Who Sits At Your Table of Influence?...

Tonight (Wednesday) at our midweek youth gathering we started a new series called MySpace: MyLife. For the next six weeks we'll be exploring things like relationships, evangelism, media choices, and the like through the lenses of the lessons we can learn from the online world and community of MySpace. We started off tonight talking about My Top 8. For those who aren't "myspace" friendly, each person has their own homepage and can choose their top 8, 16, 20 or 24 friends to display who also have a myspace page. We used that whole idea to talk about relationships and how to build healthy friendships in life.

We all want friends. None of us like to be alone. None of us like to be the one who is left out. We are all created in the image of God, whether we acknowledge it or not, and part of being created in that image means being created relationally. We need relationships with other people.

So as I prepared and prayed about this series and what I would share tonight I felt led to talk about who sits at our table of influence? Who are you friends and how do they influence you or you influence them? Who do you go through life with? Who sits at your table of influence? The dictionary defines influence as "the act or power of producing an effect (on someone or something) without the use of force or command." In our relationships we all have some sort of influence. Either we are being influenced or we are influencing others, and sometimes this can happen in the same relationship.

As we all look at the friendships and relationships we have I think we need to look for a two kinds of people. First, we all need people who influence us to be more like Jesus. We all need mentors - people who challenge us to grow and mature in the faith - people who will hold us accountable, inspire us to follow Christ more closely, and who will influence us for the good of the kingdom. But we also need a second kind of relationship: We need friendships where we are influencing others with the love of Jesus. Jesus was called a "friend of sinners." If you were to eat a meal with Him and the people he ate with you would probably share a table with prostitutes, social outcasts, uneducated and poor people, and a lot of other people considered "riff-raff" by their society and even the religious leaders of the day. But Jesus knew the need to live out truth, grace, and love in the lives of those who did not know it. And we are called to do the same. We are called to have friends who no nothing of the love and truth of Jesus so that we can model it, teach it, and live it toward them and for them.

So, who sits at your table of influence? Are there both types of people? I know that for me, personally, the challenge is to be sure that I am making authentic, real relationships with people who can influence me to follow Jesus in a deeper way, as well as friendships that are intentional and authentic in showing the love of Jesus to those who don't yet claim it as theirs.