No Partiality

I want you to think of this thought throughout the entire post:

Someone or something can influence you but cannot add anything to you. 

There are people everywhere you have influence. The POTUS has influence over billions of people. The president of your university or college has influence over thousands of people. Pastors have influence over hundreds of people. Professors have influence over a hundred people or so. Your coach has influence over your team. Your parents have influence of your family.

It is good to have an influence over people, it usually means that you are doing something right and that you are in a position of leadership. If you have influence you have definitely made in impact on people or society. Whether someone has influence over the entire country or a family, influence is influence.

Think about the people who influence you. I bet those people are some of your favorites. You enjoy listening to them talk, you enjoy seeing how they act, you enjoy interactions with them because people of influence are usually what we want to become. I believe we all have andesire to have influence.

There is one common thing about people who have influence. They can influence you and have an impact on your life but they can't add anything to you.

Picture this, you are at church listening to a sermon about serving others. It's a wonderful sermon and it's a sermon that you were able to pay attention to and be attentive to the entire time. (those are the best) The pastor may say some encouraging words to really make you think about serving others, but the desire or conviction that we feel isn't coming from what the pastor said. The desire we feel and the conviction we feel comes from the Holy Spirt.

Another example, I watched a movie called Poverty Inc. a couple weeks back. This movie was about poverty and they way we should look at it all over the world. It was an excellent movie that really made me think about a lot of things I have never really thought about. That movie had influence over me but didn't add anything to me. The conviction I felt didn't come from the movie, but from the Holy Spirit.

With these examples, the influence was great! God definitely puts people in our lives to influence us. I have no doubt in my mind. If those people weren't influencing us, then we wouldn't think about the things that we think about. Does that make sense? People of influence, make us think, and the Holy Spirit is what adds.

Where did this come from? Paul writes in Galatians 2:6: "And from those who seemed to be influential (what they were makes no difference to me; God shows no partiality)-those, I say, who seemed influential added nothing to me." 

Paul understood that influential people didn't add anything to him. Just what I talked about above. Influential people weren't changing Paul's heart. The gospel of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit were what added things to Paul and what changed his heart.

Paul reminds us that God doesn't show partiality to those who have influence. Partiality is defined as: unfair bias in favor of one thing in person compared with another. God isn't going to show you favor because you have influence because God understands that we can't change people/we can't add anything to people. Only God can do that!

We can be influenced, but not changed by people. The Holy Spirit changes us, and our hearts. Everything is the work of God. The gut feelings we get, the fire we feel in our heart, that comes from God, not others. That deep down feeling is the work of the Holy Spirit. I can promise you that.

I encourage you to have a desire to have influence with the mindset not to add something to a person, but to influence them and to get them thinking in a positive and encouraging way or to confront them and to get the thinking in a way where they realize they have to change.