Are You an Influencer or Just Influenced? (Rock Springs UMC)

Our scripture reading today is Genesis 19 verses 12 to 17 and

Genesis 19:12–17

23 to 26. This is our last Sunday on the,

the theme and the events surrounding the destruction of

Sodom and Gomorrah. And we're going to take a look

at this now from kind of Lot's perspective and follow Lot more

specifically through this. And so the, the verses that I've

chosen are really just a sampling of, of verses I'm going

to reference here today. But I, I, it's kind of the heart

of it and will get us moving in the right direction here this

morning. So verses in Genesis 19, the two

men said to Lot. Do you have anyone else here,

sons in The outcry to the Lord against its people is so great

that he has sent us to destroy it.

So Lot went out and spoke to his sons in law who were pledged to

marry his daughters. He said, hurry and get out of

this place, because the Lord is about to destroy the city.

But his sons in law thought he was joking.

With the coming of dawn the angels urged Lot, saying, Hurry,

take your wife and your two daughters who are here, or you

will be swept away when the city is punished.

When he hesitated, the men grasped his hand in the hands of

his wife and his two daughters and LED them safely out of the

city, for the Lord was merciful to them.

As soon as they had as He, they had brought them out.

One of them said, Flee for your lives, Don't look back, and

don't stop anywhere in the plain.

Flee to the mountains or you will be swept away.

By the time Lot reached Zohar, the sun had risen over the land.

Then the Lord rained down, burning sulphur on Sodom and

Gomorrah from the Lord out of the heavens.

Thus He overthrew those cities and the entire plain, destroying

all those living in the cities and also the vegetation in the

land. But Lot's wife looked back and

she became a pillar of salt. May the Lord add His blessing to

the reading and hearing of His word.

There is a whole new profession in the world that didn't exist

when no one asked me when I was graduating from high school or

when I was in college, Hey, what do you want to be when you what

they did ask me, what do you want to be when you grow up?

None of them ever said. Have you ever thought about

being an influencer? It's a thing now.

It's been a thing for a little while.

I still have a hard time wrapping my brain around the

fact that that some people's jobs, I'm an influencer and I do

it on social media. People do it, they make lots of

money and sometimes they have a lot of influence too.

But I think this is a good question because this question

of influence is an important question.

And it's an important question for the church, for followers of

Jesus, for us to always be asking ourselves, are you an

influencer or are you just influenced?

Are you having an impact and making a difference in the lives

and the culture and the atmosphere around you?

Or are you just taking on the characteristics of the culture

in which you live? This is an incredibly important

question. And I think it's a question

that's at the heart of the destruction of Sodom and

Gomorrah and that whole region. Let's take a look.

And we again, we remember this from several chapters ago and

several months ago, that Abraham lived in the land of Canaan

while Lot lived among the cities of the plain and pitched his

tents near Sodom. How they got there was again,

Abraham gave Lot. Abraham gave Lot the choice.

We got to divide up. There's too many of us.

We got too many flocks. We got to divide up.

Do you want the lowlands in the Jordan River Valley or do you

want the Highlands, kind of rockier, Hillier area up here

for you to settle? And Lot looked down and said, I

want the low ones in the Jordan Valley.

And he pitched his tent. He set up his household near the

city of Sodom. And at that point, Lot could

have said, I want to have an impact and Sodom and Gomorrah.

I want to influence Sodom and Gomorrah.

I've heard Abram tell me all about what God told him that God

told him, You know, leave this land of your ancestors.

Follow me to your place. Well, where are we going, God?

I'll let you know when we get there.

Will it be good? You'll see when we get there.

And we got here and this is it. This is it.

And God brought the Abraham, Abram, through all of these

difficulties, he's blessed him, made him a wealthy man, and has

promised him that through him all the nations of the world

will be blessed. And I want to start that now.

I want to be a blessing to the people of Sodom and Gomorrah.

I want to be a blessing. And I want to help them see and

know how good it is to follow the Lord and the Lord's ways.

That could have been what Lot did, but it wasn't.

It wasn't whether it was in his mind at any level.

We do not. We do not really know it all,

but it's certainly not what he did.

