How to use the influence of friendship wisely …

My friend was apologizing for something I was momentarily confused about.

I had been in the midst of taking on a big personal challenge. Apparently, this friend had developed his own views as to what I should be doing, and had been judging me according to his own thoughts. I didn’t have a clue he had created all these expectations for me. He had never voiced them to me, and I had never asked him to create them.

Yet, there we were, with him apologizing for judging me on something that was happening only in his head. It had not been something mutually shared. But still, I was judged and, according to what he thought I should be doing, was found wanting.

That real situation is one example that it doesn’t take real failure to disappoint others. It simply takes failing to live up to what they think you should be, or doing something other than what they think you should do.

All too often, a person would respond by trying to live up to what the other person thought. We react like that routinely. In this case, I didn’t. I knew that, with regard to the challenges in my own life, I was walking by God’s guidance, and so I wasn’t bothered in the least that my actions didn’t match with someone else’s “expectations” for me.

But here’s the dangerous part: what if I would have deviated my actions to align with what my friend thought I should be doing? I would have moved out of the will of God for me, and into the “will” of my friend.

Influence is a powerful thing. Be careful how you use it!

Here are a few things to check before you attempt to influence someone else:

1. If your opinion isn’t solicited, most of the time you should not only not share it, but don’t build it. In other words, mind your own business! Don’t justify a reason to sit in judgment of someone else.

2. Make sure you’re right. That would mean making sure your thoughts align with God’s will for someone else. That would require knowing the truth about another person. That would require their sharing correct information with you. It isn’t often a person can draw accurate conclusions from simple observations or partial information about another person. Be right, or be quiet.

3. Make sure your motive is right. It’s not about what you think another person should be, how you think they should live, what you think they should do, or what your community or culture would think. It’s about what God thinks. God often calls us to swim upstream, to move counter culturally. If your motive is to help a friend move into the center of God’s will, then you have the right motive. Anything less, and you’re acting from the wrong motive.

4. Speak the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15). If you won’t do that, then don’t speak.

Perhaps the best insight regarding any attempt at influencing others comes from Jesus himself …

“And why worry about a speck in your friend’s eye when you have a log in your own? How can you think of saying to your friend, ‘Let me help you get rid of that speck in your eye,’ when you can’t see past the log in your own eye. Hypocrite! First get rid of the log in your own eye; then you will see well enough to deal with the speck in your friend’s eye,” Matthew 7:3-5.

Scotty