The Gift of Your Influence Your 6 Unique Qualifications Qualification #2: Your life challenges
On July 30, 1967 a 17-year-old girl dove into the waters of the Chesapeake Bay. Misjudging the depth, her head slammed into the bottom of the bay, her neck was broken, leaving her without the use of her arms and legs. She was trapped inside her own body, a prisoner of paralysis. She writes, “There I was lying in the hospital bed in the summer of 1967…. In my pain and despair, I had begged many of my friends to assist me in suicide. … begging my friends to slit my wrists, dump pills down my throat, anything to end my misery. …”
As it turns out, this young woman did not commit suicide. Instead, she went on to author 50 books, receive dozens of national and international awards, and become one of the most influential Christians of all time. I’m talking of course about Joni Eareckson Tada. Her life challenges became her platform, giving her instant credibility with millions of people worldwide.
The same could be said of Nick Vujicic (Voy Chech) who was born in Melbourne, Australia in 1982 with no arms or legs. We could say, “What a horrible tragedy!” But he isn’t saying that. He’s busy traveling the world, speaking to audiences, helping them find a way beyond the obstacles they face. On top of that, he’s the star of my favorite short movie, Butterfly Circus. Check it out here.
Sometimes our life challenges are the result of our own bad choices. But God can redeem even these life challenges and use them for good if we place them in His hands. A good example would be Charles Colson of Watergate fame. On June 21, 1974, he was sentenced to prison. But out of that sentence came a worldwide prison ministry called Prison Fellowship, 30 books, and numerous awards. As a result, thousands of prisoners and their families have found hope, help, and healing.
Whatever your life challenges are—poverty, addiction, abuse, loss, cancer, homelessness, disability, incarceration, or whatever—they can be part of your unique qualifications to make an eternal difference for good in the lives of others.
But you need to go to God and get the grace He has for you in the place of your life challenge. In our places of greatest pain, we can meet most meaningfully with God and receive the greatest healing.
Here’s why:
1. Empathy. Joni Eareckson Tada barely noticed people with disabilities before her accident. Now her whole ministry is built around people with disabilities. When you’ve experienced pain, you can empathize with others who have experienced that same kind of pain.
2. Credibility. I could talk to people with disabilities about rising above their circumstances. But I start with zero credibility. However, I can talk to people who are going through bankruptcy because I went through bankruptcy. Your life challenges give you credibility with people who have gone through similar life circumstances.
3. Message. Your life challenges can help formulate your message. Here’s where God needs to be a big, big part of the equation. We gotta take our hurts to God for healing. We gotta put our setbacks in His hands. We gotta keep coming back to Him and listening to Him until we get what we need that’s gonna transform us. Without God changing us, we have nothing to offer our world. God must meet us in our place of need if we’re gonna take Jesus to the place of need in our world. Find your fulfillment in God (not in ministry) so you have something of value to offer those in need.
4. Platform. Your life challenges help define who you’re gonna reach. They give you access to a group of people. They give you instant understanding and almost instant rapport. As Christian Comedian Michael Jr. says, “Your setbacks become your set up.”
The Gift of Your Influence Your 6 Unique Qualifications Qualification #1: Your circles of influence
Your 6 Unique Qualifications make you the best person to change your world. This is why you are irreplaceable. No one else in the world or in the history of humanity is positioned to make the difference you are designed to make.
Your unique qualification #1: Your circles of influence
Anything you do—positive or negative—has a huge impact on the people closest to you—your family, close friends, coworkers. This is wonderful news because any improvement you make to your life will be felt by those closest to you.
You have established credibility with the people closest to you. But, even if you’ve blown your credibility in those close relationships, the steps you take to repair the damage will eventually turn that influence around for the good. If your life changes—genuinely changes—the people closest to you are going to notice first.
If you have no close relationships, then job #1 for you is building those relationships. Learn everything you can about building friendships, join a church small group, invest in the lives of other people.
If the people closest to you are toxic, then prudence, of course, dictates that you distance yourself from them. You don’t walk back into an abusive relationship. Get help. Get healing. Learn whatever life lessons need to be learned. Then move on, and develop new healthy relationships.
No one else is positioned exactly where you are with your circles of influence. I can’t take your place; nobody can.
5 Amazing Possibilities Possibility #5: Inspire or coach to great achievement
Who out there needs the knowledge and skills you possess?
