How to be a Good Influence

No matter who you're there are people who are watching you, they're listening to the words that you say, they're watching how you handle things. You are being an influence on someone else whether you intend to be or not. This last October our staff went on a retreat, and whenever we go on a retreat several months before I give them all about a book and I asked them to read it, and then we gathered together sometime on the retreat to discuss the different chapters of the book. 

This year, we looked at a book called multipliers by Liz Wiseman and in that book she talks about the best leaders are ones who multiplies somebody's talents, gifts, abilities by the way that they relate to them. In fact she says all leader fall into one of two categorize. You're either a multiplier that makes someone better at what they're doing, or you're a diminisher, one that stifles somebody's abilities by always having to have your way or always trying to take credit for what they're doing or always putting them down and criticizing them. And all of us fall into one of those two categorize. We're either multipliers or we're diminishes.

Reminds me of a book I read about 35 years ago by Gordon MacDonald which is called Renewing Your Spiritual Passion, and in that book he talks about the people in our lives either help us to be more passionate for Christ or they take us away from that, and what he talked about is he talked about there are people who are triple pluses, and the triple pluses they ignite or they inspire our passion for Jesus Christ, and then he talked about those who serve with us and called them double pluses.

 These are the people who share our passion for Christ and he said you need to be around people who inspire you passion for Christ and share your passion for Christ, and then he said you need to pass that on to others who catch our passion for Christ, and there're single plus and it's encouraging to us to see the next generation, catch on to that and so in one of those categories on that side of the line but also in that book talked about there are some people and he just basically said they're zeros in terms of their impact on us for our passion for Christ. 

He calls these very resourceful people, the triple pluses, the very important people, the double pluses and the very teachable people those who catch our passion, he calls these the very nice people. They just seat and watch. They're spectators by the way in the church there are a lot of people like these in the church, they don't serve, they don't give they're just watching, and they don't add anything and they don't take anything away.

Then he talks about a final category and he calls these are very draining people and these are people who sap your passion for Christ. 

When they come in they just suck the air out of the room, because they're always criticizing, they're always putting down, they don't do anything for the course of Christ but they criticize anybody whose taking the risk to do something for the course of Christ. 

Now here's a real question today. All of us influence others, all of us bring an energy to bear or are we take energy away? Are you more on this part of the continuum or are you more on this part? Talk about in your marriage, in your parenting, where you go to school and where you work. Are you a triple plus person? Are you one of those negative persons? Are you a multiplier or are you a diminisher? 

If you have your Bibles with you, I'd invite you to turn with me to 1 Thessalonians, the second chapter and we're going to look, beginning in verse 10 where Paul is writing to the church there, and he writes these words, he says ,