this is such a time.

So God knows I love my country, but I can't make that sacrifice.

And Eric didn't make that sacrifice.

He chose not to run. Now what happened was really

kind of cool. One of Eric's team mates who had

qualified in two events and already meddled in one of them,

gave up his spot in the 400 meters so Eric could run in the

400 meters instead, which did not have a heat on Sunday, and

Eric ended up winning gold medal.

Rather extraordinary story if you stop there, which is where

the movie stops. But when you also add in the The

next year, 1925, Eric left England and went to China as a

missionary, where he spent the rest of his life, which turned

out to only be 20 years, where he had a tremendous impact, not

in terms of mass conversions, but in terms of influence in

individual people's lives. He was there in China when World

War 2 started. He was there in China when the

Japanese arrived and he, along with many Chinese, was placed

into a prison camp. Not a good place to be.

And while Eric was in the prison camp, do you know what he was

doing? He was was playing rugby when he

could. He was teaching Bible studies.

He was preaching when there wasn't enough food, he gave his

food to people that were hungrier than he was.

When there wasn't enough medicine, he gave his medicine

to people who were sicker than he was.

And before the war ended, he died in that camp.

Polar opposite of Lot Eric Little.

Lot focused on prosperity. What can I get for myself?

How can I improve my position, my status, my privilege, my my

place in society? And Eric Little how can I be a

blessing to others? How can I serve others?

How can I lift up others? One of them was influenced and

shaped and became just like the culture in which they lived.

The other influenced those around him without cutting

himself off from the culture in which he lived.

Lot's failure was huge on both a horizontal and a vertical level.

Horizontal level. We've already talked about that.

Everyone that he knew was either destroyed physically, died in

the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, or were so shaped by

the culture of that place that it destroyed them as people.

Particularly thinking of his daughters here and himself in

many respects, but vertically as well because the children that

his daughters had that were also his children ended up leading

two of the nations that violently opposed the Israelites

as they left slavery in Egypt and were returning to the

Promised land. They stood in their way and did

everything they could to prevent them from receiving the blessing

that God had for them. Hundreds of years after Lot's

failure to influence, his decisions were still having a

negative impact. This question is important for

the same reasons for us, because our ability to influence or our

capacity to be influenced, we'll have positive or negative

consequences not just around us now, but for generations to

come. So let's talk about that.

Some of the practical implications here, because

chances are, chances are, none of us is going to compete in the

Olympics, probably chances are none of us is going to be die in

a prison camp in a foreign land. Chances are.

So what does all of this have to do with us?

What does all of this have to do with us?

It has to do with this. We need to be aware in our own

daily lives of our own limits, including our capacity to

influence. Maybe the best decision Lot

could have made in his entire life was when Abrahm said you

pick where to live. If, if Lot had said, you know

what, I really like what's happening down there in the

Jordan Valley. I like it so much.

I don't think it's a good idea for me to go there.

Even if I want to influence them.

I, I, I, I don't think I have that in me to do that, to

recognize our own limits. Because for all of us, there are

places where we can be of influence and there are places

where we can't. 2 simple examples to illustrate this.

Someone's two years sober from alcoholism.

The bar is probably not your mission field.

Right, Because you go there, there's our good chance you're

just going to go back to doing the stuff that made you in such

a bad position to begin with. Guys I worked with so often

about girls and guys at the juvenile detention center in

Seneca County when I lived up there just were repeated

examples of this. It would come in to jail.

They would swear off everything. They were determined they were

going to do life better after they got out so they would never

have to come back to jail. They were, some of them didn't

care, but a lot of them were absolutely serious.

They would leave and 6 to 12 months later they were back.

And I would say what happened and their story inevitably, like

9 times out of 10 was something like, well, I got to hanging out

with my old friends again. 1st. I wasn't going to, but I went to

hang out when I was like, I'm going to hang out with them, but

I'm not going to do the stuff that they're doing.

And they hang out with them And they started doing, well, they

were, you know, well, they're passing a joint, but I, I'll

just pass it. I'm not going to partake when it

comes to me. And they would partake when it

came to them eventually. And they eventually just went

back to the same pattern of behavior, influenced by the same

group of people that had helped them fail before.

They had zero chance of having a positive influence and an almost

guaranteed chance of being negatively influenced.

And we all have situations like that, places that are our

Achilles heel relationships, context settings, where if I go

there, I know I got almost zero chance of being a positive

influence and a 99.9% chance of being negatively influenced.

I got those kind of situations. It's like I just can't go there.

I can't. I can't try to help that person.

I can't try to be a friend of that.

I can't. And sometimes it is.

It's just a relationship too. When you know, it's like friends

and family say you know, when you're around that person,

you're a completely different person.

You should stop being around that person.

That person is not helping you and you are not helping them.

Let them go. Let someone else help him.

Pray for him, but you these are the kinds of things I'm talking

about. Now here's the thing.

This principle, this notion of being aware of our limitations

of being aware that there are some people in some groups, in

some situations where we just don't have the capacity to be a

positive influence. That's in tension with some of

the things that Jesus taught us lot story is in tension with

Jesus example of being a friend to sinners because Jesus made

Bible makes it clear. Jesus hung out with the quote UN

quote bad people. He hung out with the folks that

were doing the bad stuff. He went to their house, He had

dinner with them. He invited them to have dinner

with him. He made friends with them.

