- Well, all right everybody. Hey, welcome. You can see I got the glove off today, so that's a good thing. Many of you I'm sure will tell me tomorrow, don't give up my day job and become a builder. But isn't it nice just to have a little fun little laughter in the world in which we live today. Hey, I wanna welcome all of you, Bristol, and Marion, and Bluefield, I love you guys. So many of you that continue to watch us on television and online every week. Thank you for your comments, your encouragement, your kindness. You know, God's doing some really neat things as we kick off 2022. And one of the neatest things that God's done here at our church and through your lives is we're reading through the New Testament together. Here's the deal guys, 1,000 of you over 1,000 have signed up to go on this journey with us. I hope you're up to date on your reading plans. But maybe you're new to Highlands today. You're new, you haven't been here in a long time. You can jump in right where you are and you can join us on the journey. We're gonna go to the next 90 days, we're gonna finish up near Easter. We're gonna celebrate all God's doing because it's a way when we get in God's word to keep the church supernatural. It'll help you, man. It's helping me. So many of us are sort of journey on this together, you've been sending me texts and emails of what you're learning. And it's just a neat, neat thing that God's doing in the midst of our church. So if you're a part of that, that's awesome. If you're not go to our website, get signed up today, it'll help you, it'll help your family and you'll have a better year in 2022. So if you were here last week, you know that I kicked off a new series we're calling it "Influencer." And sorta how this series came about was from golfing with my buddy, Alan McCannon. And Alan said, "Hey, have you ever thought when you look back over your life, that the result of who you are in most cases is around four or five major forks in the road. And you chose to go this way and as a result of that is who you are today." And you know, when we had that conversation, I was like, that's so true. You know, whether it's been good for you, the forks you've made have been good decisions. We go into the prisons often and you'll find that it's the same thing. They came to a fork in the road and they often made a turn in the wrong direction. That is so true. So the idea behind that conversation spurred this thought in my mind, it was sort of our key caption for the series. And I want to go back and I want to just review it with you just for a second. Now let's look at this together. You have no idea how one conversation, one word of encouragement, one expression of love might change someone else's life. So my whole thought behind that is I tried to challenge you to believe, you're an Influencer. You truly are an Influencer. And for those of us that are followers of Jesus Christ, we are amazing Influencers, right? God's called us to be an amazing Influencer for him. So today I really wanna work off that, I wanna build on that. And I wanna help you to understand that we're all influencing those around us and we're all influenced by other people in our sphere, right? There are people who are influencing us. So what happened after last week's message is I began to get bombarded through all my channels that I communicate with you. And here was the question, all right. You know, I've never really thought myself as an Influencer. But if you're saying, I'm an Influencer, then how do I do it? Here's the question, right? How can I be an Influencer for the kingdom of God? Now that's a great question. And I was really encouraged that so many of you asked me that question because that's the logical next step. If you realize you're an Influencer, then how do you do it? And how do you do it in a way that would influence people toward the kingdom of God? Well, what's so amazing to me about God's word. And we learned this when we get in it, right? I mean, you're gonna see this is the Scripture is always ahead of the curve. I mean, it just always is. And in this question that we're posing today, the Scripture it was already there. It was talking about the significance of influencing others thousands of years before YouTube ever came on the scene, before companies ever thought, hey, I can get into this game of influence. But instead of being concerned with selling products like the world is, the Bible wanted us to understand that people were watching us and that people would follow our behavior. It's just the case. You remember last week that we've learned that Jesus called us his followers. This is what he said about us, "That we are the light of the world." This is how Jesus thinks, right? He doesn't think that we're the light for the room, he doesn't think we're the light for our house although we are we're light for the community, those kinds of things. But Jesus is always on a grand scale. And Jesus says, "Hey, you my followers, you guys you're the light of the world." That's what Jesus says. Think about the opportunity that that encompasses for us, his followers. You are the salt not just for the day, you're the salt of the earth. That