Welcome to the In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Friday, September 6th. I mean an influence to exert that power within us, to help other people understand who Jesus is. And to influence them to accept Him as their personal Savior. And to influence them to grow in their understanding and knowledge of the Word of God. And to influence them to walk in a way that is godly, that is holy, that is righteous. And to influence them to serve Him and to follow Him all the days of their life.
And to support His work and to spread His message all over the world. And so all of us have a responsibility, especially as believers, to be influencers. That is, exerting the power that we have. Now that can be by our voice, by our speech, by our personality, by our possessions, by our position in life.
But all of us are influencers. And in the book of Daniel, you'll find the most beautiful example of someone who indeed cast a godly influence on all those around him. And so what I'd like to do is I'd like to give you just a set of principles here. That is, what are the requirements that are necessary for us to be a godly influence? Not just some influence, but a godly influence.
The kind that makes a difference in a person's life today and the days thereafter. So I want you to think first of all about this. And the first requirement is this. And that is a strong conviction about the Word of God. A basic conviction is something you strongly believe in. You're convinced of that it is true.
And so if you're going to have a godly influence on someone else, you can't be all over the table and doing or saying, well, this is what I believe versus this is how I'm living. A principle says, that's my conviction. I don't change from it. I don't walk away from it.
Whatever the price, I may be rejected. It may cost me my job or whatever, but I don't alter and I don't waver from my basic conviction. If you're going to be a godly influence, you've got to have some basic convictions over which, listen, about which you can't be bought off by acceptance. You can't be afraid and therefore give in because of somebody else's threat.
So I ask you this question. What basic principles do you hold so dear in your life that you would not give up under any condition? Listen, the Word of God, conviction is your safety.
Walking in the will of God, being obedient to Him, doing what He would have you to do. There is a second thing that's absolutely essential and that's this. You and I must be committed to the conviction. What is this I believe? Am I committed to that? Are you so committed that no one has any question about the fact you not only say you believe it, they watch how you live? Well, it's certainly true of Daniel because all through the Scripture, what happens? He's committed.
Nothing happens when they come to say, we're going to throw you in the lion's den because you're still praying toward Jerusalem. So be it. Nothing ever bought him off, nothing ever persuaded him to violate the basic biblical conviction that God had built into his life as a young man. But there's a third thing I want you to notice here that's very evident when you look at his life and there's so many evidences of this. If you're going to have a godly influence, it requires courage. It requires courage.
Let me ask you a question. Do you have any convictions? Do you have a commitment level to the Lord Jesus Christ that you would say there's someone in authority over you where you work, where you go to school? Do you have that kind of conviction and courage to say, I'm not going to do that even if it costs me my job?
I'm not going to join that no matter what you think. And remember we said that influence can be passive or it can be very purposeful. It can be conscious or it can be unconscious, but influencing we all are. And so it takes courage to stand against those kind of difficulties and hardships because they're coming in all of our lives. And when you look at his life, it's very evident what happened here and it's going to be happening to us.
And notice something else, and that's simply this. If we're going to be a godly influence, we must have unshakable faith. Because when our faith gets shaken and others see it shaken and we begin to walk away and shrink back and we begin to deny what we believe, you know what we do? We cast a shadow on the Christian faith.
We cast a shadow on the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. Listen, if God is who He says He is and He is, He is able to deliver us. And as those Hebrew children say, look, no matter what you say, we're not going to bow down. But even if God does not deliver us, He says, we're not going to serve your gods.
And you see, that's the kind of faith that we need that, you know what? He may not deliver me from this circumstance, but He will deliver me through it all. That is, there's no way for us to obey the living God without being blessed. It's impossible to obey God without being blessed. This is the God who turns the most difficult circumstances into something good. This is the God who turns our suffering and our heartache and our pain and our persecution into something that is good from His perspective and our influence and our testimony. And all through the book of Daniel, you see this going on.
His confidence is not shaken. They say, well, throw you in the lines then. Throw me in there. And if God wants to save me, well, if He doesn't, He'll take me home. Put me before the king. And when you see what happened when this first issue came forward, first dream, what did Daniel do? He said to his friends, he said, let's go to God in prayer. And he praised this awesome prayer in this second chapter, the nineteenth verse. He said, then the mystery was revealed to Daniel in a light vision. Then Daniel blessed the God of heaven.
