Exploring the Profound Impact of Influence: Lessons from Romans and Galatians

Romans, chapter 14 and Galatians, chapter 5.

Romans 14 · chapter mention Galatians 5 · chapter mention

I had another message.

I was planning on preaching tonight and yesterday and today I

just felt like God was leading me toward this.

And I hadn't spent as much time on this as I did the others.

But I'm just trying to follow leadership of the Holy Spirit.

And I want to speak to you tonight on one word.

And I want you to think about it and maybe underline it a little

bit in mind.

And it's a very, very powerful word.

But I think so many times we don't recognize and we don't realize

the power of it.

And it's not even in the Bible, but yet you'll find it in

picture and principles all through the Scriptures from Genesis

to Revelation.

Here's the word.

If you're taking notes, just write it down.

It's very simple to remember.

Influence.

Can anybody dare imagine how they could measure influence?

The power of influence in your life, in my life, in the lives of

other people, Positive or negative influence through history,

influence through the church.

We could go on and on and on.

But here's a principle.

In Romans, chapter 14, verse number seven, it says, for none of

Romans 14 · chapter mention

us, none of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself.

What does that mean?

It just simply means influence.

It means our decisions, our directions, our thoughts, our looks,

our life, our path.

All the things I'll share more in just a moment.

But it affects other people.

A lot of times we say, well, yeah, I know that.

But we forget.

We get this idea, hey, it's my business.

What I do is nobody else's business.

Well, I understand that in some ways, in certain contexts, I

understand that.

But maturity in our Christian life, we begin to stop and think

a little bit more about what I do or don't do or what I say or don't

say is going to affect somebody.

A lot of times it affects people you don't even know that you

don't know are watching.

It may affect a teenager, it may affect a child, it may affect

an adult.

It may have an influence in such a way that you'll never know

till you get to heaven to find out how much more influence you had

that you didn't think you have.

Most of us, probably tonight, if we'd be honest, would say, well,

I don't know that I've had that much influence.

Well, because.

Be careful about saying that, because one of the goals in our life

is to have as much influence as we can.

That ought to be one of our ultimate purpose, is to glorify Christ

in all that we do.

But also Jesus said, you're the light of the world.

You're the salt of the earth.

Follow me, represent me, because I want you to have influence

with everybody and everywhere you go.

None of us liveth to himself or dieth to himself.

Now go to the book of Galatians, just a few pages over

in your Bible.

To Galatians, chapter number five and verse seven.

And this is Paul was writing to the church at Galatia, and they'd

come a long ways, but then they began to turn back and things

began to change, and not in a good way.

And Paul had to write a letter to him to straighten things out.

And he did.

And the church got things right and the priorities right.

But it says in verse number seven of Galatians, chapter five,

you did run well.

He didn't say, you're running well.

He said, you did run well.

Who did hinder you that you should not obey the truth?

Who's influenced you?

What's.

What happened?

Who Are you listening to this?

Persuasion cometh not of him that calleth you.

Verse number nine says, a little leaven, leaveneth the whole

lump.

I don't know a lot about baking and bread and all that stuff,

but you know, in the Bible, God always wanted them to have unleavened

bread because leaven would cause the bread or the yeast to rise,

which was always a picture of pride.

Pride.

I've eaten unleavened bread.

I don't particularly care for it.

I guess it depends on who's baking it and if they put a lot of

cinnamon and sugar in it, maybe, I don't know.

But it says, a little leaveneth, a little leaven, leaveneth

the whole lump.

It spreads, it affects everything.

And the Bible speaks a lot of that through throughout the Scriptures,

sometimes in our life.

A little.

There's no really such thing as a little sin.

But I want you to get the thought here.

A little sin, a little leaven, a little thing that we think is no

big deal can become a big deal very quickly in a church.

A little leaven can leaven us a whole lump.

I know you don't want to think of your church as a lump.

We think of the church as a bride and as a body and as a building,

but we affect each other.

And sometimes, if you could picture the church, if this church

was filled tonight and you could get this thought in your mind,

it was like a big loaf of bread and there was leaven, and it

started to swell in pride.

