Greater Influence

Thank you, thank you. Happy New Year to everyone. I hope you had a good Christmas season. If those that keep up with the Butterworths, there are five children, all grown and gone. Thank you very much. And having grand babies. So if we had the entire clan for Christmas, there would be 23 of us. We had only 18 this Christmas, but that was a quorum. So we did vote in some new policies. But it was great to be together as a family, and I hope your Christmas season was the same way.

It's great to be here. I love this church. I love this staff. You know, Mark and Valerie and René, it's kind of like working with Batman and Robin and Wonder Woman, you know what I mean? It's like they're just the greatest leadership team. No, you're not Wonder Woman. So I'm really excited to be part of this new series that you are doing called Greater. And our assignment for today is to talk about the whole idea of how to be a greater influence.

Years ago, I was in graduate school and I took a course on leadership. And one of the activities early on, the prof said, okay, break up into small groups and talk amongst yourselves. And your assignment is to define leadership using the fewest amount of words. How would you define leadership using the fewest amount of words? And our group came up with a three-word definition. This is years ago before this definition actually became almost cliché in our culture now. But we came up with leadership is influence.

You strip away all the technicalities of leadership theory and management and organizational charts and all that stuff. You come to the conclusion that leadership is the fact that one person influences another. And I really still like that definition with one exception. It's the problem that is developed when someone erroneously concludes that if leadership is influence, then only leaders influence. And nothing could be further from the truth.

Wherever you are today on the organizational chart, and you might not even be on an organizational chart, it really doesn't matter because every one of us influences those that are around us. And I would like to actually begin by telling you a story from my college days that will illustrate the significance of this concept in our individual lives.

I grew up in Philadelphia, wonderful, hardworking, blue-collar parents. My dad was fond of saying, "Son, you need to go to college. I hope you're going to be able to afford it." You don't hear that much these days, do you? So, between my junior and senior year, God really got a hold of my life to the point that I felt called to the ministry. And so I found this little Bible college in South Florida, in Miami, that was perfect for students whose parents say, "You need to go to college. I hope you'll be able to afford it." Because all the classes were completed by noon.

So you had plenty of time for a part-time job or even a full-time job so that you could faithfully pay your school bill. I had all kinds of crazy jobs when I was in college. The first job I had was working for Quaker State Oil in boxcars, unloading 55-gallon drums into semi-tractor trailers. And I want to remind you, I'm in Miami. It was like 130 degrees in those trucks and boxcars. So I got out of that quickly and went to work for 7-Eleven, making their world-famous shrink-wrapped sandwiches. And that was pretty ugly.

And then I got my favorite job while I was in college. I worked at a wallet factory. I made wallets. Now, some of you are thinking, "Ooh, high-grade, Gucci, hand-sewn leather." No, no, no, no, no, no. These were vinyl wallets that weren't even sewed together. There was a machine called a heat-seal machine. It would seal it together. Our promise was we guaranteed 36 hours of wallet enjoyment before the thing started separating again. And this was even before Disney was there.

And so we sold it to tourist traps in Miami like Parrot Jungle and Monkey Jungle and the Miami Seaquarium. So we sealed this little piece of vinyl together, put a fake gold stamp of a monkey or a parrot or a fish, and sell it to somebody for 36 hours of enjoyment. It was pure schlock, folks. It was horrible. And it was a very boring job because I was right there behind this huge machine that was this steel slab as the key to it.

And there were a couple of red buttons above it that were for your thumbs so you wouldn't hurt yourself. And when you hit those red buttons, the slab would come down and hit the table. Well, there needs to be something there to make this make any sense. So this table was long and narrow. You'd go all the way down to the other end of the table where there was a giant roll of vinyl. And you would pull a vinyl strip down to the table, then you'd cut it with your razor blade.