And Daniel said, let the name of God be blessed forever and ever. For wisdom and power belongs to Him. It is He who changes the times and the epochs.
He removes kings and establishes kings. He gives wisdom to wise men and knowledge to men of understanding. It is He who reveals the profound and hidden things.
He knows what's in the darkness and the light dwells with Him. To you, O God of my fathers, I give thanks and praise. For you've given me wisdom and power. Even now you've made known to me what we requested of you. For you have made known to us that kings matter. Listen, here's a man of confidence.
He's fearless. Listen, bold, crying out to God, confident. And he said to the king, we'll give you the answer. And each time there was a dream, he absolutely, beautifully interpreted the dream. And sometimes it was an awesome answer, giving words of prophecy about the future that some of us have lived long enough to see some of these things come into pass and understanding them.
The question is this. In your thinking about your relationship to God and to other people, would you say that yes, I not only have the courage, but I have confidence in my God. You see, when the test comes, whether we are real or not, whether we really have commitment, whether our convictions are really alive within us, am I willing to trust Him when I don't have anything else I can trust? Am I willing to trust Him when I look at the situation and looks hopeless and helpless? Will I stand firm and strong based on this? My God has made me this promise. He will never leave me nor forsake me, no matter what.
Let me ask you a question. Are you being a godly influence as a result of your convictions in the Word of God, your commitment to that, your courage to stand? And listen, your confidence in Him.
Well, let's think about something else that's important here, and that's simply this. And that is, we will be a godly influence if and when we demonstrate a calm spirit when under fire. It's one thing to say this is what I believe, but when the fire heats up, do I have a calm spirit? Am I shaken? Am I thrown off balance? Am I wringing my hands? Am I now full of anxiety and frustration and fear and thinking about the future and suppose this and suppose that, and I better watch after this.
You know what? When you get your focus off of God, it's very easy to move from conviction to preference. Let me ask you a question. When you hit one of those tough spots, when you hit one of those challenges in life, what is your response? Is your response immediately to look to the Father? If you and I want to be a godly influence, and I think about how children grow up in families, and when they see your family, you and your family hit one of those difficult times, do they see or hear you using profane language or God, if you would so and so? Do they see you wringing your hands? Do they hear you saying, Well, why pray if God were?
Or do they see you saying quietly, God knows all about this. He's our God. And He says, He's established His throne in the heavens and His sovereignty rules over all.
He's going to take care of us. And you know, I hesitate sometime to give personal illustrations, but that's the ones I know best. And you know that I'm not going to take any credit because God knows I know better. But let me just give you an example of something really blessed my heart. A couple of weeks or so ago, I received this letter from a young man who was in this church as a teenager when I became the pastor. And when the big vote came that night for me and against me, he and a bunch of his teenage friends were up in the balcony voting for me, and their parents were downstairs voting against me. And so, what happened was, he watched all of this. And he watched what I went through and the way people treated me and so forth and the way I responded.
He wrote me a letter a couple of weeks ago, and he says, I just want you to know I've been thinking about you and praying for you. And I want to tell you what's happening. I'm going through one of those situations like you went through. And he said, All through this, I kept remembering, I watched you when so many people were against you. And it just looked like there was no way in the world for you to win that battle. And I watched how it all came out. And I watched your response to that. And he says, I want to thank you for not falling away, not backing away, not fighting back, but just quietly trusting God.
And I want to tell you, it is still a great inspiration, challenge, and encouragement to me today, years later. Well, you know, I probably had not thought about him in a long, long time. And I never thought about trying to influence somebody. You see, there's passive influence, and then there is that purposeful influence.
What you and I don't realize is people are watching you and watching how you respond. And I remember one time when I worked in the textile mill, I got accused of doing something that I did not do, and that is the material would come off of the cans and they would have to just weave back and forth and back and forth. It was very important that they weave back and forth, back and forth, and they stay in that neat pile because of where they had to go. Somebody came along with one of those dollies and they hit my particular wagon there and knocked it all over. Well, when the boss man came by and he saw that, he just reamed me out good right in front of everybody.
Just let me have it. I just said, well, I didn't do it. And the last time I saw it, well, he didn't make it, he let me have it anyway. Well, it was sort of a habit for some reason. The guys would meet in the restroom, that's where they'd take their break and talk. So I walked in the restroom after that, and I realized I'd had a wonderful testimony and never said a word. They called me deacon for some reason.
