The Difference Between Position vs. Influence

What makes someone Great! The Difference between Position vs. Influence

Adapted from Chapter Six of Fourth Quarter: Enduring Leadership Lessons That Will

Leave a Legacy by Dr. Dwight A. Perry

The doctor pulled my brother and me and our wives out into the hall. Our mother he told us, had Stage 4 Colon Cancer. The words that followed were a blur; how did we get to this place so quickly? My mom was 81. She looked like she was in her sixties. But in the course of a couple of months, she deteriorated so rapidly we were all caught by surprise. The cancer was so pervasive that the doctors did not even recommend any treatment and within three weeks, my dear mother went home to be with the Lord.

My mom had always been my hero. She raised two boys as a single parent, worked very hard to make ends meet, and had always a word of encouragement for her two boys whom she loved dearly. She was on the kindest persons I have ever met. And I’m not along in that estimation. Nearly a thousand people came to her wake and/or her funeral. She wasn’t famous. She wasn’t a politician or some sports or entertainment celebrity. She was a civil servant who worked for thirty years as an executive assistant in the Chicago Public Schools system. But her generosity and kindness touched many lives all over the city. Why because she was a person of influence.

No matter what God has called you to do, you as well can become the type of leader that influences thousands if you focus not on being a person of position and privileged but a person of influence.

Allow me to give you three major characteristics of a person of influence.

1. Their frame of reference is not seeking to please people but seeking to

please God.

Galatians 1:10 says, For am I now seeking the favor of men, or of God? Or am I

striving to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be

a bondservant of Christ.

2. They value people more than the prestige of a position

Mark 10:42-45 says, Calling them to Himself, Jesus said to them, “You know that

those who are recognized as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them; and their

great men exercise authority over them. But it is not this way among you, but

whoever wishes to become great among you shall be your servant;   and whoever

wishes to be first among you shall be slave of all.   For even the Son of Man did

not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.”

3. They guard themselves from the sin of partiality.

James 2:1-4, 8-10 My brethren do not hold your faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ with an attitude of personal favoritism. For if a man comes into your assembly with a gold ring and dressed in fine clothes, and there also comes in a poor man in dirty clothes, and you pay special attention to the one who is wearing the fine clothes, and say, “You sit here in a good place,” and you say to the poor man, “You stand over there, or sit down by my footstool,”  have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil motives?... If,

however, you are fulfilling the royal law according to the Scripture, “You shall

love your neighbor as yourself,” you are doing well. But if you show partiality, you

are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors. For whoever

keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of all.