It's certainly not Lot after having spent, we don't know

exactly, probably 15-10, fifteen years or more in Sodom and

Gomorrah. And he went from living near

Sodom to living in the city. He went from being the total

stranger and newcomer to being one of the judges, one of the

leaders of the city. That's why he was at the city

gate when the angelic visitors came.

That's where the judges went. The leaders hung out and they

listened to people and talked to people and greeted people and

made decisions and those kinds of things became a leader in the

city of Sodom. But in all of that time, he had

zero impact. He had zero influence.

Remember, Abraham said there's 10 righteous people there.

God, will you save Sodom and Gomorrah?

Will you spare them for the sake of 10 righteous people?

And after all of those years of Lot being there, a lot who knew

the promises God had made a Brahm, who knew the blessings

that God had given a Brahm, who knew the blessing of following

God's ways and living God's ways, who knew all of those

things first hand. Eyewitness experience.

Part of it. Part was saved by a Brahm

through the power of God when Lot and his family had been

taken as political captives. With all of that background, Lot

had zero influence in that city. Zero influence for good anyway.

Instead, Lot and his family simply became like the culture

in which they left. They were influenced rather than

being influencers. Lot failed to influence his

community and his family failed to influence his community.

So his family, Here's what family we know of.

We had Lot added Lot's wife. Lot and his wife had two

daughters. That's four.

Each of their daughters was engaged.

That's 6. They were 60% of the way to the

10 people they needed for God to have mercy on an entire

civilization. 10 people away. 4, Four people away.

There were six of them. I've got trouble with my

fingers. There were six of them.

They were four people away and they didn't have it.

In fact, I, I, I kind of think they were 10 people away to be

honest. The the chapter 19 finishes

saying God saying he spared Lot for Abraham's sake, not for

Lot's own righteousness. Instead of influencing the

community, they were just influenced by it.

Instead of helping people around them put their faith in God,

they were putting their faith in the culture of that community.

Instead of helping those folks live the way of God, they were

living the way of that community.

He had zero influence. He had zero influence on his

family, his sons and his future sons in law.

They called him sons in law. It's kind of like when when

you're engaged in those cultures, it was a much more

serious commitment than being engaged in in our culture.

So that's why even though they weren't married yet, they could

still be called sons in law. There was that much of A

commitment. These, these men, his daughters

were going to marry. When Lot tells them we got to

go, we got to go. They thought it was a joke.

They thought it was just that Lot was someone to be laughed at

and all of that. No influence, no impact on them.

I mean, this was the God that had saved Lot and his family

when they were taking his political prisoners and they had

so little impact. His own family just thought he

was nuts, thought he was a joke when he said that.

His own wife, his own wife who had come to love the culture and

the city of Sodom so much that as they were miles away on the

edges of the mountain and and the city was being destroyed,

Lot's wife was longing to return to that place.

It wasn't just she glanced back over her shoulder.

It's that she wanted to go back to that way of life.

She wanted to return to that culture.

She wanted to return to that way of doing things.

And so she died, too. And then they get up in the

mountains and now it's just Lot and his daughters.

And they do unspeakable things to their father so that they can

carry on their own families. No impact.

No impact on his sons in law, no impact on his wife, no impact on

his daughters. They had completely absorbed the

corrupt culture in which they lived.

Lot failed to influence. Lot failed to influence his

community and his family. Why?

Why was he such a failure? I think it's because he focused

on the wrong thing. Lot lost his focus, or maybe he

never had the right focus, but Lot focused on the wrong things.

When Abraham was giving him the choice, Abraham could have made

the choice himself. But Abraham said to Lot, you

pick where you want to live, I'll take what's left.

And Lot picked the Jordan Valley.

Why? Let's go back and look at it

again. Lot looked around and he saw

that the whole plain of the Jordan towards Zohar was well

watered, like the Garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt.

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

set out toward the east. Lot said.

I can make money there. That that like the land of Eden

and like like Egypt meant there's prosperity to be had

there. That's good fertile land.

I can raise lots of flocks. I can grow food.

I can. I can make a lot.

This was a financially motivated decision, a prosperity motivated

decision. This was this was, I want to go

there because I can get good stuff from there.

