INFLUENCE

I once had a woman tell me something about myself I had no idea was true.

After church, she told me she had been watching how I treated people when I thought nobody was paying attention. Then she described a moment I had completely forgotten. I had stopped to talk with someone who was hurting and stayed longer than I needed to.

I didn't remember what I said. I didn't know anyone was watching. But she was.

That conversation stayed with me. We spend so much energy trying to build influence, make our message count, and get people to notice. Meanwhile, God may be doing His deepest work through a life that isn't trying to be noticed at all.

We are trained to think influence gets constructed. Build the brand, grow the platform, and watch the numbers climb. But I wonder if God measures it differently.

The problem begins when we take what Christ has formed in us and start managing it, wondering what people think. Character can survive being seen. It gets complicated when we start caring who notices.

Paul wrote to a young church in Thessalonica after a mob had stormed the house where he was staying and dragged Jason before the city authorities. This was hardly an easy beginning. Yet Paul writes, "And you became imitators of us and of the Lord, for you received the word in much affliction, with the joy of the Holy Spirit, so that you became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and in Achaia" (1 Thessalonians 1:6-7, ESV). Look at those verbs: became, and then became again. Nothing there was launched or achieved; God was shaping them.

The Greek word Paul uses for "example" is typos, a word that can mean a mark, impression, pattern, or example. They received the word under affliction, and what they became was the impression that pressure left. Their lives carried the evidence of what God was doing in them.

Then Paul says the strangest part. "For not only has the word of the Lord sounded forth from you... but your faith in God has gone forth everywhere, so that we need not say anything" (1 Thessalonians 1:8, ESV). The verb Paul uses for "sounded forth" carries the idea of something resounding outward, spreading from one place to another.

Notice he doesn’t say they kept silent. The word sounded out from them, so they spoke plenty. Read the end of verse 8 again. "So that we need not say anything." Somebody's words became unnecessary, and they were Paul's. What these believers had become got there first and made his introduction beside the point.

They had no idea their reputation had outrun the apostle. Centuries earlier, Moses had no idea either. He came down from Sinai after forty days, "and Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone because he had been talking with God" (Exodus 34:29, ESV). Aaron and the whole camp saw it and backed away, afraid to come near him. The one man who could not see the shining was the man doing the shining.

Moses didn't know at first, though he found out soon enough. The Thessalonians knew because Paul told them what their lives had become. So knowing isn't the problem. The problem begins when we take what Christ has formed in us and start managing it, wondering what people think. Character can survive being seen. It gets complicated when we start caring who notices.

The good news is that we don't have to manufacture any of it. Christ forms us in the places nobody sees. During scripture reading. An apology offered before we are ready, before we have finished deciding we were wrong. A text to the coworker whose mother died in March, sent in July when the casseroles have stopped coming.

Jesus said it plainly: "You are the light of the world." Then He set a picture beside it, a city on a hill that cannot be hidden (Matthew 5:14). He never told us to shine harder. He told us what we already are, observed that nobody lights a lamp to hide it under a basket, and then named the point: people seeing good works and giving glory to the Father in heaven (Matthew 5:16). A city does not glow because it wants to be seen. It glows because people are home with the lights on.

The lady at church never knew what that moment had meant to me because, honestly, I had forgotten it. I was simply doing what seemed right in front of me. But she remembered.

Maybe that's more of how the kingdom works than we realize. We may never know who is watching, what they are carrying, or what some small act of faithfulness will leave behind. We don't have to know. We don't have to manage the impression. We keep receiving His Word, let Him form what only He can form, and keep living faithfully. Sometimes our lives get there first.