The collection of illustrations below is all about influencing others as Christians.
It is very important that as Christians, we are to become the salt of the world. We are to influence the world and not us being influenced by the world.
The mere fact that the Bible made an important emphasis in loving our neighbor, it also means that we are to influence them in the way that God loves the world.
The illustrations below can be a good source of good insights about loving our neighbor in the way God wants it to be.
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Changing the Signs
William Barclay, a British theologian, tells the following story in his commentary on this Biblical text. He told a story about someone changing signs. That is, at an intersection of the road, one sign would point to the city of Seattle and another sign would point to the city of Tacoma. And the boy wondered to himself: How many people could I send down the wrong road if I changed the signs? Your very life is a sign post with a sign on it. Are you sending people down the wrong road or the right road?
Edward F. Markquart, Millstones
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I Love You More than Salt
An ancient king once asked his three daughters how much they loved him. One daughter said she loved him more than all the gold in the world. One said she loved him more than all the silver in the world. The youngest daughter said she loved him more than salt. The king was not pleased with this answer. But the cook overheard the conversation, so the next day he prepared a good meal for the king, but left out the salt. The food was so insipid that the king couldn’t eat it. Then he understood what his daughter meant. He understood the value of salt.
In the ancient world salt was a valuable and scarce commodity. It was used as currency in some countries even into modern times. During an invasion of Ethiopia, in the late 19th century, Italian soldiers found blocks of salt stored in bank vaults along with other familiar forms of currency. Jesus was paying his disciples a compliment when he called them salt.
King Duncan, Collected Sermons, www.Sermons.com
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The Fellowship of the Bearers of Cold Water
An old man named Calvin had lived a good life as a farmer for years. One day an evangelist came to the community, and, in the course of his stay, visited Calvin and asked him what denomination he was. Calvin answered the question like this: “When my grain gets ready for selling, after I’ve harvested it and packaged it, I can take it to town by any one of three roads ” the river road, the dirt road, or the highway. But when I get my grain to town and go to the buyer to sell him what I have, he never looks at me and asks, ˜Calvin, which road did you take to get your grain to town?’ What he does do is ask me if my grain is any good.”
Friend, is your grain good – the grain of your discipleship? That’s all that really matters. When we get to Heaven we will probably find some (Roman Catholics) and some (Baptists) and some (Presbyterians). And they’ll be just as surprised to see us as we will to see them. But we will all belong to just one fellowship. Let’s call it the Fellowship of the Bearers of Cold Water. We will all be people who have lived out our discipleship through acts of kindness to others.
King Duncan, Collected Sermons, www.Sermons.com
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The Cumulative Effect of Sin
Time-lapse photography compresses a series of events into one picture. Such a photo appeared in an issue of National Geographic. Taken from a Rocky Mountain peak during a heavy thunderstorm, the picture captured the brilliant lightning display that had taken place throughout the storm’s duration. The time-lapse technique created a fascinating, spaghetti-like web out of the individual bolts. In such a way, our sin presents itself before the eyes of God. Where we see only isolated or individual acts, God sees the overall web of our sinning. What may seem insignificant — even sporadic — to us and passes with hardly a notice creates a much more dramatic display from God’s panoramic viewpoint. The psalmist was right when he wrote, “Who can discern his [one’s own] errors? Forgive my hidden faults. Keep your servant also from willful sins; may they not rule over me.” (Psalm 19:12-13).
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Designed to Be Lived Up
Ted Engstrom of World Vision fame tells how one day he was cleaning out an old desk drawer. He found a flashlight he hadn’t used in a year. He turned it on but there was no light. He shook it, and then he unscrewed one end to release what were probably dead batteries. The batteries wouldn’t come out, but finally, after some effort, he shook them loose. What a mess he found! Corroded batteries with liquid acid seeping all over the mechanism – all because he hadn’t used the flashlight regularly!
Batteries are designed to be turned on, to be used, not neglected or ignored. What you and I refuse to use we will surely lose. We’re meant to he turned on, too. Our gifts are to be used! Our lives are not meant to be “waited out” but to be lived up! Are you and I living up to the gifts and talents God has given us? What kind of commitment do we have to ourselves and to the graces within us?
Richard W. Patt, Partners in the Impossible, CSS Publishing Co., Inc.
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Where to Put the Pies
I was in a small rural church one time that had a major dispute about where the pies should be placed in the kitchen prior to serving them for the annual turkey supper. One woman actually left the church community because several new comers to the church had convinced the rest of the women working in the kitchen that it would be more efficient to put the pies on the counter beside the sink instead of the counter next to the refrigerator. “It’s not the right way to do it”, she said. “We’ve never done it that way before, and I am not going to be part of doing it that way now. I won’t have any part of that kind of thing. Those new people are going to ruin this church. They don’t know anything. They aren’t even from around here.”
Sound familiar to anyone?
The apostle John came up to Jesus one day. “Jesus”, he said, “I was walking down the road with the rest of the disciples, and we saw someone casting out demons in your name. We tried to stop him because we don’t know who he is; we tried to stop him because he’s not one of us.
Richard J. Fairchild, Working Together
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Are We Askew, Too?
One pastor tells about listening to his father tell a story about a neighbor whose barn had burned down. The entire community gathered to help rebuild it. His father and some other men were told to saw the rafters. They first cut a rafter and then traced around it with a pencil and cut another one. They based the third rafter on the second the fourth on the third and so on. What they didn’t take into account was the width of the pencil mark. Each rafter was one pencil mark wider than the one before. After a while, this can add up to quite a difference. By lunch time they looked at the barn and discovered it was going up at a very strange angle because they had deviated from the original standard. Do you not sense that our barn is a little askew today, too?
King Duncan, Collected Sermons, www.Sermons.com