Remember, though, why God had called Abram to leave his

homeland and come to this promised land.

Not so Abram could get in. His family could get good stuff

from there. Although God did give them good

stuff, but he brought them there so they could be a blessing and

eventually a blessing to every nation.

Alert. But Lot wasn't looking at the

Jordan Valley, thinking, how can I go down there and be a

blessing there? When Abraham gave him that

decision, his thought wasn't, you know what, let me choose the

place where I can have the greatest impact to help people

live in God's way. It was, I can make a lot of

money there. I can get good stuff there.

I can get good things for me and for my family.

Lot lost his focus, if he ever had it.

His focus was not on how to be a blessing.

His focus was not on how to serve God.

His focus was not on how can I help other people live in God's

ways. His focus was how can I maximize

benefits for me and my family. And the way to maximize benefits

for him and his family was to go along and get along.

Man, their digs are doing great here.

Lot of money, people living an ease and and they know how to do

it. I'll do it like they do it.

And he did it like they did it. And his family got what they

got. No influence, no impact.

I want to put someone out here by way of comparison.

Anyone know the name Eric Little?

Is that a name you're familiar with?

I knew you would. I knew you'd know that.

Anyone who you? You and I watch a lot of the

same movies. I think Chariots of Fire is an

old movie. My opinion, my humble opinion,

this is not thus saith the Lord. I think it's best sports movie

ever made. True story and it focus.

One of the main characters is Eric Little.

It's kind of a mirror image of Lot.

Eric Little had his focus. He was in school and university

in Edinburgh in Scotland, training to be a missionary.

He was going to go to China and be a missionary.

This was in the 1920s, but Eric Little was also very gifted in

athletics. He played rugby for Scotland's

national team and was very good at it and he was very fast.

He was a very fast runner. And so as the 1924 Olympics that

were to be held in Paris, as those approached Eric Little,

much to the chagrin of his sister and some of his others,

close friends and people that are around him, he he put a

pause on his missionary training to go to the Olympics and

compete in the Olympics. And he qualified, he qualified

in the 100 meter dash to go to the Olympics in Paris in 1924.

And his sister and friend came to him and said, we think you've

lost your focus, Eric. You need to be focused on the

mission field, not distracted by sports and glory and competition

and cameras and fame. You're losing your focus.

And Eric said, I'm not losing my focus.

I'm not losing my focus. I love what you said in the

movie. I don't know if it's a direct

quote or not. I hope it is.

He said God made me. I know God made me for a

purpose. God made me for mission.

God made me for China. But God also made me fast.

And when I run I feel his glory. My favorite lines ever,

anywhere. It's good.

He was focused and he went to compete in the Olympics and on

the way there he was tested right off the bat because part

of his Christian tradition was a very, very, very high level

honoring of the Sabbath. You did not work on the Sabbath.

The Sabbath was God's day, and all you did on the Sabbath day

was honor God. You went to worship, you went to

church. You didn't do anything else

except the qualifying heats for the 100 meter dash were on a

Sunday. And so Eric announced to his

team mates and to the leaders of the British Olympic team, I

can't run on Sunday. I'm not going to run on Sunday.

He was their only person, as far as I know, he was their only

chance at meddling in the 100 meters.

And he backed out. He said I'm not going to do it.

And all of this pressure came on him to compete.

And they sat him down in a room surrounded by very wealthy, very

powerful, very influential people, including the Crown

Prince of the Prince of Wales, the Crown Prince of England

himself, his future king, to persuade him to compete on the

Sabbath. I've got a video clip of that.

I might need you to turn the volume up on this, Don.

And we'll see that it's, it's all dialogue and it's fairly

quiet. Let's see how it goes.

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 cabin 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, ma'am?

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 little. The impertinence lies so with

those who seek to influence our mind to deny his beliefs.

Our country, little. We're appealing to your beliefs

in your country. No King.

Your loyalty to them. Yeah, Here.

In my day it was King first, God after.

Yes, and the war to end was 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.

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

little. It's like a mirror image of a

lot. He was focused, and his focus

was not on what's good for me, what can I get, what can it add

to my wealth, my privilege, my position, my status, None of

that. His focus was on God.