I'm Talking about influence, it's not a deep sermon, not a lot

of points, but the principle, you find it all through the Bible.

In fact, God kept over and over and over again to try to teach

and to tell his people to live a separated life.

Why?

I mean, over and over again, come out from among them, don't marry

unsaved people, don't follow their plans, don't follow their ideas,

don't get caught up with their clothes and their music.

But they wouldn't follow.

They didn't believe it.

They.

They thought, we can handle it.

And the reason God went over and over and over again in the Bible

and still applied in the New Testament and to the day in which

we live, that we're to live a separated life, not an isolated life,

but a separated life is because of the power of influence.

God knows if we get too much involved in the world and the world

starts getting into us, it'll influence our thinking, it'll influence

our life.

And some of us old guys say, well, that doesn't bother me.

Well, it can influence our children or our grandchildren or

our great grandchildren.

Influence a little leaven.

Leaveneth the whole lump.

I heard somebody say many years ago, speaking of our lives,

that you are every one of us, you are either a blot or a blessing,

but never a blank.

You're either a blot or a blessing, but never a blank.

Because when you think, well, I'm not going to say anything, then

you're going to have influence.

When you don't speak up when you should, or you don't stand up

when you should, we think, well, I'll just be a blank.

No, you'll never be a blank.

People watch what we do, they watch what we don't do.

Our children watch what we say, they listen to what we don't

say.

Who can measure the power of influence, whether it be good or

bad?

I think it's one of the most powerful words in all the English

language.

Train up a child in the way he should go.

What does that mean?

Well, I've heard a lot of great sermons on it.

It doesn't mean your children be perfect.

It says, turn up a child in the way should go, and when he's

old, he'll not depart from.

Doesn't mean that they'll never do wrong, but it does mean

they'll be influenced a lot.

If you train up a child, you're going to have an influence

that they will never escape.

Amen.

Does anybody have a Kleenex up here?

Let me get one.

I haven't coughed all day.

Well, not all.

I shouldn't say that.

Last couple hours, I go, well, that's good.

And my wife said, do you have.

Start coughing?

Do you have a handkerchief?

I said, well, yeah, right there, sticking right up.

Would you like to see me use that?

Excuse me.

Train up a child.

That's a whole sermon.

And we need a lot of sermons on how to train up a child.

Most of the time, children are being raised today by television

and by the Internet and by Facebook.

That's who's raising.

That's the training up of most children.

Now, obviously, that would not be very.

A lot of that going on in this church because of the kind of church

it is.

You have men and women here that take God seriously, they take

their family seriously, and they try to train up a child in the

way he should go.

The home life may be among the top influences of all.

Would you agree with that?

The way you were raised, how you were raised, the kind of dad

you had, the kind of mom you had, the kind of discipline you had,

what you were allowed to do, what you were not allowed to do.

About 18 years.

17.

18 years.

A lot of influence.

Children grew up and they say, well, I don't know why that was wrong.

Nobody ever explained it to me.

So I'm gonna go out and find out for myself.

You see, it's one thing to tell your kids right or wrong, but

another thing to explain it to them.

Why?

Why is it wrong?

What does it hurt?

What does the Bible have to say?

Well, I'm getting off my subject tonight, but I'm talking

about influence.

My grandfather had a huge influence on my life.

And every time I think of him, he's been in heaven for a long time.

I preached his funeral.

His wife died when my mother was nine.

So I never knew my grandmother on my mother's side.

But every time I close my eyes, I think for a moment about

Grand.

We called him Granddaddy.

We didn't call him grand or Grandee or grand or Grand Pappy or.

It was Granddaddy that every time I close my eyes, I see him sitting

in a room with.

We lived in his house.

It was a very, very small house.

And every night I would peek around and see him.

And I could see him sitting in a little recliner, very small.

And boy, it was worn completely out from the way he sat

in.

He sat in it all the time, reading his Bible.

I never saw my dad read his Bible or my mother.

I wasn't saved till I was 14.

I didn't really read the Bible until after that.

But I saw my granddaddy get up and go to church most of the time

by himself.

