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How are you influenced? Have you ever asked that question? Welcome to Living Influence. We want to go into this question of influence. Yes. And how we're influenced. To start, I want to talk about a problem that exists in the United States. And the problem is that we equate blessing, the blessing of God,

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with success. But it's actually not true. The path is that the blessing of God leads us to purpose. And here's the fun thing. Purpose leads us to suffering. It's a really interesting concept. How do we know we're influenced by

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And how do we press into that? You know, I'm in the business world, and so I meet a lot of other business owners. You cannot meet a business owner who started a company where he doesn't talk to you about the moment where he almost failed, the moment where it was bleak,

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And all he could do was hang on and keep going and keep showing up. And so I have a saying to other people that want to be entrepreneurs or start a business. And my saying is, well, you can have anything you want as long as you're willing to suffer for it. Which is, it fits into this, what does the blessing of God look like? And we've got these scriptures in the curse, right?

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God says, thorns and thistles, the earth will yield for you. So we can't do anything. I mean, we know this is true. We know thorns and thistles come up in our garden, and they come up in our life, and they come up in what we do. And Jesus has this other thing that's really encouraging. He says, in this life, you'll have trouble. How are you influenced is an important question to begin to answer.

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important question to be able to consider in your life. How are you influenced? And do you discount that influence, discount that purpose based on circumstances, based on whether you're experiencing success and easy blessing? Or do you consider those things that those things that you've been influenced to pursue and to do and

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you're not deterred when the struggle comes. I mean, like we're on week 30, right, Bill? And right now there's like 19 of our videos have been published. And we're just beginning to work on advertising. So on YouTube, we have 108 subscribers. Well, you know,

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If two years from now we still have 108 subscribers, maybe this wasn't the right thing to do. But we're going to press in. We're going to keep going because we believe in this content. Amen. How are you influenced? What purpose has God brought into your heart that you're pursuing? Amen.

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And that's where we want to start this series that's going to go for, we don't know how long, maybe a month or two, on sharing with you our stories of how we've been influenced. Thank you, Scott. Yeah. Bill, jump in on the topic. Thank you very much. I just love what you just said, and I want to just pause with everybody and just say this, that as I think about influence, these are kind of the topics we're going to be talking stories over.

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How have I experienced God's influence? How have I experienced your influence? How have others experienced my influence? What are the lies that I believe that influence me so deeply? These are very important topics.

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As I think about our beginning here with God influencing us, I really want to kind of teach a principle, repeat it often, hope you hear it from us often, and that is this. In our relationship with God, God is always the initiator. Yeah. God is always the initiator. I'll read a scripture that helps us understand that. But God, the great initiator...

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actually interrupts our lives. It's the interruption of God in my life, in your life, that changes the direction of my life. Right. Quickly in my mind, I just went, he interrupted Abraham's life. Right. He interrupted Paul's life. Yeah. He interrupted David's life. He made a kid a king. Right.

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Yeah. Holy mackerel. Come on. So I— He told him when he was a kid. A kid? You're going to be king. Yeah. I love to tell this part of the story, Scott. You know, David knew Goliath couldn't kill him that day. He knew he couldn't die because he was not yet king. Yeah. He knew he couldn't die. Such is the confidence of a young boy.

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in the interruption of God. As you know, Scott, when we do cohorts, this is one of the passages I read almost every time for the first year. Right. But I want to just bring it into the context of influence right now. It says this in Galatians chapter 3. The obvious impossibility of carrying out a moral program should make it plain that no one can sustain a relationship with God that way. Here's the key words. The key words.

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The person who is in right relationship with God does it by embracing what God arranges for him. No one can sustain a relationship with God on his terms, meaning the person's terms. Right. Every relationship with God is arranged by God. Then this next line, so important to our influence, doing things for God is the opposite of

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of entering into what God does for you. Doing things for God is the opposite. But, oh, there's so much I want to do for God. Yeah, that's got to be hard for some people. Oh, it's terribly hard. Not so much in recent years, but I used to speak at pastor's conferences, and I would say the pastor's conferences. How many of you have excellence in?

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as one of the values of your ministry. But don't raise your hands. Yet they're all kind of, and then I said, They're all raising their hands. Yeah, they're all raising their hands. Oh, yeah, that's sweet. Then I'll say to them, now, I have another question. How many of you have humility as a value of your church and ministry? And I say, now, go ahead and raise your hands. Nobody's raising their hands. And I'll say to them, listen, what if God does not want your excellence?