is the ramifications of the influence that you and I can actually have for the kingdom of God according to our king, Jesus. So the idea that Jesus is presenting is that by looking at the church, by looking at followers of Jesus, people will actually better understand what God is like. Whether we like it or not those of us who follow Jesus, we're Influencers, you're an influence. And the decisions that we make impact those around us, You know the lives we lead are either gonna make us more credible witnesses for the kingdom, or they're gonna make it more difficult for others to take the gospel seriously. So we have been given by Jesus an extremely important mandate as salt and light. Our influence truly, truly matters. And as we journey through the New Testament, we're gonna see this over and over, you know. Next month we're gonna be in the Gospels and then we're gonna shift. And in that last month we're gonna learn and zero in a lot about, Paul. And Paul was, we might not be able to relate to Jesus 'cause he was perfect, right? We can all relate to, Paul. He had a checkered past, God got ahold of him in an amazing salvation experience. And then Paul went throughout the known world on his missionary journeys. And another thing that Paul did as he was planting churches as he was raising up leaders, he was influencing younger leaders so that the church could have a future, right? And we still needed to be doing that today. I mean, we really do. And so I wanna look at a text today that Paul gives to a young guy by the name of Timothy, like a spiritual son to him, that he mentored, that he loved, that he really encouraged, that he started just became a spiritual father for him. Paul loved Timothy. Timothy was incredible young man. And so, Paul tells Timothy, he's began his ministry. Timothy has to began working in the church. And Paul tells him something really unique. In 1st Timothy 4:12, I want you to see this. Paul says this. He says, "All right, Timothy, don't let anyone look down on you because you're young." So let me just stop right there Just for a second. Highlands we love all people, all right. Somebody asked me other day, I got an email say, "Hey, is it okay, I'm pretty strong Liberal in my views cannot come to Highlands?" Oh, I'll tell you something, you can come to Highlands if you're a Democrat, you can come to Highland if you're Republican. You can be a Democrat Party, Republican Party. We don't care. You can Highlands, you're just love to party. It doesn't really matter. The church is open to all. Because here's our deal, we truly believe here that when we experienced life with Jesus, your life's gonna be better. And guys that fits all of us, everybody. So you're welcome. Highlands is gonna be home for you, it's who we are. So if you're young today, we have a lot of young people. And you might think, "Well, I don't know enough or I can't be perfect enough, or you know, my life's not really where it needs to be," we wanna help you today. Because Paul wants to help Timothy. And this is what he says to him. He said, "Don't let anybody look down on you 'cause you're young," all right? He says, "But set an example, you be an influencer for the believers." This is what he says to Timothy, in speech, in conduct, in love and faith, in period, he tells him five things. Let's dig into that just a little bit. I want to give you what you asked for, tips on being an Influencer. All right, let me give you a few tips there. This is what Paul tells Timothy, that's good enough for me. He says, "First of all, Timothy, I want you to be an influence to others in your conversations." Paul says, "Timothy be an example in speech." In other words what's he saying, he's saying, "Hey, I want you to use your conversations the way you handle relationships and convert with other people, I want you to use that as using that for your influence to help people get towards Jesus." In his letter to the Church at Ephesus. Paul also encourages the church with this truth. Look in chapter five, verse four what he says, "Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place but rather thanksgiving." "In place a bad language," Paul says. He says, "Be encouraged and be an encouraging person and encourage other people to be thankful." Paul says, "Hey, don't let your conversations and your language get to the obscene." You be an encourager of thanksgiving. You you'd be a person who lifts other people up in place a bad language. He just says, "Be thankful." Have you ever noticed in our culture day, this is the reason I think, man, it's so important for us. That nothing seems off limits when it comes to language. I mean, it's just, it's crazy to me. And what the apostle Paul would still tell us, which I think is more relevant when he shared it with Timothy, is, "Hey guys, watch he swear words." If you claim to be a follower of Jesus, watch how you talk. Instead Paul says, "Replace these bad examples of speech with good ones." Well, what would that look like? Well, that's why he tells the Ephesians here in verse 29 of chapter four, "Do not let any," all right, this is what Paul says, "Don't