Last week during our chapel service we began a conversation about influence and how the culture we’re immersed in invades us. I mentioned that our lives are porous and that what is around us so easily seeps into us. I was talking about this tendency with my sister-in-law over the Labor Day weekend and I told her about my not so subtle likeness to pumice. She responded “Because you rub people the wrong way or because you slough off the dead stuff?” We both had a good laugh.
What is around us soaks into us so easily. What we are immersed in invades us so quickly. I am confident that you are familiar with this condition and that you too find yourself under the influence of the world around you; purchasing unnecessary items, taking on unflattering attitudes and thinking unsettling thoughts. We must discipline ourselves to live above such influence. However, living under the influence of what is around us is not all bad. In fact I believe the human tendency to be influenced is an intentional design attribute rather than a flawed design.
God intended for us to be influenced. God did not design us to be impenetrable but rather created us with a porosity that allows us to be susceptible to the cries of a starving child, he fashioned us to be perceptive to the plight of a person without a home, God wired us to be receptive to the work to which he would call his people.
The way the wiring works most efficiently is if God’s people live by and are led by the Holy Spirit. God did not and does not ask us to resist bad influences simply by an act of will power but instead gives us real power so that we are able to consistently respond to the work to which he is calling us to participate. In the Scriptures it says, “In the last days God will pour out his Spirit on all people.” This Spirit will come and invade our lives and live within us to counsel and teach, prepare and empower, inform and impart so that we might live under its influence.
We invite you to join us today for Chapel at 10:30 where we seek together to live under the influence of a God who loves to invade our lives. We have the privilege of having Shane Claiborne with us today to proclaim God’s word (www.thesimpleway.org/shane/). Shane writes and travels extensively speaking about peacemaking, social justice, and Jesus and is a founding partner of The Simple Way, a faith community in inner city Philadelphia that has helped to birth and connect radical faith communities around the world. He is the author of several books including, The Irresistible Revolution, Jesus for President, and Becoming the Answer to Our Prayers. Shane is a man who has sought to live above the influence of the world while at that same time being so moved by the world that he radically submits to the influence of God’s Spirit.
This week I pray that we would find ourselves living under the right influence. May you immerse yourself in God’s Spirit and may you find that it invades every part of your life.
