PUTTING YOUR INFLUENCE TO WORK

Five Instruments of Influence I

Pastor Tayo Adeyemi

Senior Pastor, New Wine Church

                                                                  Sunday 28 November 2010

Foundation Scriptures: Matthew 5 : 13-16; Ephesians 3: 20 

Today, New Wine Church received the third part of Pastor Tayo Adeyemi’s powerful series Putting Your Influence to Work, as he began to unfold the practical dimensions of operating in influence .

Having recapped the principal points of his previous message, in particular the seven distinctions between power and influence and the fundamental truth that in every relationship there is an interplay between these dynamics, Pastor Tayo explained that it was his intention to deal with the first of the five instruments of influence today and the remaining instruments in the coming week.

Equipped to Go!

Pastor Tayo began by drawing our attention to Ecclesiastes 10: 10 and established that whenever God gives us an assignment, He always provides the necessary tools and adequately equips us with the tools needed for the successful fulfilment of our mission. Many times however, Pastor Tayo observed, we consider ourselves to be inadequate for the mission on which we are sent because we fail to recognise the tools that God has given us or we look at the tools that we are given and do not value them. Noting that when God sent Moses to Pharaoh He had made clear that Aaron had been provided as Moses’ mouthpiece and that He had given Moses a rod, Pastor Tayo cautioned that we should not overlook the gifts that God has placed in our hands as I Timothy 4:14 made clear. He also cautioned us not to under-estimate the gifts that God has equipped us with as He often accomplishes great exploits with sub-standard equipment; whilst it was often the case that we are looking for a harvest, all God needs is a seed and rather than looking for Saul’s amour, God is content to make use of a sling and stone.

Pastor Tayo drew our attention to the use of the past tense in Ephesians 1:3 and 2 Peter 1:3, amplifying the point that God “has blessed us with every spiritual blessing” and “has given us all that pertains to life and godliness”. Further, in Mathew 10: 1 he noted that Jesus had first given the disciples power before sending them out and was careful to warn the disciples not to look for gold or silver or tunics, sandals or staffs, none of which were needed for their assignment.

 From these illustrations, we were shown, God has given us the tools we require to put our influence to work, however, in order for us to take full advantage of these tools, three things must happen:

1.       We must recognise that we have the tools to put our influence to work  - Discover!

2.       We must know how to sharpen these tools and keep them in mint condition – Develop!

3.       We must know how to put these tools to work – Deploy!

What is that in Your Hand?

Continuing, Pastor Tayo reminded us that God gave Joseph a dream; Moses a rod; David a harp and later a sling and a stone and He gave Solomon wisdom. He gave Esther beauty and courage and Daniel was given vision and Pastor Tayo challenged us to accept that in the same vein, God has given each of us something. He made clear that an instrument cannot do the job by itself; by way of illustration, he noted that a hammer cannot drive a nail into a wall by itself and thus we are the ones who must do the job but the instruments we are given make the job easier and faster. Therefore, the more proficient we become at using the instruments of our influence, the easier it becomes to put our influence to work.

The first of the five instruments that we have been given to extend our influence was that of information, which Pastor Tayo defined as knowledge acquired through experience or study. The source of wealth on the earth today is not material, he explained, but informational, with information being the capital commodity of the 21^st century and intellectual capital being at the heart of wealth creation today. The pursuit of wealth therefore is in reality the pursuit of information.

Drawing our attention to Proverbs 8: 10-11 which compares knowledge to choice gold, Pastor Tayo made clear that next to what we carry in our hearts, what we carry in our heads is the most valuable asset for influence. The possible options were therefore either to be well-informed or ill-equipped; to be well-informed is to be well-equipped whereas to be ill-informed is to be irrelevant.

Pastor Tayo developed our understanding of this truth further by explaining that there have been three distinct ages that have defined the world in terms of civilisation. The Agrarian Age defined civilisation from the beginning of time until 1860. During this period agriculture was the occupation of 90% of the population and practically all other trades supported or interacted with agriculture. Land was the main capital and therefore landowners were by definition wealthy and influential. The Industrial Age defined civilisation from between 1860-1956 and began with the invention of the steam engine and saw people leaving the farms and flocking to the factories, shifting the focus from land to machinery. The Information Age from 1956 to the present ushered in by the invention of the computer and later the internet, saw those who knew how to access and use information become the real powerbrokers in society.

Although some believed that we had now in fact moved into the digital age in which laptops, kindles digital cameras and smart phones had replaced many of the means of communication that had previously been relied on, the underlying fact remained that knowledge is power and therefore in order to wield great influence, being an information broker or a dealer in intellectual capital is key.

Locate and Communicate; Acquire and Share; Collect and Distribute

Pastor Tayo encouraged us to understand the importance of becoming the “go to” person for information, the main resource for information to the people around us and in answer to the question as to how we can do this, he encouraged us to commit to know how to access information; how to locate and communicate information and how to collect and distribute it. Both, he explained were essential; it was impossible to have one without the other and as illustrated in Daniel 5:12,  those who are an information resource will always be in demand. For this reason, Pastor Tayo encouraged each of us to commit to know more about at least one subject than anyone else in the organisations in which we worked and very quickly, he assured us, our influence will increase.

Continuing, Pastor Tayo made clear that before we can share information we must acquire it as we cannot give we do not possess and therefore each of us must nurture a desire to learn. Drawing from Hosea 4:6a, he explained that it was not a lack, shortage or unavailability of knowledge that destroyed the people but the fact that they did not desire it.  God had created human beings with an innate capacity to learn and grow, noting that although the brains of animals were 98% developed at birth in humans this figure was only 38% and therefore if we refuse to learn and grow, we have denied ourselves a fundamental human right. He encouraged us to become voracious in our hunger for learning and remarked that when we are through with learning, we are through indeed....finished!

In this information age there was absolutely no excuse for ignorance, with most if not all information simply a click away. Setting aside just 15 minutes a day to read a book would result in 24 books being read in the space of 1 year and with statistics showing that more than 400 books were published each day in the USA, there was simply no excuse for ignorance.

The More that Knowledge is Shared, the More Valuable it Becomes

After acquiring information, Pastor Tayo explained, we must be willing to share it; willing to pass on what we know to others as the more that knowledge is shared, the more valuable it becomes. He encouraged us to resist the urge to hoard information as this did not place us at an advantage over others but would likely in fact render us irrelevant as they would invariably acquire the information that they seek from other sources.

In closing this challenging and thought-provoking message, Pastor Tayo read from a speech delivered by Dr Hafez A.B Mohammed, the Director General of the Al Barak Bank, the largest Islamic Banking Group in the world in which he examined the impact that people of Jewish descent had made on the world notwithstanding that in population terms, the Jewish people at 14m were dwarfed in comparison to the 1.5bn Muslims there were worldwide. The conclusions that Dr Mohammed reached were that the Muslim world currently lacked the capacity to produce knowledge and was failing to diffuse knowledge and to apply knowledge. The advice issued by Dr Mohammed to the Muslim world to place a premium upon education for both themselves and their children, had equal significance for believers and it was for us too very much the case that “ Our victory is with our knowledge, our creativity, our literacy and nothing else.”