let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouth, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen." Now, every time I have conversations like this with our kids or you know, somebody in the family or something like that, they'll say, "Well, I don't ever do that, I don't, ever say that." So we have this really neat device all of us have, it can be used for incredible things, our phone. And our phones have this little record button. It's what I challenge you to do. If you think no unwholesome talk, no critical note, none of this stuff comes there man, just put record, you know, while you're hanging out at the house or driving down the road or in a conversation, you hit record button. And it's painful I promise to listen to yourself for 30 minutes or so. But you'll find if you'll just be honest and listen to yourself, how much unwholesome talk comes out of your mouth in a lot of our just normal conversations. Here's what Paul is saying. "If you're gonna be Influencers, we need to be known as people whose words reflect the hope and encouragement found in Jesus Christ." Now sharing stories like this with you before you may have heard me share this one. But it's been several years ago. Just as a way for me to get to know people in our community, I picked up the game of golf and they had this little scramble at our local little country club there. And you'd go up on Saturday morning and you didn't have to have people to play with. So you can just go by yourself and they would sort of pair you up with whoever showed up that morning, you played by your handicap. And so, it was a way for me to get to know people in the community and I'll never forget that. I was up there on one Saturday morning and I got paired up with didn't really know. And we are on the First Tee, there's a couple other people with us in this group. And he introduces himself as, Buffalo. And now you can just tell, Buffalo was sort of man's van ended up he was really a great golfer, but he was having a bad day. And every shot Buffalo made, he would just let out this string of cuss words. And yeah, I never said anything. I'm sort of used to that and the culture in which we live. And so, you know, we're riding together same car he'd get back in the car. And after we'd finished up a whole, and try to ask him a little bit about his family or talk about jobs, safe kinds of things. I mean, we played the whole front nine together. And finally on hole number nine, he stopped, we got back in the car and he said, "Hey, you know your game's worse than mine." And he said, "Man, I haven't heard you cuss one time today. How you do that?" And I didn't say anything 'cause just instantly one of the guys in our foursome riding on the other car, one of the other guys said, "Well, he's a preacher." Buffalo, he's a preacher? Buffalo looked at me and he said, "Hey, are you a preacher?" And I said yeah, that's one of the things I do. And he said, "Why didn't you tell me?" Awesome well, I'll said, "Hey, you know, it shouldn't make any difference on who you are and how you act because I'm a preacher. I'm not the one you need to be concerned about." And we laughed a little bit. We played the entire back nine true story and he never said another cuss word, at least out loud, the rest of the 18 holes, the whole back nine. And at the end of the day and I can tell, you know, he was actually enjoying being able to not just throw this string of, I mean, he could do it. I mean, he had all the language down. And when we got back to the clubhouse after finishing those 18 holes, he said, "You know let me tell you something." He says, "The first nine holes of golf I've ever played without cussing." He said, "To be honest with you. I didn't think I could." He said, "I thought it was impossible for me." We talked to all afterwards and he said, "I want to thank you." I said, you don't need to thank me. I said for what? He said, "Thanks for not judging me." He said, "You could have easily judged me." But he said, "I really, since you care about me" and he said, "I can't tell you" this was his word. He said, "I can't tell you when I've had a more fun day playing golf." And I just thought, we ended up playing together several times. In the years that were after that, we became decent friends. And I just think sometimes it's so easy for us to go, here's the guy I really genuinely cared about. He just got caught up. It was sorta his brand, right. And saying these cuss words when he didn't get things to go his way. And honestly, I don't even think he realized he was saying them half the time just became a habit. So I would just say, we're better than that, right? We are better than that. Especially followers of Jesus, we're called to a higher standard. Here's the second thing that Paul tells Timothy, "Influenced people by the way you live Timothy." It's what he says. He says, "Be an example in conduct." Have you ever noticed that the minute we claim to be Christians, that the people around us start paying attention more to our behavior? I honestly, I think they really want to know if we're serious or not. I remember I got saved when I was almost 17 years old and I had a group of friends that we didn't always behave correctly. But we had our