Think about the skills you use everyday, the skills that make your life work—the list might include leadership, relationship building, driving, writing, child rearing, programming, cooking, researching, or whatever. How did you acquire those skills? Most likely, someone helped you. Someone taught you. Someone coached you.
Using the gift of your influence, you can inspire or coach others to great achievement.
The results can be, literally, life saving. For example, someone taught my wife to be a lifeguard. She was able to rescue a couple swimmers who were in danger. As a result, a people are alive today who might not have made it otherwise.
When you coach or teach others, you can improve the quality of their lives. If you teach someone how to cook, they can make their own delicious meals. Teach someone how to study the Bible, they can learn and grow in the Christian life. If you teach someone the right skills, you might give him or her the power to climb out of poverty.
Multiply your influence. When you teach others what you know, then your influence is multiplied through their lives. Think about the person who taught Billy Graham how to preach!
In my own case, I know about writing and publishing books, so I’m able to teach others how to do that. In addition, my wife and I have skill in transformational prayer ministry, so we’re able to teach others how to do this important ministry that heals hurts and transforms lives. If you’d like more information about this, you may contact me here.
5 Amazing Possibilities Possibility #4: Making connections
People out there need you to connect them with someone who can enrich their lives.
Part of wisely using the gift of your influence is realizing you can’t be all things to all people. In fact, often one of the best things you can do for someone is to introduce that person to someone else. Someone else may have the skills, the resources, the personality, the vision your friends need to flourish.
I love connecting people.
You never know what will happen when you put two people together. One of the connections I made resulted in a business more than tripling in size and creating a beautiful work environment where people with Christian values can flourish. Another connection I made helped to bring about the end of a fifty year civil war. (More on that on the video.)
Be generous with your connections. Look for opportunities to put people together who can advance God’s kingdom.
5 Amazing Possibilities Possibility #3: Fixing things that are broken
If you’ve ever experienced panic attacks, you know how disabling they can be. You also know how hard they are to overcome. Like a childhood bully who’s a head taller than everyone else on the playground, panic attacks can feel like a frightening monster from whom there is no escape.
When my wife started experiencing panic attacks, we tried everything that a Christian would normally try to deal with them. What we tried helped a little, but not very much. Then we discovered a new type of prayer ministry that helped with panic attacks. We met with Steve Freitag. After Steve prayed with Kim, Kim’s panic went from a 9 to a 1.
Our lives and our world are filled with things that are broken, and panic attacks are just one of many examples. Sometimes marriages are broken. Friendships are fractured. Addictions, anger, poverty, oppression, corruption, injustice, and many other ills plague humanity. But you can be the doctor that brings healing, the mechanic that puts things back together.
And this is what God is all about. God is about redemption and repair. Our world is messed up; God is fixing things; we get to help.
The Gift of Your Influence can repair things that are broken.
It might be a literal thing that you fix. When my lawnmower was conking out, my neighbor invited me over, lifted my lawnmower onto his workbench, took it completely apart, found the problem, fixed it, and put it back together. Wow! Talk about improving the quality of my life!
You might fix a broken relationship. As followers of Jesus Christ, that is what we do. We repair relationships.
You might help break the chains of addiction, or a put back together a soul fractured by abuse. You might bring healing to an entire community or fix a disabled system.
Remember, you can be the answer to someone’s prayer.
How do you help others experience God? One of the ways in which the gift of your influence makes a difference in your world is this: You help others experience the love of God.
The Gift of Your Influence: 5 Amazing Possibilities
Possibility #2 Experience
Who is the nicest person you’ve ever met?
For me, that’s a pretty simple answer. My grandma.
When I was two years old, my dad was deployed by the military to Japan. My mom, my brother, and I remained here in the US. My mom, saddled with the need to work and yet care for two very small children, did the only thing that made sense at the time; she moved us back to her parents’ farm. There she went to work every day, and my grandfather went out to work the fields every day. That left my brother and me at home with my grandma.
It was one of the best things that ever happened to me. From my grandma I learned some very important life lessons. Like some people are safe. Some people are kind. Some people are gentle. Some people can be trusted. It was clear to me that my grandma loved Jesus with all her heart—that was clear before I really even knew who Jesus was.
What did my grandma do? She used the gift of her influence to help me experience the love of God. While many of us believe that God loves us, that love remains abstract, theological, theoretical—unless and until someone comes into our lives to show us what that love is all about.
In my case, if it hadn’t been for my grandma, I don’t know that I ever would have said yes to Jesus. She made Jesus attractive to me.
