Dear God, I started my experience with Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA) almost 40 years ago. An image they embraced as an organization that would come to explain their strategy of reaching the world for you through athletes who are believers is summarized in the above image, “Influence.” The idea is that we all have someone who influences us. The question is, whom do we allow to influence us, and are we careful and intentional about how we influence others.

I saw a headline yesterday (inauguration day) from a media outlet suggesting that other outlets that have an opposite bias as this outlet will now treat this president differently than the last, saying they were about to apply a duplicitous double standard. I told my wife that the person who wrote the headline (I didn’t read the article) was either completely un-self aware, or being ironic because their news organization as about (and has already started) doing the same thing, only in the opposite direction. All of these news organizations have influence and can color how we interpret the events around us.

I prayed recently about this, about what I allow to influence me and being intentional. Too whom do I listen? What do I read? What do I watch. With whom do I hang out? Whose world view influences me?

There is also the part about who I influence. There are people around me at work or in my personal life who give my thoughts and words some amount of credibility. How do I treat that trust? Am I careful and intentional about the example I set? I am both one of the boys sitting down in that picture as well as being the boy with the ball. Perhaps I only see myself as one or the other, but we are all both, whether we like it or not.

Father, please guide me today. I have one topic specifically on my mind that involves the influence that I have personally and that the organization where I work has. Give me your wisdom. Give us your collective wisdom. Do it so that your people who are in our care can have your best for them. I don’t want to make decisions out of fear or public perceptions. I want them to be out of true leading by the Holy Spirit. So lead us, Father.

In Jesus’s name I pray,

Amen