There was four kids, my mother, my father and four kids.

But always watched him reading the Bible and he had influence.

He was a hard worker and he always told the truth.

I never heard him say a cuss word or a wrong word.

I never see him being modest.

He never told a dirty joke.

He never drank a beer, he never smoked a cigarette.

I'm sure he had his problems.

There's no perfect people.

But in my mind he was perfect.

I couldn't find a fault in him.

He had influence on me.

We are all products of influence before we're saved.

And then we have people and whole different sometimes people

that influence us after we're saved.

Did your life change when you got saved?

You'd been influenced one way pretty much.

And then you got saved and new people.

Church was different, the Bible was different, the music was

different.

And things started influencing you.

When I was 14, saved and called at 15, my whole life changed.

But I wanted to be like my preacher.

I told you many times I was saved at 14, called at 15 and went

to Bible College at 16.

That was.

That was a world that I wanted to be a preacher and I wanted to

pattern my life and I wanted to be just like my preacher, my pastor

who's still living 87 years old and we call and talk to each

other a lot.

And he had so much influence on me.

I mean, he went way out of his way.

I was his first preacher boy out of his church in Jacksonville.

He picked me up every day in high school.

Picked me up at the end of the day at 3 o'.

Clock.

He said, you ready to go?

I said, where are we going?

He said, we're going to visit.

We're going to try to lead people to Christ, invite people to

church and visit the sick and on and on and on.

He had influence on me.

The exact modern English word influence does not frequently appear

in standard scriptural translations.

But the Bible speaks extensively of about this concept

of influence.

The power of actions and reactions and words and associations

that shape our lives.

I just listed a few.

Think about the influence that just God, your father has had in

your life.

Christ.

The first time you really realized and understood and pictured

and heard the sermons of Christ hanging on a cross.

The Bible says his.

His visage was so marred that you couldn't tell he was human.

It didn't look like human, it looked like flesh, just raw flesh

hanging on a cross.

We've seen pictures and paintings.

It's nothing like the way it was his influence that he would die

such a cruel death for me for what I did wrong.

He got the punishment and I got to go free.

That had an influence on my life.

The Holy Spirit has had an influence on my life.

Has he yours?

I know I've already said this several times.

McCracken.

Brother McCracken did such a marvelous job on the subject of the

Holy Spirit.

But, boy, you talk about being filled with the Spirit and the influence

the Spirit of God can have in our lives.

But so many people don't know anything about the Holy Spirit or

being filled with the Holy Spirit.

And so they don't have a lot of influence.

The Holy Spirit doesn't grab us by the hair of our head.

He doesn't snatch us up and say, listen to me.

But he waits to be asked to be in control.

Anybody been influenced by this?

Mm.

We can't imagine people around the world who got received Christ

and got saved, but they still have never seen a Bible.

And the only thing they get is a little bit from a missionary.

They can't buy them, they can't afford them.

They're not allowed in a lot of places.

Can you imagine your life without a Bible?

Most of us certainly can't do that.

But most every church, there's people on Sunday mornings.

I can't find my Bible.

I hadn't seen it since last Sunday.

Oh, but I believe it.

It's the word of God.

It's true.

Has the Bible had much influence in your life?

Do you want it to have more influence in your life?

Sunday school?

Do you.

I guess most of you probably know in most modern churches, Sunday

school has been wiped out.

It's ridiculous and a waste of time.

And if you have any Sunday school, it's for the little kiddies.

And most people today don't have a desire, they don't have a

hunger.

They want to hear an uplifting sermon to make them feel good and

go home.

Till next week, Sunday school become obsolete.

I don't know how long I'll live, but I hope I don't live.

I hope to the day I die, I hope I'll still be able to go to

Sunday school.

No one ever graduates from Sunday school.

I had a man one time, Brother Dawes.

Shelly remembers Brother Dawes.

He was a great.

He was my amen corner.

And he sat on the front row and, boy, he would dress to a hilt.

And he looked like he was 100 years old the whole time.

I Knew him that he'd say, oh, praise God.

I mean, he'd just, he'd get really.

Get preacher fired up.

But he never went to Sunday school.