And then you'd pull another one on top of that. You'd do that about 20 times. So you have about 20 thicknesses of vinyl. And then you would take the most important part of the process. It was called a die. And for a vinyl wallet, actually the die looked very much like my Bible in size. It was rectangular and it was about an inch to an inch and a half thick. It was made out of wood, but around the wood was metal. And the bottom of it was razor sharp.

So what you would do is you would place the die over the 20 sheets of vinyl, hit the buttons, and the steel slab would come down and force that die to cut through. Then you would have 20 pieces of vinyl in the shape of a potential wallet. Pass it on to heat seal that would seal it for 36 hours and you'd put the monkey on it and there you go. My job was incredibly boring. I mean, thank goodness there was entertainment on either side of me. Bart and Izzy.

Bart and Izzy. Bart, most distinguishing characteristic about Bart, the largest human being I have ever met in my life. And remember Mark said, right, I have been with 26 National Football League teams. I've never been with a human being bigger than Bart. Okay? And he achieved his girth by drinking beer. He was mammoth. All right? Izzy was just the polar opposite. Barely a hundred pounds, had this little crop of silver hair just waiting to retire. Izzy's most distinguishing characteristic is he had false teeth.

Now you'll notice I didn't say he wore false teeth. I said he had false teeth. They were always with him in his front left pants pocket wrapped in wax paper. In case an occasion would arise where he would need his teeth. And so some of you wear false teeth, I mean no disrespect, but you do have some quirks. And one that I was fascinated with with Izzy is even though he didn't have teeth, he would always look like he was chewing something. He was just gumming something to death. And so this provided high entertainment throughout the day.

Bart was always trying to get Izzy to come with him to the bar after work. Two confirmed bachelors. Come to the bar, I mean no, no, no, no, come on. And of course they, I guess, felt there was no hope in inviting the Bible college boy who was just sitting there quoting Ezekiel. Izzy refused. Izzy refused until the fateful day Izzy agreed to go to the bar with Bart.

Now I don't know a lot about this subject, but I do know that a 100-pound man cannot keep up with a 400-pound man when it comes to drinking beer. Izzy was gone very quickly, all right? Bart got him home safely. Izzy shows up for work the next day. He's a mess. He's cross-eyed, his hair's all over the place. His teeth are in his right pocket really messing up the whole thing. Now remember, he pulls his vinyl out, he gets 20 pieces, and he gets his die and he makes the fatal mistake. Instead of putting it the way it's supposed to be, Izzy puts it upside down.

And he hits the red button and the steel slab comes down and it destroys that die. Because once a beautiful rectangle is now all because it's just been smashed by this steel plate. Well, Izzy, barely coherent, believes that the fix is simply turn the die back over the way it's supposed to be. And now he's cutting dozens of pieces of vinyl in this horrible shape like this.

Now I tell you this story not only because it was the first day that Izzy became the janitor, but I also tell you this because it illustrates what I'm talking about when we talk about influence. You and I are die. And we may be practically perfect in a rectangular way or we may be jagged and chopped up and have so much dysfunction and baggage and issues. It doesn't matter. We're cutting through the lives of the people that are around us and impacting us.

And this is not just some novel idea that I thought was kind of neat. It's thoroughly biblical. Matter of fact, if you pull out your outline and then also open your Bible, let's start in 1 Peter 5. Peter is talking to the elders of the church and he says in verse 3, "Not as lording it over those allotted to your charge, but prove to be examples to the flock." If you would, circle the word "example." All right? It's a very interesting word in the Greek.

Matter of fact, the Greek word is interesting. It's easy to remember because it rhymes with a fun English word. The Greek word is tupon. T-U-P-O-N. Tupon. Rhymes with coupon. Tupon literally means the mark of a blow or a stamp struck by a die. We are being told by Peter that we are people that are striking others like a die strikes the vinyl in the story that I just gave you. So, I mean, it's thoroughly biblical in that way. We have that impact on other people.

