A desire to influence

I once read a quote by John Maxwell that went something like this: "With only one exception every person in the world is made up of others."

Well, most of us are not content to live our lives for ourselves. We believe in our ideas. We are also motivated by a desire to live a life that counts ... that leaves a positive imprint on as many others as possible. So, we look at the "others" around us and desire to influence them, to leave them better off for their encounter with us.

Well, if we look at Jesus' Great Commission and also look at that desire within most of us, we realize that our desire to influence others goes beautifully with Jesus' command to make disciples (followers of Jesus). God's Son calls us to play a part in influencing others to follow Him and grow in their conformity to His teachings.

One of the many ways we can do this is to blog. I love those times when it is just me and my computer. I have a thought that I would love to share with others regarding a Christian's perspective of a current event or a devotional thought on some passage of Scripture. So, I sit down and punch out my thoughts on the keyboard.

The potential influence we can have when we upload our thoughts to the web is mind-blowing. As a pastor, I've had the chance to regularly influence hundreds in my ministry. Yet as a blogger, I have had the opportunity to influence tens of thousands of others around the world. You can see from the inset how many times my blog has had a hit from the top ten countries that visit my site.

With the inset to the left, you see that you can blog about just about anything. My top post, "Symptoms of a Guilty Conscience" was written a couple of years ago as I reflected on the words of a lawyer in a murder trial and also upon some relevant stories in God's Word. The next most popular post, "Selling Our Florida House" simply reflected on the struggle my wife and I had with how God would resolve our nightmare-scenario situation of trying to get rid of a house that was VERY upside down. On and on, you see that I simply write about a lot of things and folks just like reading.


So, if I can do it, so can you. Why not consider starting a blog and putting your thoughts to print. People will read and you will influence. If you want to get into blogging, I'd love to help you get started. Just contact me at: mattellis1997@gmail.com.