permits now we were driving. I have a couple friends that were older than me. And we had hung out together for a few years on the local little community parking lot in town. And that was often the place where bad habits started, right. And well, I got saved. I went to church Bible camp got saved. And when I got back in town I went back to my buddies and I told him that I've got saved. It seemed like all of a sudden they were trying to twice something that you know I know you had to experience at camp. but surely that's not what you're gonna do. You know, we don't do that. You know I tried my language got better and I didn't do the things that they wanted me to do. And all of a sudden they were looking at me like, "Well, come on, man. You're one of us." And I remember one of the hardest things after a few months go by, I just decided God, I gotta get some new friends. And I remember one night going down to the parking lot. And they were trying to get me to go in and do this and do that. I said no, you know, that's just, it's really not wanting to do anymore. And I left that group. And it was hard, it was a hard decision. But I knew if I was gonna be where God wanted me to be, I was gonna have to let go some old friends, embrace some new ones. Because all of a sudden they were watching everything I did. And they were trying to get me to do things that they knew if I was truly real about my Christian journey, I wouldn't do it. And so I walked away. And I look back now and everyone there was eight of those guys, every one of those guys, I had the opportunity to lead to Christ, eventually. I just followed him, didn't judge him, but just come alongside them. They're still some of my closest, closest friends today. People watch you when you claim the name of Christ. Now they'll never tell you that they're watching you, but I won't promise you they are. And thankfully, you know doesn't mean we have to be perfect, that's not what Paul is telling Timothy. But our intent should be what I think Peter tells us in his book. And this is what he says in 1st Peter 1:15, he says, "But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do." Now we're going to mess up. We still have our old nature, right? We're gonna blow it at times. But when you mess up, just own up to your mistakes and recommit to being faithful again. Own your mistakes, don't blame somebody else, don't try to lie about it just own it. And when push comes to shove, it's not our flawless behavior that people are looking for, it's our sincerity. And when we're transparent about our mistakes and we demonstrate just a genuine desire to do better, it's an influence, makes an impact on the people around us. Third thing, Paul tells Timothy. He says, "Timothy, influence people and how you love." Notice what he says here, "Be and example and love." "So Timothy, you watch your conversation, watch what you say, you know. Be careful on these unwholesome words and all this craziness." And then he says, "You watch how you live." And then he says, "You, you influence people with love." Now it's so interesting to me, especially around men circles. That when we talk about love, it's great if we're talking about that with our spouse. But in a circle of friends, it's almost looked at that's a sign of weakness. Oh, if you're not, if you're a man's man, human tough, you know, don't associate love with me. That's not what I want to be associated with. I hear that often. Well, you'd be wrong according to Jesus, one of the most famous passages in the entire Bible about love, Paul defines it for us, right? And we hear it at weddings but it was never meant to be a wedding passage. This was to the church, this is for us as followers of Jesus. This is what Paul says love is. He says, "Love is patient, love is kind, it doesn't envy, it doesn't boast, it's not proud. It doesn't dishonor others, it's not self-seeking, it's not easily angered. Love keeps no record of wrongs, love does not delight in evil but love rejoices in the truth. Love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres, love never fails. This how Jesus helps Paul define what love is. And even though we hear that at weddings all the time, there is a reason Paul defines it for the church at Corinth. And here's the reason, he wants them to understand, "Hey, if you don't have love, it doesn't really matter. What else you say you're doing?" And he helps them for a few verses before this passage that we often omit, right? Notice what he says. He says, "If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging symbol." If I have the gift of prophecy, which in that day we don't talk about that much today. But in that day, a prophet would be somebody who could accurately discern sort of what's gonna happen. It's like, if somebody could tell you where to invest your resources, whether it be stock market, real estate or something like that and be prophetic about it and they were right all the time. Then they had a following, they had influence. And he says, "Hey, you can have to get to prophecy, you can do fathom all mysteries, all knowledge. If you don't have, and if you can have faith to move mountains but if you don't have