Wednesday, July 03, 2013
To Lead
Scot McKnight:
change influence lead
Here’s an amazing instruction by Jesus. Jesus believes each and every one of us is an influencer. Not just pastors and leaders, but each of us. Preachers and Bible readers are agreed on one thing about “salt” and “light” in our passage: they might mean any number of things, but the one thing they do mean is that salt influences meat and light influences darkness. They make an impact. But there’s more here: Jesus doesn’t urge us to become influencers. He says each disciple, by virtue of being a follower of Jesus, already is an influencer. His concern is not becoming an influence but ruining our existing influence. He doesn’t want our “salt” to become “unsalty.” (What is chemically impossible is morally possible.) He doesn’t want our light to be covered up (by refusing to witness to Jesus Christ).
Another way of looking at this: Jesus wants us to be more influential by faithfully being who we are and by faithfully doing what we are called to do: follow Jesus, show love to our neighbor as we would to ourselves, and serve others out of the grace we have been shown by God. If we pick weeds from our garden daily, if we water our flowers daily, our garden flourishes; if we pick weeds once and water once, our garden dies. So, too, if we read the Bible daily, if we pray daily, if we love daily … if we are faithful over time our influence may increase.This is how God intends to change the world - one of us at a time, doing what we are doing to His glory!
change influence lead
