Spiritual Influencers

Our fallen world is in urgent need of people who are willing to serve God by helping people as spiritual influencers. You can be one of them. In your sphere of influence – your family, your workplace, your church, your neighborhood, and everywhere else you’re in relationships with others – you can influence people spiritually, joining God in His redemptive work.

The way to successfully lead others is to follow Jesus Christ first. When you follow Jesus, He empowers you to lead others to Him – and the greatest gift a leader can give people is to teach them how to follow Jesus. If you make people dependent on yourself alone, you’re setting them up for disappointment, because as a fallible human being you’ll eventually fail them. But if you teach people to depend on Jesus, you’ll connect them with a perfectly reliable source of whatever they need.

As finite human beings, we can never fully understand an infinite God (Romans 11:33-34). Sometimes we think we understand why God is doing something, only to find out later that it was for a different purpose than we originally thought. God looks at things from a holy, eternal perspective. We look at things from a sinful, earthly, and temporal perspective. Why did God put man on earth knowing that Adam and Eve would sin and therefore bring evil, death, and suffering on all mankind? Why didn’t He just create us all and leave us in heaven where we would be perfect and without suffering? These questions cannot be adequately answered this side of eternity. What we can know is whatever God does is holy and perfect and ultimately will glorify Him. God allowed for the possibility of evil in order to give us a true choice in regards to whether we worship Him. God did not create evil, but He allowed it. If He had not allowed evil, we would be worshipping Him out of obligation, not by a choice of our own will.

You build your spiritual influence on the foundation of a connection with God, so aim to strengthen your relationship with God every day. Then you can see people and understand their potential and problems from the right perspective, and you can understand your role as a leader accurately. Incorporate worship and prayer into your life, making a habit of bowing to God’s greatness and goodness often. Ground your relationship with God in spiritual disciplines such as frequent Bible reading and meditation. Doing so motivates you to submit your will to God’s will, putting you in a position where God can best use you as a spiritual influencer. 
 
We can all relate when it comes to falling short of expectations. Obedience to God is a learning process, and failure is a part of our development as humble servants. When we yield to temptation or rebel against God's authority, we realize that sin has few rewards, and even those are fleeting.

We would probably all prefer to grow in our faith without ever making a mistake before God's eyes, but we cannot deny that missteps are instructive. Failure teaches believers that it is much wiser and more profitable to be obedient to the Lord. That's a lesson we all should take to heart.

Blessings,

Raj Kosaraju