What does it take to cause a ripple? Are ripples only from smart people? People with money? Attractive people? Well traveled people? Winners? What does it take to be an influence?
Today I’m starting a study group using Carol Kent’s Becoming a Woman of Influence: Making a Lasting Impact on Others.
Jesus wasn’t anything especially unique to look at, as men of the Galilee region went. “For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not” (Isaiah 53:2-3).
No majestic. Not beautiful. Despised by other people. And yet He created ripples that changed the world and, thankfully, my life. He used people like Anna Ruth, Mary Ellen, Carol, Wanda, and Gretchen to start the ripples that touched my life and changed me. Are you touching anyone? Maybe we can make some ripples in His name to touch more people.
It doesn’t take someone extraordinary to start a ripple, just someone willing to use their pebble.
Would you toss a pebble right now by clicking on this window of Compassion (if reading on a phone, click the Compassion link) and offer a single prayer for a child needing to be touched by a ripple of living water?
Jesus made ripples because He always obeyed the Father, always was in His will. As I reflect on my life (with a TINY sphere of influence) and the lives of those who have made big ripples for Him, the times when true and lasting influence happens are the times when God’s kids are right in the middle of His will for them at that moment. We almost don’t even have to worry about influence… If we keep our eyes on Him and not ourselves, if we obey, He uses us in ways we never would have imagined (and often don’t even know). In popular Christian culture I think sometimes we put the cart before the horse. We try to figure out how to influence people for Christ and maybe get a little distracted thinking about what WE are going to do (this is not me being judgmental, this me talking about myself). Forgetting that it’s about what HE is going to do. Oh that there would be less of me and more of Him!
Amen, Patti. So well shared. I think you’re right on target. Today our group looked at Psalm 1 and how delighting in the Law of the Lord comes BEFORE fruit and prospering. Ladies shared about the same insight you shared … that we often look for influence and THEN want to delight in the Lord, but it’s meant to be the other way around. I wish you could be in the “REAL” group! 🙂
Oh I know I would enjoy that SO much!