Quest 20 - Influence + Faith

This week in Quest, I loved the question from day one: Do you think that Jesus is impressed with you?

That question is so amazing because it caused me to reflect on my life, what I have done, and what that means in relation to Jesus. 

On paper, I have had an “impressive” life journey. I was a kid who didn’t get into too much trouble, I went to Haiti to serve in the mission field twice in high school, I preached my first sermon as a sophomore in high school (it went 7 whole minutes), ended up playing college football, decided to go into ministry, graduated from Bible college, got married, bought a house, had a child. 

Impressive-ish life on paper. As I reflected on it, I felt pretty good. Then reality hit me. On paper means nothing. All those things that I did, all the various degrees of success that I have achieved, all my accolades. They don’t matter.  None of that matters. Sure it’s great. Sure, I have a great life. Sure, I am extremely happy with where I am right now.

But does it impress Jesus? Ehh.

And it shouldn’t. There are people who live full time on the mission field, are way better at preaching than me, there are better athletes than me, people have larger houses than me, and they have better degrees than me. I’ll stop there because they don’t have a better child. My baby is the best. 

If it comes down to accomplishments and accolades, well then, we are all in trouble. There is no way to impress Jesus with those things because there are always people who are better. That’s just life. 

So what impresses Jesus? Faith! We have talked about it all week and have been dissecting it in this week's reading. Remember these two scriptures:

Luke 7:7-9, “7 I am not even worthy to come and meet you. Just say the word from where you are, and my servant will be healed. 8 I know this because I am under the authority of my superior officers, and I have authority over my soldiers. I only need to say, ‘Go,’ and they go, or ‘Come,’ and they come. And if I say to my slaves, ‘Do this,’ they do it. 9 When Jesus heard this, he was amazed. Turning to the crowd that was following him, he said, “I tell you, I haven’t seen faith like this in all Israel!”

Mark 6:4-6, “4 Then Jesus told them, “A prophet is honored everywhere except in his own hometown and among his relatives and his own family.” 5 And because of their unbelief, he couldn’t do any miracles among them except to place his hands on a few sick people and heal them. 6 And he was amazed at their unbelief.”

It all comes down to faith. 

I will be brutally honest here for a moment. When I say that after saying that all my accomplishments mean nothing, it gets a little depressing. It makes it feel like: What’s the point in life? Why even try? 

Ahhhh, but there is a combination that is the secret sauce that pushes these two worlds together and makes an enormous difference. 

The key here is to take the influence that God has given you through your past, your skills, and your passions and then combine them with your faith to make a difference in others lives. It’s not meaningless, it's an opportunity!

Let me give it to you in equation form. 

Your Influence + Your faith = the opportunity to influence others to faith. 

That’s exactly what happened with the Roman Centurion. This was a man who was a leader. Probably extremely strong, passionate, a man that cared. He had influence! He didn’t just have influence over his soldiers though, he had influence over the Jewish people. 

Luke 7:3-5, “ 3 When the officer heard about Jesus, he sent some respected Jewish elders to ask him to come and heal his slave. 4 So they earnestly begged Jesus to help the man. “If anyone deserves your help, he does,” they said, 5 “for he loves the Jewish people and even built a synagogue for us.”

As you read that you recognize that this man has influence. That influence came from his willingness to work, serve, and lead others. He proved who he was, but it wasn’t until he brought the faith in that it impressed. 

He had faith in who Jesus was, what he could do, and how he could help him in his situation. This led to his servant being healed! Now, we have no recorded conversations about what happened to this man afterwards, but if I had to bet money, I would bet this moment led his servant, some of his soldiers, and people of the community to faith. 

His influence and faith led to him being able to influence others with their faith. 

That’s impressive. 

What about you? What has God given you that you need to pair with your faith to make a difference? Are you a coach? A boss? A small group leader? A shift leader? Do you have people you are with daily? Do you have a family?

Dig deep into your life, see how God has used your past, your skills, and your passions to give you influence… then have faith in Jesus! Let him do some work! That will lead to people’s lives being changed. 

For me…. I have been given this platform at The Rock. I am thankful for it. Everything that I have done in my life? Not impressive. What Jesus can do through my life? That’s impressive. 

Take what you have and simply have faith.