Your world is filled with people who need to experience the love of God. The gift of your influence can make that possible. What will that look like? It might look like homemade bread toasted with butter and sugar given to a four year old child. Or it might mean a kind word, a meal, groceries, a long walk, a day fishing. It might mean you advocate for them, protect them, watch out for their interests in a world where everyone is looking out for #1. It might mean that your provide a safe place. In some cases, it means you hurt with those who hurt, you celebrate with those who celebrate. It may mean that you make sacrifices for them, little sacrifices, or maybe big sacrifices.
When Jesus walks in a room, everything changes. There are over seven billion people on this earth. Is Jesus physically present with each? No. Instead, He sends you. You are His body. You are His representative. You are His physical presence in someone’s life. You convey His love to the people in your world.
How do the people in your world discover that God is good? How do they experience God’s love? They experience it through you, through the gift of your influence.
When I was nine or ten years old, my dad, an Air Force Sergeant, was reassigned to Fort Fisher, a little radar site on the North Carolina Coast. We moved into a rental home off base, and one Sunday, we found ourselves—at the invitation of my dad’s coworker—at the Carolina Beach Community Church.
Wow! This place was different. The pastor, instead of wearing those robes that ministers wore, dressed in regular clothes. He talked about stuff he really seemed to care about. He laughed, and sometimes, he cried. Afterward, nobody seemed to be in a big hurry to leave. The stood around and talked, sometimes telling stories of what God had done in their lives.
Then one night the pastor came over to our home and talked to my dad about how he could find eternal life through Jesus Christ. My dad opted in, and a couple weeks later, the pastor came back to talk to my brother and me. When I prayed, I really could sense the Holy Spirit swooping down from heaven and cleaning out the inside of my soul.
That moment in time set our whole family on a different path. We started heading in a different direction, filled with a new hope.
That night in 1968 my world and my life changed. Because of Pastor Marshall Weaver I’m in a very different place today that I might otherwise have been in.
Your gift of influence opens up amazing possibilities. This is why the gift of your influence is so very important, and so very needed. I’ve identified five of these amazing possibilities, and the first one is discovery.
Right now, someone in your world needs you to help them discover a new path, uncover a new paradigm, find a new way.
Life can be full of dead ends. We chase what seems to be important, only to discover it doesn’t give us what we want. We try something, and it doesn’t work. We try something else, and it doesn’t work. After a while, all the paths we thought were good, end up going no-where.
We end up losing options. We end up losing hope.
That’s why we all sometimes need someone else to come along and show us an alternate route. This is where breakthroughs take place in our lives—we discover a new path, a path we didn’t even know was there.
We need someone to help us. And that someone could be you.
What’s your most important spiritual gift? Would it be a practical gift like giving, helps, or hospitality? Would it be a ministry gift like pastoring, teaching, administration? Or would it be one of the flashier gifts like healing, tongues, miracles?
I would like to suggest to you that while those gifts are important, you have been given a much more important gift: the gift of your influence.
What do I mean by that?
Have you seen It’s a Wonderful Life? In this classic Christmas movie, George Bailey has an incredible experience. He gets to see what his world would look like if he had never been born. What he sees is astounding. Without realizing it, he had prevented great evil and brought great good into the lives of many, many people.
What George Bailey was seeing—in a roundabout way—was the gift of his influence. When the movie was over, he understood for the first time, the huge hole that would be left if his influence was removed.
Likewise, you have the power to change lives, and to change your world for the better. You have the power to bring eternal good into many lives. All of this is due to the gift of your influence.
I’d like to unpack this gift for you, and help you see how amazing it is and how you can use it to bring much good into your world. As we do this, we’ll be looking at:
• 5 Amazing Possibilities—This is why the gift of your influence is so very important, and so very needed.
• Your 6 Unique Qualifications—This is why you are irreplaceable. No one else in the world or in the history of humanity is positioned to make the difference you are designed to make.
• Your 7 Transforming Identities—This is how God designed you to be the change agent your world needs.
• Your 4 Power Tools—These are the tools you need to get your gift of influence to work properly. You don’t want to neglect these. You can do everything else perfectly, but if you don’t get these right, it all falls apart.
• Your 5 Superpowers—Yes, you really do have superpowers, and I’ll tell you what they are and how to use them.
• 6 Easy-to-learn Kingdom Skills—Here’s how to take your gift of influence to the next level.
