J. N. N. Ng’ang’a – Meditations for October 31st-Nov 6^th , 2011: to influence your environment for Christ,You must set an example even in a mob situation

 

Day 1

 

John 7:49
No! But this mob that knows nothing of the law—there is a curse on them

 

Man of Influence - does not lose himself in a mob. If you are to fulfill your God given mission, and influence your environment so that they are attracted to Christ, then you must remain a  leader , a Man of Impact even when in  chaos or any other situation. We have seen that  you  will need to have good interpersonal skills that allow you  to influence your  generation instead of your  generation influencing you. You are able to have influence even across sexes without falling into sin

Such a leader does not get lost in a mob. How he behaves in a mob tests his  influencing skills . He doesn’t lose himself into  mob psychology. There are three types of people in  any group…. . a person who follows the Mob Unawares, those who are aware but feel powerless to influence direction of the mob, do not ever follow the mob, the mob instead follows them.

Day 2

Acts 21:35
When Paul reached the steps, the violence of the mob was so great he had to be carried by the soldiers

The first one is a Person who follows the Mob Unawares. When he sees people rise and start walking, he also rises and starts walking, and somewhere later he asks, but where are we going? But by then he has already done a kilometer. The average person is not a leader and so tends to follow the mob. You are not going to influence your community  if you are the type of person who follows unawares. It’s always important when you go to a new company, to study your environment. For you to influence that company, they will want to know you are not the type who just goes anywhere you see people go. You seek to understand where you are going before accepting to go. They then realize that you use your brain. That’s critical. This gives you credibility.You are not a leader if you are not bothered where you are going and you just want to go where others are going.

Day 3

Acts 17:5
But other Jews were jealous; so they rounded up some bad characters from the marketplace, formed a mob and started a riot in the city. They rushed to Jason’s house in search of Paul and Silas in order to bring them out to the crowd

The second category of people in a mob is those who are aware but feel powerless to influence direction of the mob. In other words, these ones understand where the mob is  going, and they know where they are going is a wrong place, but they ask..’ what can I do other than follow them?’ One of the things that embarrassed me in July 09, was to see one school after another in Kenya go on strike and burn their  own living quarters. I happen to be then the  chief patron of Kenya Students Christian fellowship   ,  the organization that looks after all the Christian Unions in high schools in Kenya.  I  talked to our leadership, saying, ‘we should be  embarrassed. When  those schools were going to strike, where were our Christian student leaders? We have been telling the Christian union people they are the leaders of the schools. How come a whole school could be burnt without the Christian Union doing anything to stop it? What were they doing? might they have joined in?’

They may have been in this  second category of people in a mob. I don’t believe that our saved brothers and sisters in high school were burning schools. But they were following the mob aware but feeling powerless.

You will not be influencing your market place  until you come to where you never accept you  are powerless. Why? Because the God you believe in is never powerless. The bible says:

1 John 4:4

4 You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.NIV

So you never reach where you feel : I cannot help but sin with the others, what else can I do? Oh! No, no. as long as you have God in you, there is always something you can do. So you will never follow the mob feeling powerless.

Day 4

 

Job 11:19
You will lie down, with no one to make you afraid, and many will court your favor

 

The third category of people in mob do not ever follow the mob, the mob instead follows them.

Leaders are people who do not ever follow the mob, the mob instead follows them. It is shows they are always alive in every situation they happen to be in. Dead fish flow with the river’s current. Only live fish can swim upstream, dead fish naturally flow downstream. Meaning that they flow with the current.

If you  find women  wearing embarrassingly short dresses and  ask them , why? They will tell you : it’s the new fashion from  Paris the fashion head quarter of the world’. Are you a prisoner of Paris? It’s very important to understand that you must do only what you are convinced is right and useful  to do, isn’t it? So if you wear a short dress, don’t apologize for it. You deliberately decided to wear it. There were many dresses in wardrobe, you made a choice of the short one. You must tell me why you are wearing the short dress and with a cut in the wrong place.

The bible actually says that you must be ready to give a reason for the things you believe in. Now that’s what we are actually saying. A person who wants to have influence will be a person who knows where they are going, understands why they are going there and is ready to defend the reason why  they are going  there . You will do this if you are not a dead fish, only dead fish moves with the current. But when Christ comes in you, you become alive. In fact the bible says that we were dead in trespasses until Christ saved us and now we are alive in Christ. And it means that if you are a Christian, you are actually alive and you can go against the whole current. The whole class decides they are going on strike, you will be in class all alone. I agree you have to be wise and use means that will help show them what they are doing is wrong .But eventually  they might stone you dead, but then you go to heaven. It’s important that you understand that you cannot be a Christian and follow the mob just anywhere .

