Five Minute Friday: How to influence someone (as Oswald Chambers would)

As I read more of Oswald Chambers’ works, he the Scottish Baptist minister who died a hundred years ago at the age of forty-one, I appreciate increasingly one of his often-repeated insights – don’t interfere in what God is doing in the life of another. Instead, trust that God through his Holy Spirit will work in that person’s life. God’s influence will be so much stronger than our moral bludgeoning of them.

As Oswald says:

Our Lord’s counsel to His disciples is, “Be as the lily and the star.” When a man is born from above he is inclined to become a moral policeman, one who unconsciously presents himself as better than others, an intolerable spiritual prig. Who are those who influence us most? Those who “buttonhole” us, or those who live their lives as the stars in the heaven and the lily of the field, perfectly simple and unaffected? These are the lives that mould us, our mothers and wives and friends who are of that order, and that is the order the Holy Spirit produces. If you want to be of use, get rightly related to Jesus Christ and He will make you of use unconsciously every moment you live; the condition is believing on Him.*

I find this challenging, for I can be quick to make pronouncements or reach conclusions about another’s actions or beliefs. But I don’t have the whole story. I can’t see into their heart like God can. Instead, I’ll be a better influence if I’m right with Christ, as it were; if I am pouring myself out in intercession for that person, asking God to work his ways with them.

What do you think of this exercise of influence?

I am taking part in the #fiveminutefriday community. To write your own and link up with the other writers, you can do so here.

I contributed a chapter in Utmost Ongoing about the influence of Oswald and Biddy Chambers, which you can buy in the UK and US. (affiliate link)

* Oswald Chambers, Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, found in The Complete Works of Oswald Chambers (Grand Rapids, MI: Discovery House, 2000), p. 1459. I’ve slightly updated the language.