And I said, brother Dawes, how come you don't come to Sunday school?

He says, I graduated.

I said, well, then why don't you come and teach Sunday school?

He said, oh, I gotta go, I gotta go.

He didn't want to talk about that.

If you already know it all, you've got it all down, then why

don't you teach Sunday school?

Has Satan had any influence in your life?

You say, oh, hoping you wasn't going to go there.

The devil wants to influence you.

He wants to interrupt, he wants to distract.

He wants to divide your attention.

He wants to influence you to be negative and critical.

That's not God doing that.

That's not the spirit of God that does those things.

The Holy Spirit never wanted to lead you to have a sour, bitter,

critical, proud, arrogant spirit.

Amen, Brother Weatherby.

The world, the influence of the world.

You know, we're being influenced by the world.

Most of the time.

We're not even consciously aware of it.

We go by down the street and see signs and billboards and we hear

things on the radio and we see commercials and we hear this and

we see that.

And the world, churches even, have become more worldly than they

used to be.

We've gotten used to the world now it does a lot of things.

Doesn't bother us anymore.

Used to.

Not anymore.

Preachers used to preach against certain things.

They quit doing that a long time ago.

Why?

Because the world has finally taken the edge off and we've gotten

comfortable and we don't want to be thought of as illegalist or

weird or strange or dangerous or culture because we believe in

morality and men ought to be men and women ought to be women and.

And there ought to be moderation in our lives.

That's.

And then how many of us have been influenced?

That's the only thing you got to remember tonight, influence.

And I wish we had time here, but I just throw it out because I

know if you had started jotting them down, you'd run out

of paper.

But godly people who've influenced your life.

Amen, man.

I've had people.

I probably forgot the names now, but people.

Men, deacons, Sunday school teachers.

My life before, even as a young teenager, godly people.

I mean, people.

I thought, wow, they must be a prophet or she must be right out

of the Bible.

I felt strange around them.

I thought they were so godly.

Godly people now, while I'm talking about this tonight and just

keep over and over repeating myself in a different way.

Godly people, but also there's ungodly people that can influence

us if we're not careful.

We got to be careful, and the Bible tells us to be careful.

There's certain kind of people.

I wish it wasn't true, but it's true.

It's a fact of life.

It's in the Bible.

We have to be careful because we can get influenced from people

that don't really have all their facts and they don't know the

whole truth and no one's explained it.

So you've got to remember that.

You've got to recognize that.

And if you mature and you grow, it doesn't mean you go around

saying, don't contaminate me.

The Bible doesn't tell us that.

That's just proud arrogance.

And that's like the Pharisees were.

Amen, God.

I pray all the time, God help me to never fall into the rut of

being a Pharisee.

But the Bible makes it clear, and it's going to be important as

how your life turns out or is turning out.

There's some people you can shake hands with and be nice to,

but there's some people that want to influence you in a wrong

way.

You say, oh, Brother Weatherby, I didn't come to hear

that.

Well, neither did I. I wanted to preach another sermon.

I'm just saying we have to grow up.

Doesn't mean we have to be mean to people.

It doesn't mean that we have to mistreat anybody.

Somebody say amen, we know it.

I'm not saying that.

Some of you think I'm saying that and others may be listening

on.

On the live stream was.

I can't believe we just said that.

I didn't say what you thought.

I said we can be kind and loving and careful and nice and sweet.

But you have to understand that not all people that claim to

be Christians and in any church, not any church, not just

this church, but not everybody's on the same page and

never will be.

That's why you have to be called to be a pastor, because that

comes with the job.

Everybody wouldn't be a pastor if all you had a church full of nice

people.

And if you had a church full of have a nice preacher in the pulpit,

probably helped too.

The church, the influence of the church.

The influence of the Heritage Baptist Church.

You know, I've been here, Shelly, and I've been here five months

you have influenced us in a positive way.

We've learned some things.

You've influenced us.

We're almost through here, and it's not.

We're not just going to walk off in good riddance.

I mean, it's not going to be easy.

Our heart will be broken.

We've gotten attached because we are to influence each other.

