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influence through serving

Proverbs 22:4 (GWT) --- On the heels of humility (the fear of the Lord) are riches and honor and life.

"With great power comes great responsibility."  That quote comes from one of the Spiderman movies, and I have not let that thought leave me.  God has used it to remind me of the influence I have in the lives of people around me.  The truth is great power comes from great humility.  Then there are great open doors to influence more people.

Then I ran across this blog post from Ben Arment:

It's impossible to help someone through mere inquiry.
It's a nice gesture... makes us look good... lets us off the hook. But the truth is, we know what could really help others. We're fully aware of the action. We just don't want to do it.
We think influence is expendable, limited in supply; and we don't want to waste it on the wrong opportunity. So we hoard it. We might need it for ourselves, after all.
As leaders with a certain level of influence, we can either spend it on ourselves and perpetuate the personal rewards of that influence... or we can spend it in those who don't have it.
The ironic thing is - we grow in influence by helping others. It's the way of the influence economy.

Did you hear what Ben said?  "We grow in influence by helping others."  That is HUGE.  That is truth and helps us understand what our influence really is all about.  Humility is tough but is so important to our walk with God.

Seek God.  Understand humility.  Influence others by serving them.

Comments

Ben Arment said…
thanks for the shout-out Michael. You're a great encourager.
September 24, 2009 at 3:05:00 PM EDT
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