Quotes about Influence

No one is more influential in your life than you are because no one talks to you more than you do. It's a fact that you and I are in an endless conversation with ourselves.

The spiritual reality for many of us is that the one thing is not the Lord. And the danger in that reality is this: your one thing will control your heart, and whatever controls your heart will exercise inescapable influence over your words, choices, and actions. Your one thing will become that which shapes and directs your responses to the situations and relationships of your daily life. If the Lord isn't your one thing, the thing that is your one thing will be your functional lord.

It is important for all parents to examine the system of belief that shapes their moment-by-moment interactions with their children.

Parenting is about being God's ambassadors in the lives of our children.

The highest paid members of our society are not the people who teach us, heal us, or lead us in worship; the people we are willing to award with inordinate sums of money are the people who entertain us.

Whatever functionally rules your heart will then shape the way you see life and your desires, and it will control your words and behavior.

Without knowing it, we put our identity and inner peace in the hands of the people around us. We look to them for what no flawed human being will ever be able to deliver. We ride the roller coaster of their views of us. We begin to do things not because they are right, but because we know they will please those whose opinion of us and acceptance of us mean more than they should.

It is so difficult for us to remember and be motivated by what is truly important. It is so tempting to be committed to our little kingdoms that the transcendent kingdom of God is of little functional influence.

Something as normal as a concern over what others think of me, or what will happen to me if others oppose me, rises to a level of such immediate importance that my actions are more shaped by that concern than they are about the huge and transcendent glories of the life-altering grace of the gospel.

Children begin to lose respect for the parent who is content with a "do what I say and not as I do" relationship to children.

If Christ is the head of his body—and he is—then everything else is just body. The most influential pastor or ministry leader is a member of the body of Christ and therefore needs what the other members of the body need.

You are called to be an instrument of wisdom in your teenager's life. To do so, you must be gentle, humble, patient, and persevering.