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What if God wants your humility so he can give you his excellence? Yeah. That's what this influence is about. Yeah. The influence that you and I experience from God is excellent, not only for us, but for everyone, everyone that we influence. Habakkuk had it right. The person who believes God is set right by God, and that's the real life.

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The person who believes God is set right by God, and that's the real life. So as we go into these sessions on influence, thinking about,

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How have I experienced God's influence? When have I experienced the great interrupter in how my life is formed? When I was a boy, seven years old, God interrupted our lives. My parents were terribly ill with alcoholism, and my two brothers

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met a man named Gus Quint. He invited them to a boys' club on Friday night. At that boys' club, my brothers had never been to anything religious or spiritual. They got an invitation to go to a Bible camp. Yeah. So Al and Bob, my two older brothers, got to go to Bible camp, but it cost $8.50.

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And you remember, Scott, the story. So my brother Al very wisely robbed a store of $22 so he and my brother could go to Bible camp. Yeah. But the great interruption of God was my brother Bob became a believer at that Bible camp. Yeah. And he came home and told the rest of us about Jesus into a family that had no framework for God at all. Yeah. Yeah.

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And those two brothers, one became a missionary for many years, the other a pastor. And one of them leads me into the story of my own salvation. As I said in one of our other podcasts, they scared the hell out of me, so I accepted Jesus every night because I was afraid I was going to be dead in the next morning, all that good stuff. Yeah. But I didn't believe it at the point where it made a difference in whoever.

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I love the part where you talked about you'd wake up at night and look to see if the counselor was still there. Exactly. Make sure the rapture hadn't happened. Exactly. Because that's the way it was. In fact, a really quick update. So now I'm into my teen years. I'm a senior. And unfortunately, I did a lot of drinking myself. And I got home drunk one night. And I knew that my sister Helen was a Christian. And I knew I shouldn't be as drunk as I am. So I'm convinced that if Helen's home, I've still got time. Well, she is gone.

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I literally stood in the hall and screamed, where's Helen? Because I thought the rapture had come. Oh, my goodness. I've never heard that. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And you woke up the family? Oh, my dad's yelling, what's going on? I mean, I'm screaming, terrified. Wow. That I've missed the rapture.

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Because my sister never went anywhere. She was always home. My dad says, what are you doing? Stop it. Stop. What's going on? Where's Helen? Dad, where's Helen? Well, a friend got sick. She went to her friend's house. Now, this is so interesting. I relaxed and went to bed. It was like, okay. Yeah. Hasn't happened yet. I still got time. So that just was just a crazy 17-year-old kid. But even then, God had done something in your heart. Oh, absolutely.

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You hadn't yet responded at that point. No, not till that summer with my brothers, the brother who stole the money to go to Bible camp, the pastor.

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invited me to work with him that summer, came around the side of the house. I was painting a basement window in Milwaukee, and he asked me a simple question, Scott, just a very simple question. Bill, what are you going to do with Jesus? Yeah. It was like the Holy Spirit used his words. My heart got so deeply affected by that question that I started to cry. We cleaned up, and we went to his house.

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And I sat on his couch with him, and I prayed to receive Christ. But, Scott, I'll never forget my prayer. It was interesting. I wasn't being arrogant. I was 17. But I knew something was taking place. When I was in high school, there were a few Christian kids. They carried their Bibles to show how godly they were. Nobody liked them. Nobody liked those kids. They were the most miserable kids in school. And if that's what Christianity is about, I don't want that.

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So this was my salvation prayer. God, I said to my brother Al, I've been fighting the God of the universe into my life. It has to make a difference. And then I had this tagline. It has to be something more than those kids had. He knew what I was thinking. And really, I say that interesting little prayer that,

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Because that really, in that moment, I got in touch with something of the significance of Jesus God choosing me, and I knew it had to make a difference. Yeah. I could not have dreamed.

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of the life he formed for me. I couldn't have dreamed. I couldn't have dreamed of ever doing this. Right. I couldn't have dreamed of the audiences literally all over the world that I've got to share grace with. But he knew it. And I knew it in my heart that day. I didn't know what it would be like. I didn't have a vision of tomorrow. But I had this deep conviction that,

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that the God of the universe, alive in me, was going to make a difference. Yeah. Yeah, that's amazing. I had a completely different journey. Yeah, of course. I grew up Lutheran. And so Lutherans don't really teach about a salvation experience. Yeah. They just teach from an assumption that you are a Christian. Right. Even as a little kid, I would dream about God and about infinity.