And just to get an idea of how strong this Greek word is, look at the next passage. Go over to the Gospel of John, John 20:25. Look at verse 25. It's kind of a famous verse in that it's the verse that one of the disciples gained his nickname. It's all about when Thomas became doubting Thomas. And in verse 25, the other disciples were saying to him, saying to Thomas, "We have seen the Lord, but Thomas said to them, 'Unless I see in his hands the imprint of the nails, put my finger into the place of the nails, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.'" He doubted.

He essentially said, "I'm not buying what you're saying until I have hands-on personal experience seeing Jesus." Okay? But in the midst of that, there is a very significant word. "Unless I see in his hands the imprint." Circle the word "imprint." Guess what word it is in Greek? "Tupon." It's that impact. Thomas is saying, "Unless I see the actual wound of the impact of the nail, I will not believe that Jesus has really been resurrected." I mean, the impact on that statement is so powerful.

And it's also very akin to the fact that when we talk about influence, we all influence. And a lot of us wish we were a more positive influence. And some of us even want to go further. I want to be a good influence. I want to be a positive. I want to be a godly influence. Well, the only way you and I are going to be a godly influence is if God Himself lives within us. And the way God Himself lives within us is that Jesus went through the tupon, the nail in His hand, so that you and I could live this wonderful life in relationship with Him.

And so because of that, it's a very significant term. I want to show you one more where Paul makes reference of it. 1 Thessalonians 1:7. 1 Thessalonians 1:7. Paul simply says, "You became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and in Achaia." Again, it's the word "example." It's the word "tupon." And that's significant because, again, if you've been paying attention, when I first started out by saying, you know, leadership is influence, you can say, "Well, 1 Peter 5, Peter is writing to the leaders. He's writing to the elders." Yeah, but we go further than that.

In Paul's writing, he's writing to all the people in the church. You are tupons. You are examples to your circle. And your circle, you can define better than anybody else. Maybe it's your family. Maybe it's your co-workers. Maybe it's your small group. Maybe it's your neighborhood. Maybe it's the Bible study that you have or the running club or the workout group or whatever it is. You know the people that are closest to you that you are the die cutting through and impacting them.

So having said all that, kind of whipped through that, because I believe most, if not all, of us in this room would say, "I get it. I'm an influence kind of guy, kind of gal. I want to be a man or woman of influence." The question that we want to spend the rest of our time, what do we need to do to really highlight and become that person who truly is a godly influence? What are the components? And for that, I want you to look back at the Old Testament to Deuteronomy 6. And we'll spend the rest of our time there.

Deuteronomy 6, very familiar passage to our Jewish friends. In verse 6 it says, "These words which I am commanding you today shall be on your heart." And then verse 7 is the verse I want us to really key in on. It says, "You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up." Let's start at the end and work our way back.

Whatever it is that Moses is telling the people to do, he's saying do it consistently. Do it from the time you get up in the morning till the time you go to bed. Do it inside your house privately and do it outside when you have a relationship with other people. That's very important. I mean the older I get, the more I realize that's a challenge. I mean I remember when I was younger I used to pride my – I'm a morning person. And now that I'm getting older, I'm not the morning person that I used to be.

This of course is a dilemma because I'm really not a night person either. I got a couple of good hours around lunch and that's it. And I think that God should excuse me because, you know, I can't be responsible for what I'm saying early in the morning. I don't even know what time it is, you know. And God's not given me an excused absence on that. He's saying no, from the time you wake up till the time you go to bed, it's very, very significant in the house and outside the house.

And what is it that we're supposed to be so consistent about? Well, it's summed up in that phrase, "Teach them diligently and talk of them." Those two words, "teach" and "talk," represent what I'm calling the two sides of the influence coin. The best way to think of influence is to think of it as a coin. You've got one side and the other for it to be an official coin. And Moses is not saying, "Well, just concentrate on one side and don't worry about the other." It's not a multiple choice. It's all of the above.

