Opening Scripture
“But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.”
1 Peter 2:9
A Reflection of Influence
A mother took her young son shopping. After a day in the stores, a clerk handed the little boy a lollipop. “What do you say?” the mother asked, and the boy replied, “Charge it!” It’s a funny story, but it’s also revealing: that boy had already learned, without a single formal lesson, exactly how his mother handled money. That’s influence at its rawest, the imprint we leave on the people watching us, whether or not we ever meant to teach anything at all.
This week we’re asking a deceptively simple question: What does it mean that everybody has the power to influence? Right now, in this very moment, you are shaping the people around you. It might be at work as you sit at your desk or are at the worksite. In your homes as you watch your children. Or at the store as you walk down the aisle. No matter where you are, your influence is present.
In our worship settings, we have those who have the open Bible and the closed one, the note-taker and the one staring off into space; in our congregations, we have the person eager to serve and the person present but detached. In our homes we have parents who are involved, loving, and teaching with intention and those who are simply in the room. Every posture teaches somebody something. And if people know you’re a Christian, that target on your back only grows; your children and grandchildren are watching more closely than you think, forming their own sense of what following Jesus actually looks like based on what they see in you.
That pattern plays out generationally, and honestly, painfully. Children raised in homes marked by addiction, abuse, or violence are far more likely to carry those patterns into their own adult lives. Children raised in homes where Scripture is taught and lived, where love is the norm, tend to carry that forward too. People can change, of course they can, but the odds of becoming something they’ve never seen modeled are slim. We are, in large part, products of the influences that raised us: the people we grew up around, the friends we kept, the voices from a screen. So the real question isn’t whether we’re influencing the next generation. It’s what we’re handing them.
Influence itself is worth defining plainly: the capacity to affect the character, development, or behavior of someone else, or the effect that capacity produces. Character is what tribulation, oddly enough, is designed to build in us: perseverance, proven character, and ultimately hope (Romans 5:3-5), and it’s meant to be free from the love of money, anchored instead in the confidence that God will never leave us (Hebrews 13:5-6). Behavior is the visible fruit of that character, excellent enough that it silences slander (1 Peter 2:12) and wise enough that it needs no argument, only gentleness (James 3:13), behavior so consistent it can win an unbelieving spouse without a single word being spoken (1 Peter 3:1-2).
Development is where influence gets tested most dramatically, and nobody illustrates it better than Saul of Tarsus. Three days blind on the road to Damascus (Acts 9:3-12) gave him nothing to do but think about every believer he’d dragged to prison, every face he’d harmed, every way his zeal had actually been a war against Jesus Himself. Whatever wrestling happened in that darkness, it produced a man who took the very same intensity he’d once used to destroy the church and pointed it toward building it instead. That’s development: influence redirected, not erased.
And that redirection is exactly the effect distinctive living is meant to produce. Paul told the Corinthians to do everything, from the smallest choice to the largest, to the glory of God (1 Corinthians 10:31). Jesus put it even more visually: let your light shine so that people see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven (Matthew 5:16). That’s not abstract. It shows up in the fruit we bear through our families (John 15:1-8), in faithfully finishing the work God has given us (John 17:4), in doing everything with excellence rather than the bare minimum (Colossians 3:23; Ecclesiastes 9:10), in refusing to be shaped by worldly attractions (1 Peter 2:11-12; 4:1-4; 1 Thessalonians 5:21-22), in staying faithful through trials instead of being soured by them (James 1:2-4, 12; 1 Peter 4:12-16), and in treating our own bodies as instruments that honor God rather than ourselves (1 Corinthians 6:13-20).
This truth isn’t just ancient doctrine. It speaks directly to us:
- Influence is not optional. You are shaping the people around you right now, whether you intend to or not.
- What children see modeled, they tend to become. Distinctive living is one of the most important gifts we give the next generation.
So here is what we learn:
- Character comes first. Godly behavior and lasting effect both grow out of character formed under trial.
- Even our worst seasons can be redeveloped. Paul’s three days of darkness became the turning point for a lifetime of gospel influence.
- Distinctive living isn’t about being noticed; it’s about pointing what people notice back to God.
You’ll rarely get to see where most of your influence lands. But every open Bible, every faithful choice, every ordinary act of excellence is quietly teaching somebody what chosen, royal, holy, and His actually looks like. Live like it.