I did not know why till today. They said, deacon, we can't believe you stood there and let him say that to you. Anyway, they were all patting me on the shoulder and encouraging me and so forth. And you know what?
The best thing that happened to me in three months of working that textile mill was being falsely accused and responding in the right way. Because when I left, they were all telling me goodbye, hate to see me leave, and they said, what a good influence I've been on them. And I was just a teenager at that time, really, and just starting the college and wasn't trying to have an influence. They just saw me in a situation how I responded.
And you know what? God's going to let you. You see, we say, well, it wasn't your fault. That's not the issue. Listen, sometimes God will allow things to happen in your life.
It's not your fault. He's going to allow things to happen in your life so He gets glorified. Isn't that what, exactly what Jesus said to Mary and Martha? He said, you know, I could have come and healed him, but just wait till you see what I do. And then you're going to see something. He raised him from the dead.
You never know what kind of influence you're going to have. It's that right response. Which leads me to the next point, and there's so many illustrations I could give you at this point, and I need to move on here. A calm spirit, but then likewise, one of the requirements, listen, is a Christ-like spirit when we're under fire. It's one thing to become, what's a Christ-like spirit?
Here's what it is. Christ-like spirit is you forgive no matter what. No matter what, you forgive. That's a Christ-like spirit. And if you're going to have a godly influence, you've got to respond that way. And one time when Daniel was, the manipulation by some of his associates, they tried to get him in a position where he would be killed because of their jealousy. You don't see or hear anything from Daniel, his animosity, unforgiving spirit, bitterness, resentment, hostility, any of that. And you say, well, the Bible doesn't tell all those things. Listen, the Bible tells a lot of bad things about his servants.
But Daniel and Joseph are two of the most pristine people in the whole Bible. Godly men undergoing difficulty, hardship, all kind of things, but responding in the right way. A loving, listen, spirit of forgiveness. That's the Christ-like spirit. And sometimes our greatest influence in testimony is when people see us with a spirit of forgiveness toward others when they've wronged us. That's that Christ-like spirit. And you know how we lose a lot of our testimony and our influence? With our lips.
You say, well, everybody's got a right to say something. Here's what you have to ask yourself the question. Am I about to lose my godly influence or am I about to nail it down solid for good? That loving forgiveness, that quiet, calm spirit.
And the last thing I'd mention is simply this. And that is if we're going to have a godly influence, and this is where we get trapped. If I'm going to have a godly influence, I must be consistent in my walk.
Now, if you look at the book of Daniel and read what happens here, and there's so many wonderful things in these first six chapters. He's very consistent. He doesn't yield with the first test. I've prebursed in my heart I'm not going to do it.
He doesn't compromise anywhere along the way where suppose the king gets upset. Well, I better not tell the king what God really told me or he may throw me in prison. Or I better stop praying or I get thrown the lines down. Or my friends had better bow down to this god or they're going to get thrown in the fire. Here's what I want you to see.
Daniel's awesome influence that influenced his friends, king's servants, four kings, and the whole nation was a result of not only his conviction in the Word of God, but his consistency all the way through. If I were to ask your children, did your parents give you a godly influence? What would your children say? Because you see, it doesn't make any sense what you and I say. When somebody asks me about my past or something, I say, You know what?
The best thing for you to do if you want another church, go ask my children. Because you know what? They're going to be dead honest. Would your children say you were a godly influence in their life? If I should ask the person you work for, does he or she exert a godly influence? They may not even understand what that is, but they'll catch on in a moment. They'll have to say yes or maybe no. Will your friends who know you the best, who've lived around you, watched you, heard you, seen you in tough times and good times, would they say he's always consistent.
She's always the same. Doesn't mean we don't have fluctuations in our personality at times, but can always count on you. The truth is, if we don't have a godly influence to leave those around us, what do we have?
Ashes. Nothing much to give. If we can't give a godly influence, we don't have much else to give. And I want to challenge you that before you go to bed this very night, ask yourself the question, Father, help me to see myself the way You see me. And Lord, help me to understand, am I exerting a godly influence in the circumference of the people whom I touch every day?
And if not, make whatever corrections necessary. And if so, thank Him and go to sleep in perfect peace that you're walking in the will of God. Thank you for listening to part two of Requirements of a Godly Influence. If you'd like to know more about Charles Stanley or InTouch Ministries, stop by InTouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of InTouch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.