What does God want? What does God want from me?

And I will do that no matter what the cost, no matter what

the cost. And I will trust that God will

bless me in whatever way God sees fit and God sees

appropriate. Now, if you know the story, you

know that Little eventually did run in the Olympics.

Not because he was willing to violate his conscience and run

on the Sabbath, but because one of his team mates decided to

give up his spot in the 400 meter dash.

And there was no heat on Sunday. And so instead of running in the

100 meters, Eric ran in the 400 meters.

And Eric won gold medal in the 400 meters.

And God blessed him in the eyes of the whole world.

And then the next year, in 1925, Eric went to China as a

missionary. Eric had a long and significant

career in ministry, not significant in the sense of

drawing huge crowds. The significant in the sense of

the impact on the lives of people who said he made a

tremendous was a tremendous influence and their faith and

their growth and their following of God.

And he was in China when World War 2 started.

He was in China when Japan invaded, and he was sent to a

Japanese prison camp. Not a good place to be.

And that's where he died, in a prison camp in China held by the

Japanese. And you know what he did while

he was there? He preached sermons and he led

Bible studies, and when someone was hungry, he gave up his food.

And when someone needed medicine, he gave them his

medicine. All the way through, Eric Little

kept his focus right where it needed to be, on God.

On what does God want me to be doing to be a blessing to

others? And he had an impact.

He had an impact. I would love to know.

I don't know if there's any way of finding out.

Maybe it'll be in the Kingdom of heaven, meeting some sisters and

brothers from China who were followers of Jesus Christ in my

lifetime because of what Eric did in his lifetime.

That's the kind of impact we can have, what it means to be an

influencer rather than just being influenced.

But Lot failed and his failure had massive implications.

When we fail to focus on God, when we fail to be an influencer

and instead are just influenced by the culture around us, those

those that failure has implications that are both

horizontal and vertical. Horizontal meaning in our own

time period, in our lifetime. I've already talked about the

horizontal implications. Lot's wife, Lot's sons in law,

Lots daughters, and every single person the Lot ever had lunch

with went to their house for dinner, shared in business

associations with on the plains of Sodom and Gomorrah, lost

their lives, or their lives were otherwise destroyed by Lot's

failure of influence. But it also had vertical that

impact goes over time. And we don't know exactly, or at

least you know, hard to find out in the United States right now,

the vertical, the, the influence over time that Eric Little had.

But we know the influence over time that Lot's failure had the

daughters, his lot, Lot's daughters who had children by

him. Those children, their

descendants became nations that stayed in the land of Canaan.

And when Abraham's descendants left Egypt and we're on their

way back to the Promised Land, lots descendants stood in their

way and fought them to keep them from coming back.

Our failure to have an impact doesn't just affect us and the

people around us right now. It can affect people for

generations and generations and generations to come.

So what does this mean for us? What are the practical

applications for us here? Just a couple of things that I

wanted to take note of. 1 is we need to be aware of our own

limits, including our capacity to influence.

See, it's easy to throw stones at lot.

I'm, I don't and I'm not doing this to throw stones at Lot, but

to see the possibilities of, to see what happened a lot so we

can avoid it in our own life if we can.

Because Lot could have avoided this for his family and himself

at least if perhaps he had set back and said, you know what,

what's going to happen to me and my family if we go there?

Can I really be an influence there?

Oh well, I really become like them.

And will my family just become like them and face the same, you

know, adopting the same destructive mindsets, the same

destructive lifestyles, and facing the same destructive

future that they face? Beware of our own capacity to

influence, particularly at times, our lack of capacity,

because there's some places we can be an influence and some

places we can't. And the decision on that is a

decision that has to be made by prayer, not simply by rule.

There's some churches and church groups that make it by rule and

they isolate themselves and insulate themselves and, and

they insist on having a separate kind of subculture.

And we won't even interact with people outside of that culture

if we can avoid it. And, and we'll never go to a

restaurant that sells alcohol or never buy from a grocery store

that sells alcohol. We'll never hang out with me.

My mom was, you know, she tasted a little bit of that.

Her family was, was very strict in some ways.

