Have you ever thought of yourself as an influential person? As having the ability to impact the lives of other people?

How do you evaluate your spiritual progress? Do you compare yourself to someone else, deciding either that you’ll never be as good as that person, or else thanking God that you’re not as messed up as that other person? When you compare yourself to someone else, you can become discouraged – or get a swelled head!

Oswald Chambers would likely tell you not to bother comparing yourself to other people. Why? He writes: “If the Spirit of God has transformed you within, you will exhibit Divine characteristics in your life…” (My Utmost for His Highest, September 20). In other words, compare yourself to God’s character.

God’s character? In me? Surprising as it sounds, 2 Corinthians 3:18 seems to agree. Nothing between us and God, our faces shining with the brightness of his face. And so we are transfigured much like the Messiah, our lives gradually becoming brighter and more beautiful as God enters our lives and we become like him (The Message).

Becoming like God, as God enters our lives. Nothing between us and God. How do I live so that there is nothing between myself and God? Stay in a prayer closet all day? No. Paul wrote, “I can do everything through him who gives me strength” (Philippians 4:13). You live your life by looking to Jesus to give you strength for every situation you face. Larry Crabb calls it living “in the energy of Christ”. That means, he says, that you look to Jesus for strength even for the choices no one sees.

Here’s what’s really amazing: Larry Crabb suggests that the choices we make have an impact on the lives of others, even though those people didn’t see us make those choices. In other words, this isn’t just about setting a good example. It’s about the kind of person we have become by the unseen choices we make – and the kind of person we have become then influences the lives of those around us. Here are Crabb’s words: “The choices we make to live in the energy of Christ, including the private choices no one can see, have a far greater impact for good on other people’s lives (as bad ones have for bad) than we suspect. it is the energy that comes out of us, what we most deeply believe, that stirs passion, which nurtures or gets in the way of spiritual community. And the quality of that energy depends on our level of fellowship with God.” The Safest Place on Earth: Where People Connect and are Forever Changed Word Publishing, 1999, p. 125

Really? Is that Biblical? That by our very presence we influence other people, because of the kind of people we’ve become, either drawing them toward Jesus or away from Him?

More on this next time.