It's, "You know what? You need to do this and you need to do the other as well." So let me give you both of the points. Let me give you both sides of the coin at once and then let me break them down for you. Point number one on your outline looks like this. "Everyday influence occurs when I take time to teach." Everyday influence occurs when I take time to teach. And that comes from the word "teach" in the text, which basically explains itself. It's verbal. It's communication. It's, "I want to tell you what's important in my life and I want you to hear it and accept it."

The other side of the coin, point number two, is, "Everyday influence occurs not only by my words but by my actions." "Everyday influence occurs not only by my words but by my actions." And curiously enough, that comes from the word "talk," which obviously says, "talk" is kind of poorly translated in English there. Because the Hebrew word is not talking about conversation. It's not talking about dialogue. It's talking about more what we would say in today's terms, doing life together, sharing life.

That it's not just stuff I say but I'm there with you. Okay? Think about dinner time. The one side of the coin is the mom or dad that will say, "Bring a notebook to dinner. I have a few thoughts I'd like to pass on. There will be a PowerPoint presentation with some fill in the blanks and there'll of course be a test before dessert." All right? That's kind of the teach side of it. The talk side of it, the action side of it is the parent that says, "Well, I don't know what that guy's talking about but if we hurry up and clear the table together, let's go out and shoot hoops until it gets dark."

And it's the mom or dad who's sharing life with those that are in their stead. Okay? So you've got those two sides. It's interesting. My personal—I don't have scientific research on this—but my personal experience is that we tend to have a strength on one side of the coin versus the other. And that's where we kind of spend most of our time. And in today's world in the United States, most of us tend to be more, "I'm more of a share life together" kind of person than I am actually sit down and talk to the people that are really important. That feels awkward to me.

I don't know. And Moses is saying, "Well, it's not either/or. It's both/and. We need to do both of them." Mark mentioned that I do some ghostwriting and I had this assignment this gentleman sent me out to interview men with a series of questions. And one of the questions was, "Tell me about the best day you ever had with your dad." What's the best day you ever had with your dad? The number one answer was overwhelming above all the rest. Number one answer, "The day he took me to a ballgame." Just me and dad. We went to a ballgame. Fishing was number two. But that whole kind of experience.

And the more I heard this, the more I decide I'm going to have a little fun with these guys, a little follow-up question, and they'd say, "Yeah, the day my dad took me to a ballgame." And I would say, "Wow, that must have been great. I bet you and your dad had amazing conversations that day." And they'd say, "What? I don't even think we said a word." "No, no, no, wait. About the eighth inning, the ump made a really bad call. My dad stood up. He said words I've never heard him say before." So that was it. Yeah. But that was the best day I ever had with my dad. Sharing life together.

Now, 200 years ago, the culture was a little different. There's a very famous story about James Boswell, the author of the biography of Samuel Johnson. They asked him, "What's the best day you ever had with your dad?" And without even batting an eye, he'd say, "The day my dad took me fishing." Really? Yeah. And boy, he stuck with that answer his whole life. And the story goes that eventually Boswell's father passed away, and they had access to his father's journals. So they went to the date of the best day fishing trip, according to his son, and they looked to see what Boswell's dad had written that day.

And it was a short and very painful entry. "Took my son fishing, Dash, a wasted day." Why? Because back then it was like, I didn't get to talk to him about what was really important. He kept saying, "You've got to be quiet or I'm going to scare the fish." You know, I had so much that I wanted to say to him, but instead I just sat there in the boat with the boy. Isn't that amazing? But see, you need both sides of the influence coin to make it what God is asking us to do.

So for some of us, that means we need to make our New Year's resolution. I'm going to be a little bit more of a teacher. I'm going to be a little bit more of a talker. I'm going to tell my kids or my circle what's really important to me. And for others of us, it's, "Well, I do that pretty well. I just got to work on sharing life a little bit better." When the Swindoll's hired us and moved us from Florida to Southern California, I remember being very excited about that. My five kids were all very young and I loved Chuck's ministry, still do.