love, you're nothing. If you give everything you have and look how serious this is, if you have everything you possess, you give everything you have to the poor, you give your body over to hardship that you can boast about it. But you don't have love, you gain nothing. Those are humbling verses for us. We need to be influencing others by our love. Now for those of you in the crowd or online or on TV today, and your personality is high D, all right. I just want to speak to you just for a second. Pick on just for a minute it's hard for you. Because in your mind, you're so driven, okay? And you are achieving. You're gonna go out and you're gonna get results. And as you go out and you get results and man, you do it, you get it done. But when you look back, there's often a string of people in your pathway that you've just killed, you know. But you got it done 'cause you're a driver. You got this high D personality. I would just remind you if you don't have love, it doesn't matter what you accomplish. It doesn't matter. Love is a key Influencer and so much so in the world in which we live. And think about for a second, if we're unable to demonstrate the love of Jesus, I mean, honestly, we got nothing else we do matters. I mean, it just doesn't. And we might have an exceptional understanding of Christian truth. We may know the Bible back and forth. We may be able to have faith and do miraculous kinds of things. We may just have an awesome commitment to selfless charity. But if people cannot see love in our behavior, I mean, it's worthless, it's worthless. And these are the words right out of what we're learning in the New Testament. Here's the fourth thing. We can influence others with our faith, we really can. Again, Paul says, "Be an example in faith." What is faith? Author of Hebrews we're not really sure who that is, but in chapter 11 verse one, helps us understand what faith is. And this is genius right here. Best definition of faith. He says, "Faith is the confidence in what we hope for," watch this, "And the assurance about what we do not see." This is a compelling explanation of faith. What's he saying. Before people can accept what we say about faith people have to see our faith in action. It's not gonna happen unless they see that we're not only a bunch of talk that we actually walk the walk. That's what helps people see our faith is real. It's a reason here at our church at Highlands, we don't want you to come and consume a seat on Sunday morning for an hour. We believe in getting outside the walls of our buildings and serving our community because that demonstrates faith. That lets our communities know we care about them, that we really do desire to serve them and help them and honor them and love them. We're not seat soakers here. So if you're new to Highlands let me just tell you upfront, don't stay, I mean, don't stay, I'll get emails about this, but you're not going to be happy. Because I'm gonna challenge you every week. And if it's not me here somebody else, we're gonna challenge you every week. Get out of that seat, put your faith into action, because we were never meant to soak and set on a seat, take it all in and become a taker. That's not who we are we're givers. So when we hit a roadblock struggle, do we fall apart? Our confidence's found in something deeper and more profound because people are watching. So I would just say being an example of someone with faith that really helps others who are on the fence. Does God exist or not? Faith demonstrates a certainty about who God is, and it really can be influential in our world. Here's fifth thing, final thing. He says, "Influence, Timothy with your integrity." Notice what he says, "Be an example in purity, be an example in purity." And that's an antiquated word in our culture, isn't it? Over in Colossians, Paul writes in chapter three verse five to the church at Colossae. He says, this is what he says, he says, "Put to death therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature." Remember we still have this old nature even though we're believers. And he sorta helps us identify sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, and greed, which is idolatry. Now by our very nature, we naturally gravitate toward a selfish desire to indulge in things that we know God is forbidden, right? I mean, we all have these temptations. Now notice Paul's advice to the church here. He doesn't say, "I suggest you wean yourselves from lust and sexual immorality, and gossip, and greed and these things." No, that's not the language he uses. He says, "Put them to death." Kill those things. Don't try to win yourself off of them because we get in trouble when we think, oh, I know my boundaries, I know my limits, I know what I can take. No, you don't. Put them to death. And we all know how much damage has been done to people's Christian influence when they're secretly self-indulgent impure behavior comes out. And once that trust and credibility is shot, it's really difficult to get it back. I'm your pastor, I'm your friend, I love you. I want the best for you. Truth is the world is watching and they're watching us. And I used to think that was unfair, but it comes with