You've influenced parents, influence, grandparents, influence,

friends influence.

How many times have you heard the sad story of young people?

And not just young people, sometimes even adults.

What happened to them?

Well, they got mixed up with the wrong friends.

You ever heard that?

I know as parents, we can't choose the friends of our kids.

I understand that.

But we can coach them and we can pray for them, and we can encourage

them in the right direction and do the best we can, because friends

can have powerful influence.

What about boyfriends and girlfriends that can have a lot of

influence?

Mm.

Yeah.

Guys feels like, man, I'm ready to live for God.

He gets involved with a young lady, young girl, that doesn't want

to live for God, and she could have a very negative influence and

vice versa.

A lot of young girls say, I want to marry a preacher one day,

or I want to be a missionary, or I want to teach Sunday school,

or I want to sing in the choir.

And one of these days, I'm going to be the best church member

we got.

And they fall in love with the young man that says, do we have to

go to church every service?

Do we have to do this?

Do we have to do that?

What's wrong with that?

What's wrong with this?

I don't have to drink six cans.

I can just drink one can.

That's not bad.

And that's the way it goes.

And I'm just being general here.

Goes a lot further, doesn't it?

After you're married, a husband can have a good influence

or a bad influence on his wife.

A wife, on her husband, a father and a mother.

What about a youth director?

Can a youth director have influence?

Oh, yeah.

That's why we need to pray that God give good youth directors.

They're getting just about as hard to find as good preachers that

believe the Bible and want to preach the book and stay by the stuff.

It's getting hard to find them, too.

But a good youth director that's sold out to God and not just

gets up and tells a few funny stories, but he teaches the Bible

and he lives the Bible and his wife lives the Bible, and they're

an example of how young men and young women should Dress and

carry themselves and talk and places they should go and they shouldn't.

They're hard to find youth directors like that, but they have

great influence.

Anybody here ever been influenced at youth camp?

My son was called to preach at youth camp.

I've been to a lot of youth camps.

I've talked to a lot of kids that my life totally changed at one

particular year at youth camp.

You ever been influenced by a sermon I don't like?

I haven't liked all the sermons I've preached, not very many.

But I'll tell you one thing.

I've heard a few sermons that changed my life and my ministry.

And I'm thinking one right now that I wasn't really crazy about.

I never really cared for that particular man.

He pastored at one time one of the largest churches in America.

If I called his name, some of you would know him.

But I can think of at least two or maybe three sermons that he

preached that radically changed my life forever.

Forever.

And some of you may not remember the title, but I bet you

could say there was one particular sermon or maybe two or

three or maybe more.

But there's this kind of stick out that influenced you.

By the way, that wouldn't be a bad prayer on your prayer list.

Lord, help my preacher, my pastor, to influence me today through

the preaching of the Word.

Has anybody been influenced, good or bad, through going to the

wrong college?

Come on, we have to admit it.

I can't even recommend a preacher to go to the college, the

Bible college that I went to.

I would never recommend a preacher, young boy to go to where

I went to school.

And at that time was one of the greatest Bible schools, seminaries

in the whole country.

And at the time I went to that school, seven out of the 10 largest

churches in America were pastored by graduates from that seminary.

I know we don't grade churches by numbers all that, but I'm just

talking about it had a lot of influence.

Would you remember to try to remember to pray for the Norris Bible

Baptist Seminary?

That'll have influence.

Because a lot of kids today say, what do I want to go there for?

I want to go where I can play football and basketball and find

girls and guys and do this and do that and be in the dorm and have

parties.

It's hard to get kids to consider a seminary, to study the

Bible five or six hours a day.

It influenced my life and I like, even though the young people

are not in this building tonight.

But I've always tried, probably should have tried harder

to get Young people to, why don't you just go one time, just

one year, just get a good basic Bible foundation.

Whether you're going to be a preacher or called to do anything,

just go one year.

And a lot of kids growing up on my ministry, not all of them,

but a lot of them did that and they decided to go a second year

and then a third year and then a fourth year.

And some of them are out doing things for God.

But I think still whether a person actually called in the ministry

just to get that other bell.