She never, you know, there was never a deca playing guards in

her house growing up and and individual, you know, personal

policies like that are not the issue.

But God does not call us to cut ourselves off from the culture

that's around us. Otherwise we can't be an

influence. We can't have an impact.

So Jesus said, well, we're told of Jesus that he was a friend of

sinners. Jesus went to the houses of

people that were known to be sinful people.

He ate with them, He became friends with them, He invited

them to follow him. And he calls us to do the same.

To cross cultural lines, to cross cultural barriers.

Not to live in silos. Not to wrap ourselves, our

families or our churches and bubble wrap and try to keep all

the bad people out and away at arm's distance.

But to embrace folks in the culture, folks that are

righteous people and folks that are sinful people and love them

and welcome them and be in relationship with them, to seek

them out. But there's a tension between

that and Lot pitching his tent near Sodom, in which we have to

ask ourselves on an ongoing basis, is this a relationship in

which I can be an influence or which I will simply be

influenced? There's some easy examples.

I don't want to spend too much time on this.

We're going to give you 2 easy examples to kind of get a sense

of it. If Europe, if there's a person

who is 2 years sober recovering from, you know, decades of

alcohol addiction, the local bar is probably not your mission

field, right? That's don't go there if you're

if you're just, you know, if you're too, you're some folks

that are 10 or 15 years sober won't go there.

They say I can go there, but I know that they will influence

me. I won't influence them.

I'll simply go back to being what I was being what folks

there are. I won't influence them.

They'll influence me. That's wisdom.

That's wisdom is you find someplace else to be an

influence there. The nice thing about the world

is there sinners everywhere, all over the place.

We can make friends of sinners anywhere.

You know, by the other place where I saw this over and over

again was when I was working with kids in the juvenile

detention center up in Seneca County.

And they would come, they'd be there for a while.

They're sure never going to change.

They're going to change, never going to come back here again.

And six months, nine months, 12 months later, they're back. 9

times out of 10, as they told me their stories, it went something

like that and things were going great.

I decided when I left, I wasn't going to go hang out with my old

friends anymore. But you know, they're my friends

and I, I want to hang out. So I was hanging out with them

at school. I was like, well, I'll just hang

out with them at school, but I won't go to their house.

Well, I went to their house. I was like, well, I'll go there

and I, but I'm just not when they, when they're passing the

pot around, I'm not going to take any of the pot.

They took the pot and then then they're smoking the pot and

they're doing all the same stuff they were doing before because

they put themselves back into an environment where they had no

chance of having a meaningful influence on the people around

them. Then every chance that those

people around them would simply pull them right back to what

they didn't want to be. We have to be discerning.

And that's it's not a matter of rulemaking.

It's a matter of prayer. It's a matter of talking with

God about it and people around us that are wise enough to say,

yeah, yeah, don't go there. You go hang out.

And it could be whether it's, you know, it could be any, it

could be relationships. It could be a group of it could

be a, a single relationship. Yeah.

Every time you get it with that person, you become this other

person that is, just don't do it.

You know, we've got to make those kind of decisions.

We've got to be discerning enough to see how relationships

affect us so that we can see this is a place where I can be

of influence, but this is a place where I will simply be

dragged down. I will be influenced.

Those are hard decisions to make, and those are best made in

prayer with wise people around us who know us and love us well,

so we can ask them and ourselves, to what degree can I

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

That's the thing. Because Lot, maybe Lot, was

never going to influence Sodom. Maybe Lot's best decision would

have been, you know what, I can make a lot of money down in the

Jordan Valley. But if I go hang out down there,

yeah, I'm just going to want to join right in.

I think I'll stay up here in the hills.

I'll let Uncle Abram go down there.

He's better at that than I am. But not getting caught up in

that stuff. That could have been Lot's

decision. He might never have had an

influence. It might have been no chance

that he was ever going to have any meaningful influence on

Sodom and Gomorrah. But think how different his

family would have been. Think how different his

descendants would have been if Lot had made that kind of

decision. One last person I want to talk

about as a as another actual current example of someone who's

not like Lot, and that is Maria Carina Machado.

You've heard that name. I suspect if you follow the news

at all or social media much you've heard of Maria Carina

Machado. She is currently living and

hiding in Venezuela. She is by birth.

