Our devotion this week, I’m In, was provided by Life.Church and is available on the YouVersion Bible app.
I’m Influential.
If we were to scroll through today’s headlines, it wouldn’t take long to encounter the brokenness of this world: violence, poverty, hatred, abuse, and countless other atrocities. All evidence of our need for Jesus. Faced with this reality, it’d be easy to sit back, shaking our heads, longing for Jesus to return. While His return is the hope we all look forward to, sitting back and waiting is not what He asked us to do. Rather, as children of God, we’ve been asked to be influential for His glory, right here, right now.
God desires to right the wrongs of this world, and His plan to bring about this reconciliation is us, His Church, living out the good news of Jesus for our world to see. This means growing and living in a way that our lives produce fruit that makes a difference in the world around us. Rather than passively enjoying the freedom we’ve received in Christ, we are compelled to share the good news and lead others into God’s family. Rather than separating ourselves from broken people and systems, we’re invited to realize our own brokenness and find healing as we engage in God’s work in our neighborhoods, churches, and relationships.
Living a life of influence begins with recognizing that our days are not our own. God has good works planned for each of us, ways that He wants to influence this world through us. We must simply hear His voice and obey His nudges. It may require setting aside our own expectations and choosing to see what seem like interruptions as opportunities—opportunities to embrace a moment of influence. These moments may seem inconsequential, but when God is at work in the middle of them, our small acts of obedience can become significant acts of influence.
God is at work in this broken world, and we have a vital part to play in His plan. Listen to His voice, obey His call, and step into a life of influence for His glory.
Read Colossians 1:19.
19 For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him,
Read 2 Corinthians 5:14-20.
14 For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. 15 And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.
16 So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ,the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! 18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19 that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. 20 We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God.
Read Matthew 5:16.
16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.
Read 1 Peter 2:9-12.
9 But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. 10 Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
11 Dear friends, I urge you, as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from sinful desires,which wage war against your soul. 12 Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.
Read Ephesians 2:10.
10 For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
Consider: What is something, or who is someone, that I can stop seeing as an interruption and start seeing as an opportunity to be influential for His glory?