I mean, what would be wrong with getting a good foundation of

the Bible?

I already mentioned the television has such an influence.

You don't hear this much anymore preaching these days, but

what about pornography?

Has that had any kind of influence on people?

Ladies and gentlemen, there is an addiction in our country.

I haven't gotten to drugs yet.

I'm talking about a major serious.

They don't have to buy magazines anymore.

Just pull out the cell phone.

See anything you want to see, as long as you want to see it, Say,

well, my kids wouldn't do that.

Well, okay.

Or I take their phone away.

Their friend's got phones.

What about the influence of music?

I don't have time to go at all these.

But the kind of music we listen to breaks down inhibitions

and breaks down things that we know better than that.

But we like the tune or we like the beat or we like the sound.

I'm not against new songs and new music in the church.

I don't think there's anything wrong with that.

But they need to make sure that they're right doctrinally and

they glorify Jesus Christ and they speak to the heart and it's

not a show and it's not an entertainment.

Concert, drugs, alcohol, books.

You remember in Acts, chapter 4, verse 13, Peter had preached and

Acts 4:13

they were kind of arrested and kind of problems and all that earlier

in the Acts, and you remember this verse, they took knowledge of

them that they had been with Jesus.

Think about that.

Hey, you've been hanging around Jesus.

How do you know?

He must have influence on you.

You're talking like him.

You remind me of Jesus.

It was in Acts, chapter four, Influence.

Who has the most.

Who has had the most influence in your life so far?

Could you think of one name?

Probably say, well, mama, daddy, best friend, preacher, somebody

who has had the most influence in your life so far?

Do you think God could still have somebody coming up around you

maybe soon that could have even more influence on you?

And here's the other side of the coin.

And I'm going to have to.

I'm running out of time, as always do.

What kind of influence are you having on other people?

I think I've said enough about the influence on us.

Are you having a good influence on your friends at church,

in your Sunday school class and where you go to work and the

people you work around all day?

Our country is plummeting because of evil influences morally

and religiously and educationally.

Back.

I kind of go back around before I finish up here, something

I wrote down years ago about influence.

It kind of goes back to the thing of children and how they're

influenced.

Because that really, it probably is the most impact because

of the years, you know, from the time they're born to the time

they leave.

I mean, it's a daily influence.

If a child lives with criticism, if he lives with it, he

learns how to condemn other people.

He's learned it from his parents.

If a child lives with hostility, he learns violence.

If a child lives with ridicule, in other words, he's always

told that he's not good and he's bad and he's dumb and on and

on and on.

He just kind of lives with that all the time.

He learns how to be shy and not volunteer and slip to the back

of the row and not make anybody notice them because they've

lived under ridicule for 17 or 18 years.

If a child lives with encouragement, he learns some self

confidence.

If a child lives with praise, he learns to appreciate.

If a child lives with fairness, he learns justice.

If a child lives with approval, he learns to like himself.

If a child lives with acceptance and friendship, he learns

to love other people.

And witnessing.

I didn't spend a lot of time on this, but I should have.

Witnessing has a lot to do with influence.

When you try to witness to people, you're influencing them.

Witnessing is the outflow and the overflow of the inflow.

You can't give out what you don't have.

That's why we don't witness as much as we should, because it's not

flowing into us.

Witnessing is the outflow and the overflow of the inflow influence.

Are you being influenced now?

Do you want to have more influence in your life?

If you want to have any kind of influence, and I already said,

whether you want to or not, you do.

You're not a blank.

You're a blot or a blessing, but you're not a blank.

So if you don't say a word or do anything, you're still having

influence.

People Say, hmm, Christianity must not be that big a deal to them.

But if you want to have influence, if you're going to have

it, you need to want to have it and you need to be consistent.

Amen.

It's hard to have influence when you're on and off, on and off,

on and off like a street light.

And if you're going to have influence, you've got to spend yourself,

not your money.

All the time.

People say, well, spend you think of money.

Paul said, most gladly would I spend and be spent, that others may

know Christ.

It will cost you to have influence, the right kind of influence.

Don't quit.

I wish I had time.

