Light but Heavy Influence - Martin Wiles

You are the salt of the earth. But what good is salt if it has lost its flavor? Matthew 5:13 NLT

“I can’t believe something so small could make such a loud noise.”

My wife and I lay in the tent. The rains had held off. The only sound was the oscillating fan we had brought to provide noise and to keep us cool in the July heat. Darkness invaded our tent, so thick we couldn’t see our hands in front of our faces, literally.

The first rays of dawn had not yet infiltrated our tent, but we lay awake listening to the silence of the night. No birds had begun their chorus. Even the campground rooster had not awakened. Then, we heard a loud whoosh.

“What was that?” my wife asked. By this time, dawn was breaking, and I saw what had made the sound.

“Just a leaf,” I said, comforting her, before remarking how something so light could be heard so loudly. She snuggled against me and went back to sleep.

I thought of what Jesus said about His followers' influence: that we were the salt of the earth and the light of the world. As He was. He brought flavor to a legalistic world, reinterpreting the wrong interpretations the religious leaders had made of His Father’s Word. He loved the unlovable and pointed others to the true way to be restored to a right relationship with the heavenly Father. His influence was light, but heavy.

Our influence is often more than we imagine. Not everyone circulates in a wide area of the world. Our worlds appear small, but the influence we have in our small worlds can be great, especially by using technology. The people we influence with our love, acts of kindness, and testimony for Christ may go on to influence others … or be the one person God chooses to use in a worldwide way. We never know what God wants to do in others’ lives—or even in our own.

God controls where we make our influence. That place may not be our place of choice, but God knows what’s best. Since God orders our influence, we should never negate what He might do through it. We don’t have to have a testimony of how bad we were before God saved us for our testimony to mean something to others. That God kept us from that type of living is a wonderful testimony in and of itself.

Like the leaf gracing our tent, choose to make an impact on others. You never know what God will do through your influence.

Prayer: Father, give us the courage to impact the lives of others.

Tweetable: How are you weighting your influence?

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