Dangerously InfluentialSample

Choose Influences Wisely 

There’s a difference between hearing and listening. Hearing something is just what your body does. It’s the action of your ears perceiving sound and then your brain forming meaning. But listening is a choice. Listening requires focus and concentration—you actually process what’s been said.

In the same way, there’s a difference between influence and existence. We live in a fallen, broken world because we’ve all sinned. Because of that, there will always be people and influences not worth following, because the world is dangerously influential. But just because something exists doesn’t mean it has to influence. Just look at pop culture. We can learn from it, but we certainly shouldn’t try to be like it.

We can’t cut out every bad influence in our world. There are just too many, and then we’d have no friends. We can’t be so out of touch about the world that we lose our influence in the world. But, it brings us to a really important question: How can we be in this world, but not of it?

We have to acknowledge that all influences exist, but only some are worth following. 

So, how do we do that? We need to decide who or what we let influence us. And God gave us His Holy Spirit and discernment to help us with that.

Philippians 4:8 NIV says this: Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or worthy or praiseworthy—think about such things.

We let discernment decide. We choose to think of things that are praiseworthy and right. In order to choose our influences wisely, we need to filter them by what is good and what is not.

Challenge: What influences do you have that align with Philippians 4:8? How can you find more influences that motivate you to think about praiseworthy things?