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and about space would go on forever and God had created that. But I wanted to know what was outside of that space. Even though it went on forever, what was outside of what forever was? There was a piece of me that always believed in God. And so when I got engaged, my wife and I began to try to figure out how we were going to do Christianity early.

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She was Baptist, I was Lutheran, and she would go to my church and we'd sing organ music written in the 1400s. And she didn't like that. And I would go to her church and there'd be the yelling preacher that would deliver the punchline and ask for you to get saved and come down to the altar every meeting. And I just couldn't do that. And I've told this story as well.

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We visited my dad, who was an alcoholic. His second wife, Jean, she loved Jesus. As messed up as she was, she had a relationship with Jesus that she shared with us. And it affected us. Amen. It's like, she says you can talk to Jesus, and then he will talk back to you. We came back from that—

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Weird visit, because it was really weird. And started looking for a different kind of church in the town that we were going to college. And we found this church. It's called Christian Fellowship. We went to. And we found people that had this relationship with God that was like, wow, this is real. Amen. Amen.

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And God began to work in our lives in that point. And that's where I prayed, God, do you want me to go into the ministry? We had a Bible college in our church. And friends of mine were quitting college and going to Bible college.

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I wasn't quite sure if they were doing that because they were flunking out of college. And so they thought Bible college was the next best alternative. Some of that, of course. Some of that happened. But I felt God say, no, no, I want you to pursue a secular job, but not just to be comfortable. I want you to go for it. So I had this. I didn't know what that meant. And then he added on top of that.

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And I want you to trust me with your career because I want you to commit to this body of believers that you're with. And order your life about staying there and being a part of this church. And trust me with your career. And so my wife and I both felt, yeah, we want to do that. There were other people doing that in the middle of it. But we felt God was speaking that to us. I found myself graduated from college. I turned down two jobs that were in other towns.

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And I now had no work. And I remained unemployed except for side jobs and odd jobs and painting and cleaning things. I remained unemployed for like nine months before I found my first job with my degree. I had a friend of mine who I've told this, he got a job cleaning this federal building that had a flood with this coal dust. And I found myself in the bathroom scrubbing the grout.

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while employees were coming in to use the urinals. I'm crying on the floor. God, can't you give me a job like they have?

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But that's the thing I think that we're talking about. It is the thing we're talking about. Sometimes God influences through truths, and we're going to talk about through convictions, through life stories, and sometimes he influences through what he tells us. Amen. He broke in my life and told me those things. Absolutely. Which is your point. It's just the point. It's our point, Scott. Yeah. But here's the critical reality. When God interrupts a life,

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Can we trust the God who interrupts our lives? Yeah. In your story, you chose to trust God. Hey, first of all, you chose to trust it was God. Yeah, which is so strange. I mean, our parents were saying, well, God's in other cities too. Are you sure you can't go there and find God and a job?

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But I had this thing in my heart that maybe I got it wrong, but I thought it was God. Amen. And it's what I trusted. That's the most important thing you're saying in my mind. Yeah. What I would call that, you and I have talked about that, is that was your sense of destiny.

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moment. It was your sense. It was when God interrupted your life, so to speak, tapped you on the shoulder and says, God, I have a plan for you, but it requires you to commit to this body of believers. I'll take care of your career. And it's like, what? Who does that? Yeah. And now I turn around and it's not turned around. It's been 30 years.

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But I have these companies that my sons and I have grown that are doing over $100 million a year. It's crazy that that happened. Amen. I had no idea that would happen. Of course not. But he did. I believe he did. He did. Yeah. And as we continue to think through this God influencing us and the influence we have because of God's influence—

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It's like we sit here saying, is it possible to say to an audience, God is engaged in your life. Can you hear him? And if you can, you can trust him. And if you can, you can trust him. Yeah. And we don't have to know the consequences. Here's a principle we teach all the time in our cohorts. Yeah.

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Obedience is trusting God. Obedience is trusting God with the consequences of my obedience. Yeah. So here's our question. We want you to ask yourself, how have you been influenced? Amen. Let us know you're here. We appreciate you.

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We'll see you next week. Thank you for listening to the podcast. We're really glad that you're here. We'd love to know that you're here. And so if you could leave a comment, we would appreciate that. But more importantly, if you know someone that should listen to this or hear it, we would love for you to share it with them. Thanks again.