Day 5

Hebrews 2:14-16

¹⁴ Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil— ¹⁵ and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. ¹⁶ For surely it is not angels he helps, but Abraham’s descendants.

 

Any one who has been a professional for any length of time will have known the stress of the mob psychology. People like to use mob psychology behavior. Any work group detests anyone who does things differently. If they smoke or drink alcohol they find you disagreeable if you do not .It is therefore a struggle for you to go up the a career ladder if you do not behave as ‘one of the boys’. But do you know you could be the one who sets the standards, so that they are the ones who will feel out of place when they behave unbiblically.

People think that in politics  you should be  forgiven if you follow the party line because you would have a hard time  otherwise. But this pressure is in every profession. Why? Do you know a politician has no harder time than an accountant? They are faced by exactly the same challenge. Because there are non-Christian in politics, and there are also non-Christians among accountants. It is only that it is politicians that  we see in newspapers, so when they fail, the whole world knows. There are many accountants who are also failing, many engineers who are failing, to stand for their faith, but because it does not appear in newspapers, we don’t read about it, and so we assume other professionals are not failing. What I am saying is that the temptations are real in every profession.

I remember somebody wanting to come to my office because I was cancelling his contract.  I had been  told, ‘I don’t know what you will do when he comes because he normally carries a gun’. And he finally came to my office. And he chose to come during lunch hour when even the secretary was away. Those days managers  had  closed offices, before open plan was in fashion. He insisted he wanted his contract renewed. Obviously I could lie to him,  in order to save myself. In the process I would  be ‘following the mob’. They would advise you…. in such a situation …tell a ‘white lie’, as if lies have colors. But I wondered …., surely what is the worst he can do? Shoot me! Isn’t it? And if I die? I go to heaven. Isn’t it? So what was the big deal? So I declined to renew his contract and give his reasons. I watched to see what he would  do.

Now when you are a Christian, it’s important to understand there is no bigger power, than Christ’s power in you. We do not even fear death, if that is the threat. It means that you cannot compromise in  whatever industry just because you want money since God can give it to you, or fearing death , since that will send you to Him which is your home.

In any case when you behave biblically consistently, people accept you as you are. When you are consistent, (I repeat), when you are consistent, people will finally respect your position. Not when you have situational ethics that change with every situation. That’s what enterprise owners  are looking for in the market place, people whose ethics will keep them consistent in behavior. People who will be ready to die for what is the right . This will be true whether in politics or in whicever profession.

Day 6

Col 3

¹⁷ And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

 

There’s no career in which God allows you to compromise his standards.  If you are working where you are going to do the wrong things then you are working  out of God’s will. You know even Abraham, who cheated that his wife was only a sister,  was really condemned by God, despite the understandable fear. In fact  King Abimeleck wondered how he could have  allowed  it to happen,and he was told to move away. Do you remember this bible  story? God used a non-Christian to condemn Abraham for having cheated. There is no time you have a reason to cheat. No chance to tell a lesser lie in order to support  a bigger truth. You must be true, not some times, but all the time.

In Kenya we retire early, so I am already in retirement . I can tell you after over thirty years of working I have had opportunities to lose my job because of my faith and I have always made a choice to lose it. But by God’s grace I didn’t loose, I lasted to retirement. I worked until normal retirement age. During my retirement party ,a manager who spoke on behalf of others said that they will remember the fact that I spoke my mind irrespective of who was in the meeting .He told the non management staff ,’Ng’ang’a speaks in the board room the same way he speaks out of the board room…he speaks his mind’. And yet I worked to retirement age!!! .

Once I was ready to lose the job , I didn’t necessarily lose  it. You need to be where you are sure that ‘if this is a job that God has given me, it’s not my business to protect it, it’s his business.’ If you work to his glory ,and if he needs you in the place , he will protect the job, that’s my testimony.

You have no reason to behave like part of a mob so that you do n pot loose the job or so that you get a promotion.

Day 7

Proverbs 14:27
The fear of the LORD is a fountain of life, turning a person from the snares of death

Whatever you fear most  is your God just like the thing you love most is your God. Anyone who seeks to influence his environment for Christ must determine to love and fear the lord in whose service he is. You know that even if your enemy was to prepare a snare so that he kills you ,God is able to rescue you if He does not want youhome yet.

So it’s critical to understand that for you to have influence even in hostile environment , it will be important to take God sanctioned risks and then leave yourself in God’s hands.  For you to be a leader, you will not follow the mob. Even if the  mob or opposition is powerful you will stand your ground and lose your life, or your job, or your contract. And by the way I am telling you that you don’t necessarily have to lose it, except if that’s the way the Lord has chosen for you to ‘go home’ or ‘go elsewhere’. God has his ways of protecting his people, isn’t it? But of course if he wants you home, why should he protect you? And you must also want to go home  when He says it is time .