He invited some of them to be part of his inner circle and

that's intention. Jesus's example and call to us

to be a friend of sinners is in tension with lots pitching his

tent near Sodom and the one of the ways that some people

resolve that and some churches resolve that is to say we've got

to have a silo. We'll be in the world, but not

of the world. You know, we'll, I, I, we'll,

we'll, we'll be there. But, but we're going to put a

layer of bubble wrap and we're going to put a wall around us

and we're going to make sure that those bad people out there

don't influence us and our families in here.

We're going to have a whole separate subculture.

It has as little to do with those folks as possible.

We'll be the shining city on the hill.

But you better be like us before you get inside the gates.

Jesus's teaching an example completely disallows that.

We don't get to do it that way. But the other way we don't get

to do it is just whoo, Hoo. We'll just join in with

everything and do whatever they do, and we'll have fun.

And we'll be just like they are, and there won't be any

difference between US and them. That's what Lot did.

We also don't get to do well, We yeah, we can do either one of

those things. It just doesn't work well and

doesn't work out well. The middle course is much more

challenging, which is prayer and discernment.

And that we, we, we pray and we talk with God and we talk with

people that know us and love us best.

And we say, what about this person?

What about that situation? What about that relationship?

Because I feel like, you know, I, I feel like I can have an

impact there. And sometimes God and our

friends that know us and love us will say, yeah, go for it.

Sometimes they'll say, you know what?

I don't think you will. I think I think you will just

get dragged down. I think you won't make them

better. I think they'll make you worse.

And that's the route that we have, the difficult route of

prayerfully discerning. Can I have an impact?

Can I be an influence? Or will I simply be dragged down

in that situation, in that circumstance?

And we ask ourselves in prayer with them, to what degree can I

keep my focus on Jesus and his call in any given situation?

There are some situations I will not put myself in.

God bless the people that are in them.

They need to know that someone. They need someone to go and tell

them that Jesus loves them. They need someone to go and be

their friend without manipulating and exploiting

them. But there's some situations

where I am just not going to be able to be that person because

if I go there, I'm done. I'm done.

That's why it's great that we're part of the body because other

people can go there and they'll be all right.

Now I can go places. They can, I can go to a bar, I

can have a drink and it's going to be all right.

But there are places that I can go and that I won't go.

And and there's some folks I got good friends that are like,

don't ever take me to a bar. I can never be a good positive.

To what degree can we keep our focus on Jesus in any given

situation? I want to close with another

concrete modern day example. Someone you might have heard

this name a lot recently, and particularly if you follow the

news a lot, Maria Carina Machado.

Have you heard that name? I love that.

I don't know that I just, I love that, love the name Maria Carina

Machado is the the most recent recipient of the Nobel Peace

Prize. She just received it a couple

weeks ago. She could not go pick it up

herself because she is currently in hiding.

Most of her allies don't even know where she is.

She is a citizen of Venezuela and she, like every other person

in the world, was given the opportunity and the choice.

Do you want to get along to go along or go along to get along?

Or are you going to stand against something in the culture

that is negative? Can you be an influence here?

And she chose to be that. She grew up in a wealthy family.

It would have been easy enough to just kind of go along and use

the wealth to gain political favor and Curry political favor.

For whatever reason, she chose not to do well, not for whatever

reason. She has said her faith is one of

the reasons she's doing what she's doing.

She's a staunch Catholic and and deeply committed to to God and

to prayer. She's also an industrial

engineer, very well educated. She's also a competent and

capable business person who was convinced to go into politics.

Politics is one of those places where I don't think I could ever

survive. I'm not, you know, just saying I

think I would be too easily corrupted.

She has not been. She's been threatened.

She's had her life threatened. She's had her family threatened.

She's been accused of multiple crimes.

She was last year in 2024, she was going to run for president

was an election. She was going to run for

president of Venezuela against Maduro, A dictator president, a

name dictator in fact. And, and, and the Maduro regime

declared it illegal for her name to even be on the ballot.

So she convinced an old guy to run as her proxy.

Everyone knew that a vote for this guy was not a vote for him,

but was a vote for Machado. You know how what percentage of

the popular vote she got running when she wasn't allowed to run?

90 percent, 90% of the popular vote.

And she lives in hiding. And she still lives in hiding

and she still prays for her people.

She still speaks, she still leads.

She still, she does a lot on social media now.

And she's still convinced that one day democracy and freedom

will return to Venezuela. She's choosing at great risk to

herself and to her family. She's choosing to be an

influencer rather than simply to be influenced.

I think she's a tremendous example, someone going into an

environment that for many people would be corrupting.

And for her, she's being an influencer.

This is the choice that we all have.

Most of us probably will not have an opportunity to run for

president and a country struggling against dictatorship.

Most of us probably not going to have an opportunity to win a

Nobel Peace Prize. Although I think I think Aidan

might win 1, maybe you could, you could feel like you could.

Yeah, I do think this that although our the scale of impact

open to most of us is much smaller than that of Eric Little

or Machado or even Lot. But we all have this opportunity

to be an influencer in our family, in our school, in our

place of work, in our community, in our county to influence folks

for good to see. How can I be a blessing in this

situation? How can I help others?

How can I lift others up? How can I be a shield and a

protection for folks that are vulnerable and are in need?

How can I do those things versus how can I just adopt the values

around me and get along and go along and get what's best for

myself and who cares about everybody else?

We have that choice to be an influencer or to be influenced

in Jesus name. Let's choose to be influencers.

Amen. Amen.