I was thinking this afternoon of the people in the Bible, the power

of influence.

I mean, there was 12 spies sent out to check out the promised

land, right?

They come back and take a vote.

Ten said, no way.

Two said, we can do it with God.

Well, the majority ruled, and 1 1/2 to maybe close to 2 million

people were influenced by 10 men.

I can't comprehend leading a million and A half to 2 million people

cross the desert.

But 10 people convinced them, no way we're going to stay right

here.

And they did for 40 years.

Lot's wife.

You remember Lot's wife, don't you, Lot?

Sodom and Gomorrah, all the stuff that was going on because of

the immorality and homosexuality and the angels.

God sent angels there and said, you better get out because

I'm getting ready to burn this to a crisp.

And Lot couldn't get his wife.

He had to drag her out.

Why?

Because she had been influenced.

She kept looking back, do we have to go?

Do we have to go now?

Can't we just go a little ways?

One more night?

She kept looking back, looking back, looking back, he lost his wife,

he lost his son in laws.

They mocked him, they laughed at him because he didn't have any

influence.

Lot lost his influence totally.

In fact, he wanted to give his girls away to a bunch of homosexual

people.

Said, you can do whatever you want to with them.

Just don't mess with these angels.

Yeah, it's in the Bible.

Barnabas, the great encourager.

What an influencer.

Paul wasn't really crazy about taking John Mark on as his assistant.

Barnabas said, I'll take him.

The word Barnabas means encourager.

That was his name.

That's what he was known as, the encourager.

Barnabas took Mark and later on end of life, Paul's life, Paul

said, oh, boy, I sure should have had more influence on Mark because

He turned out great.

And he wrote one of the gospels.

Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, Paul and Silas.

Boy, what an influence.

Singing together in prison.

Both of them singing?

Not just one, both of them.

What about Ruth and Naomi?

In the book of Ruth, Naomi was backslidden.

But even in a backslidden condition, she still had so much

influence on Ruth that Ruth's sister said, I'm out here.

Ruth said, not me.

I'm going with her.

And she wasn't even right with God.

She had a better testimony than most people do as a backslider.

I'm talking about influence tonight.

And sometimes your influence may go on for generations.

Did you know you hear this a lot?

I'm sure here, the name J. Frank Norris.

Most of you know who that is, but most people don't realize his

influence.

And he actually is the only real, true, honest to goodness father

of fundamentalism.

He was the first one to say, there's no way I'm going to continue

to support the Southern Baptist colleges that don't believe

in creation.

And he had a list of other things.

And J. Frank Norris said, well, I'm going to start my own school

in Fort Worth, Texas, downtown.

Whether you like him or not, he had influence, and he influenced

me, and I never met him.

He died the year I was born, 1952, not far from where I was raised

in Jacksonville, Florida.

He died in a youth camp.

But he's influenced me because he influenced my pastor and my pastor's

pastor and my pastor's pastor.

You never know how far your influence may go, and you may not

even live to see it.

When you get to heaven, you may be called up for a couple of

rewards you weren't expecting because you had influence on a preacher.

Mm.

A lot of preachers couldn't have made it to first base had they

not had people who influenced them in a positive way.

Let's stand with our heads bowed and eyes closed.

Heavenly Father, we thank you.

I want to thank you, Lord, for the people that you've used in my

life to influence me.

And, Lord, I'd still like to have some influence.

If I have a few days, weeks, months, years, I don't know, I'd

like to still have some influence.

And I believe probably there's people here tonight.

Said, me, too, preacher.

Me too.

I want to make a difference.

I want to have influence on my children, even though they don't

go to church or I don't know if they're saved.

But, Lord, maybe I can still have influence.

My grandchildren, my great grandchildren.

I don't know where you are in your life but maybe God's touched

your heart.

Tonight I'm going to pray and we'll have verse invitation and we'll

not spend a long time if no one comes.

Heavenly Father, I pray you would help us to be touchable tonight.

And maybe we could go to bed tonight thinking a little bit more

about that word influence.

And God, I pray that you would continue to influence our lives so

that we can influence other lives lives.

We pray it all in Jesus name.