I love the joy and excitement and enthusiasm he has when he teaches the Word. And I thought, "This is exactly what my kids need to see." My kids need to see that ministry and ministers are fun people. They're not all sober and serious and even sour. You know, they're good, fun. Ministry is a good thing. So I remember early on at Insight for Living, there was a leaders meeting one day and some of the VPs were saying, "Well, we need a little bit of a morale booster around Insight for Living." It's kind of, you know, there's splits of, you know, people need to unify and we just need something to kind of bring everything back together like it was in the early days.

And one of the other guys said, "Well, you know what? Football season is coming up. I think we should have an Insight for Living NFL football poll." Now, this is before fantasy and fan duel and, you know, point spreads and all this kind of stuff. There was no, you know, it was simply, "Let's just pick every NFL game of the season, no points, just who's going to win." And at the end of the football season, the person who has the most wins will be the Insight for Living NFL football poll champion and will win the prize of knowing that you are the Insight for Living NFL football poll champion.

All right, we got no money for this thing. So let's just do it. Well, I was excited because I'm such a big fan and I was in the top five and I'd come home every night telling my kids, "This is great. You know, we got some good picks this week and I'm going to win." And, you know, I thought I was doing a good thing. My kids got really sick of it. And finally one night they just, "Stop, stop, stop, stop telling us about all the fun you're having at work." I mean, what? "We want to know about the fun you're having here with us." Ooh, okay.

Well, how can we fix this? "We want a family football poll." And my oldest is like nine years old, my daughter, and then there's the four little boys. So we do this thing. And my daughter, I remember the first year my daughter, she picked the teams based on the colors of the uniforms. You know? And imagine, I mean, she won that year. It was horrible. It was just... But the smartest thing I did, I went to the trophy shop and got one of those perpetual plaques, you know? Butterworth Family Football Poll. And every year whoever won got their name on a little brass plate. We're on our third plaque. We're still doing it. Now the grandkids make picks. And many of them pick based on the colors of the uniforms.

Now, can I show you a verse that says, "And you too shall have an NFL football poll in thy house. Amen. Alleluia." No, I can't show you a Bible verse. But all I'm trying to is offer a practical suggestion of how you might want to share life together with those that are around you. And the story is very special to me. And I'd be remiss if I didn't just add one more PS to it. Part of why it's so special is a daughter and four sons. I had a son who, when he graduated high school, said to me, "Well, Dad, I'm going off to college, so this is kind of the perfect time to say this. I really don't care to talk to you anymore. So don't call me and I'm not going to call you and we'll just be fine that way."

And he left and he broke my heart. And the silence was killing me. And I thought, "What's going on?" But fortunately, football season eventually arrived and he wanted to be part of the family NFL football poll. So this is pre-email, pre-cell phone texts and stuff like that. He had to actually call on, here's a term you haven't used in a while, a land line. He called me on a land line. And most Saturday nights he would just say, "Hi, dolphins, 49ers, cowboys, packers, jets, patriots." You know, he'd get through the list and he'd hang up. But there was those occasional Saturday nights where I think he must have forgot that we weren't speaking.

Because after he went through that list, he started telling me a little bit about his life until he realized what he was doing and then he would abruptly hang up. But if you've ever been distanced from a family member, those couple minutes on the phone, those are golden, absolutely golden. So one side of the coin is teaching. The other side of the coin is actions that we live out in our lives. Let me give you one more thing to consider as we start to wrap this up, and that is, number three, everyday influence occurs in the simplest of ways.

Everyday influence occurs in the simplest of ways. And on your outline, you see a verse, "I've known since I was a child." And since I've known it, since I was a child, I knew it from the King James Version. I'm old enough. I did not know King James personally, but, you know, serving under him, it was a great opportunity to get close in 1611. But it just has a beautiful turn of the phrase right in the middle of this verse. And the phrase is, "I, being in the way, the Lord led me." "I, being in the way, the Lord led me."