our calling. The Bible says that, "Jesus left his followers, that's us church with a mission." It's commonly known we call it the great commission because he called it that Jesus told us to go into all the world. Highland's is the church for the world, all right. We're gonna love our local community, we're gonna love our region. We're gonna be a church. We believe God's gonna use us to change the world. We have partners all over the world. Make disciples, baptize them and teach them to follow his commands. And to do this, how do we do it? We got to share the Gospel, right. I mean, we got to share the good news of Jesus, no way around it. We have to tell people who Jesus is and what he did for them. But sharing the Gospel requires more than telling people about Jesus. Here at Highlands we try to live out these rhythms of how Jesus lived. You know, He spent time with his father in this up movement and then he spent time with his disciples and brought them in, we call this in movement. And then he went out into all the world and he shared what he could do for people. And his disciples shared the love of Jesus and shared the Gospel all over the known world. So we have to demonstrate what lives submitted to Jesus look like. You know, we're not trying to pretend we're perfect, that we're far from that, we'll be the first to admit that. But we got to remember guys, we're Influencers for the kingdom of God, either good or either bad. And the world is looking at us to see if things that we actually profess in our lives, the things that we claim to believe are they impacting us, is it real with us or is it just talk? So review with me just a little bit. Paul says, "Timothy, you want to influence your church, you want to influence your community, you be an example in your conversations. You watch what you say, guard your mouth, you know. Being example in your conduct and how you live, being an example, Timothy, in your faith, being an example in your love. And be an example as you go out and as you realize the world is watching, be an example to those who follow you, who look to you when you claim to know Jesus as your Lord and savior. You know, today's a little different, I'm talking to those of you who are believers. I've sort of feel like I'm a spiritual father. You know, like I would talk to my kids at home. I understand, I struggle. Well live in this life too. I sure don't have it together. I'm sure I'm not perfect. Don't look at me, don't ever look at me. Keep your eyes on Jesus. He's the one we look to, right? He's he's our goal. And although we will never be quite like Jesus. We can make significant progress along our journey. So get you some people in your life you can be accountable with. Again, the reason we want you to get in God's word, because it just helps you, it just helps you. And when we do this together, our church is gonna be so much stronger. We already are just a weekend. If you're here today or you're watching online and you've never trusted Jesus, I would just say, what in the world? How do you make it? I don't know how you make it with everything that's going on in our culture? How are you not anxious and scared to death? I mean, think about this God. You have no security of where your future is gonna be once this life is over. Why do you wanna roll the dice like that, why? I I'll never understand it. I'm convinced if you knew how much Jesus loved you, you would run to him. He gave his life for you. So I just, every weekend I try to give those of you because I know God's Holy Spirit brings some of you to us and you're ready to take that step across the line and enter into the kingdom of God. And I just wondered today. Would you just, would you pray with me? So let's have a word of prayer together and believers just pray along with me. And you're ready to say Jesus, I want to follow you. Just pray this prayer. Just say Jesus, I've messed up, I've made mistakes. Lord, would you forgive me? I'm unworthy but God, I ask you to forgive me. And today Lord, I surrender my life to you ask you to come in and save me. Thank you for loving me. Hey, if you prayed that prayer and you watching online, just hit that little raised hand button right now. Just let us know where we want to come alongside and help you. If you're at one of our locations, grab somebody please on your way out today just let them know you made that decision. For those of us who are followers, hey, I know I've pounded you pretty good today, but just let's watch what we say, and how we talk, how we live, how we act. The world is watching. And we are Influencers in a very, very powerful way. When we claim to be a person of faith, people are watching us. And I want to tell you something. They, where they live are desperately hoping that what they see in our lives truly represents the God of Miracles that we love. Because in essence, everybody needs a miracle of God. May we represent him well, how wonders. May we rise to the bar that you've called us to be. And when we blow it, when we make a mistake, may we own it, may we admit it not blame somebody else. Because through that, we'll all get better. May we help cheer each other on in Jesus name, Amen.