Her family was wealthy business folks in Venezuela.

That's what she wanted to be. Well, she wanted to be an

engineer and she became an engineer.

She went to school to become an industrial engineer.

I don't know exactly what industrial engineers do, but I,

I just, the name tells me I could.

I'm not smart enough for that job.

And she was good at it. And that's what she wanted to

do. That's what she wanted to be.

Life was going on great, but politics in her country was

going bad and had been bad and was getting worse.

And people kept saying you should step in, you should step

in, you should do something. And she did.

She eventually became a politician pushing for

democracy, pushing for freedom, pushing for free enterprise in

her country and and the leaders of her government and the other,

the main person, Maduro, tyrannical dictator who trumped

up a bunch of charges against her.

She's been accused of every crime you can think of.

When the election time rolled around in 2024, she wanted to

run for president of Venezuela, but that but Maduro and his his

regime said that she could not run.

She was not allowed to appear on the ballot.

She could not run for election. She was a criminal.

She could not be president. And so she convinced a friend,

an old guy, to run in her name as a proxy.

His name would be on the ballot, but everyone would know that a

vote for him was really a vote for Maria Machado.

Anyone know what percentage of the vote she got?

90%, Ninety. I mean, I can't even imagine

that. I've never even heard of a

school board election getting 90% much less president of a

country 90% of a vote when she wasn't even legally allowed to

run and Maduro was done with her and declared her an outlaw and a

traitor. And she lives in hiding, and

most of her supporters don't even know where she is right

now. But she continues to post on

social media. She continues to assert that

Maduro's government is failing and will fall, that democracy

and freedom will prevail in Venezuela, and that good things

will come to her people there. Now, here's the thing.

Machado is she's not a pastor. She's not a missionary like Eric

Little, and she's not a nomad like Abraham, following God from

place to place. She's a engineer and a

businesswoman and a politician. But she is a staunch Christian.

Her version of her her the tradition she grew up in happens

to be Catholic, because that's the the dominant Christian

tradition in Venezuela. But she prays throughout her

country. She prays for her people.

One of the ways her people primarily show their support for

her is whenever she goes someplace, they'll give her

rosaries. And rosaries, A, it's a tool

that Catholics use for prayer. You use that I'm not sure exact,

but each bead reminds you to pray for a different thing.

And she's collected these rosaries all over and she

praised them, and she prays for her people.

And she sees her struggle and has openly said it's not just

political, it's not just business.

This is a spiritual struggle that God has given her and she's

put herself at risk. She's put her family at risk.

Her children have had to flee the country.

Well, I don't know whether they fled, but they're not in the

country. I don't know whether it's, I

suspect part of it is fleeing, but her, her children are at

risk. She's at risk.

She has to live in hiding. She's had such an influence and

such an impact on so many people because she kept her focus.

She kept her focus on the mission and the ministry and the

calling. For her, it was freedom and

democracy to lead her country back into that.

And, and instead of going along to get along, instead of seeking

the good that came from participating with the regime,

she stood against it. And it's cost her a lot that

she's being an influencer rather than being influenced.

This is the question that we all have.

Not all of us are going to have a chance to win a Nobel Prize.

I can virtually guarantee you I'm not going to win a Nobel

Prize. It would be startlingly

surprising. That's all right.

Leave that to other folks. I just want to have an influence

on my family and my friends and my community.

I want people to feel like they've been blessed rather than

that I've just gotten something from them that, that, that, that

somehow, in small ways or large, they know that God loves them

because of what I do or what I say, that they're built up and

encouraged. And we all have this

opportunity. We all have this choice.

We're not. I'm not, you know, maybe we

might have some future social media influencers in here.

I don't know. I, I suspect it would be the two

youngest people here that are the most likely to become social

media. And you want to be a social

media influencer? No.

OK, All right. You want to be a social.

No. All right.

No social media influencers. That's all right.

That's it. But we're all, we all have the

choice whether we're on social media or not, whether we'll be

an influencer or whether we'll just be influenced.

Let's follow Eric Little, let's follow Machado and influence

those around us in Jesus name, Amen.

Amen.