Abraham's servant is essentially saying, "I was sent to do a task. I didn't even know how I was going to pull it off." But essentially, I just showed up, and God used me to find exactly what my master wanted. "I, being in the way, the Lord led me." And I've talked about this long enough now that I'm sure several of you are starting to think about people that have had influence in your life. Teachers, coaches, camp counselors, youth pastors, one of your bosses, your mom, your dad, your grandmother, your grandfather.

And they had a powerful impact on your life. And if you were to share with me their story, so many of us, and I've heard so many of these stories, so many of us have somewhere in that story, and this is what they did, and then you will say, "And you know what? I don't even think they realize how significant that was. They were just in the way, and the Lord led them."

You asked me about the best day I ever had with my dad? It's a no-brainer. Thanksgiving Day when I was eight years old. Growing up in Philly, dad worked on one of the railroads from the Monopoly board, the Redding Railroad. And I remember Thanksgiving Day when I was eight years old, my mother was putting a winter coat on me and making sure it was all zipped up, and she said, "Billy, you know the railroad operates 365 days a year." Yes, Mommy. "So that means your daddy's got to work today." I said, "Yes, Mommy. But he's finally got enough seniority, he's going to get Christmas Day off. That's going to be a good thing. Yes, Mommy. But guess what he wants to do today?" I said, "What?" He said, "He wants to take you to work with him."

"Daddy wants to take me to work." I mean, I sprinted to that '57 Ford and got in the passenger side. We drove to downtown Philly and made that hard turn left, and all of a sudden we're in this giant freight yard. And I'm walking behind dad as he's walking the tracks and making all these notes about all these freight cars, and we end up in this old brick building where he had this office that was really small. There was just one giant desk in the center and a little small desk off to the side.

And dad sat down, he started doing all this paperwork, forgetting that I was there. I remember standing in the door jam in my winter coat thinking, "Well, everything kind of, you know, dropped off at this point." And he finally looked up and he saw me, and he motioned me over to the little desk. And I was excited because there was something on the little desk I had never seen in person. I had seen pictures of it and I'd seen it on television. Talk about an old term. It was a typewriter. A typewriter.

Kids, go home and ask your great-grandparents what that is. See if they can tell you. It was an Underwood manual typewriter. And dad took a fresh sheet of white paper and he rolled that in, and I'll never forget four simple words. He looked at me and he said, "You might like this." I thought, "You might like this." He had no idea. "Might like it." I went nuts over this thing. I started writing letters to everybody I knew. "Dear mommy, I'm at work with daddy. I am typing on a typewriter. It is great. I love you. I love Billy." "Neighbor kids, dear Johnny, I live next door to you, but I'm not home right now. I am at work with my daddy typing on a typewriter."

I was working my way through the 30 kids in my third grade class when dad said, "Time to go home." Already? Hours had gone by. You might like this. And as Mark mentioned in his kind intro, 36 books later, now I'm working with the great-great-great grandchild of the Underwood manual, the laptop. And I sit there at that keyboard and I think, "Dad, thank you. You have no idea what you did in just the simplest of terms. You have people like that in your life and you can be that person in the life of someone else. It's all a matter of greater influence."

Let's pray. Lord, that's our prayer this morning. That's our resolution. Would you make us women and men of greater influence? Would you help us be the kind of people that earnestly pursue you and your will and knowing that you live within us, you will energize us to be the kind of godly influence that we need to be? Help us to be men and women who not only teach but also show influence through our actions. For those of us that have one side stronger than the other, give us the courage to try and develop that weaker side so that it's a more balanced approach.

And Lord, for those who really hurt today who are thinking, "I don't even want to talk about influence. I've got so much pain going on in my life." I pray you would just be especially close to them, wrap your arms around them and help them see you really care. You're going to help them get through this and their influence is only beginning. In Jesus' name, amen.