Video Transcript: Influence Wrecking Habits 3.3

Hi, this is Henry Reyenga and with me is Steve Elzinga, and we're the professors in this class  on influence. And today we're in talk about more of these influence wrecking habits. And we  have started with not walking with God is a serious breach of a person who wants to make an  influence in this world. Why do we keep talking about it's an obvious thing. Remember, you  know, remember when we first started together, we started, we got all excited about,  everyone needs their own walk with God. And we thought, we thought we had just invented  plastic. And we thought, we just have to tell the churches, we got to get back to a walk with  God, and all revival would happen. And then when we started doing it, people just didn't do it. They got excited when we told them, you know, that relationship with God. But a week later,  they didn't do it. It was like, you know, and so getting habits of actually walking with God,  when you don't have it is a hard thing, apparently. And so, you know, you can lead yourself or  your spouse or your family to that, that'll in Face the wall, it will take for the 15 year old,  who'd like to do this. If you can figure out how to influence yourself and your family in these  habits, that becomes powerful in the principles and desire and will to influence others. And I  think too, Christians are just used to blowing this one off. The you know, we've all had a walk  with God, and we were doing our devotions, and we did it for a while and then we stopped  doing about doing it and we don't think anything of it. Or in the year later, we get contrived. I  guess I should get back to that, like at some small thing, right. Like I should get back to  actually talking to my I haven't talked to earn a year. I guess I should get you know, that's a  serious problem. If you're married and you actually did I am avid hockey. Okay, so we tend to  this this one, and maybe some of you have been watching, you've been hearing us talk about  this. But you still don't ever walk with God. You don't ever daily work with God. You have a  rather a hit or miss walk with God because you haven't done a you've been pray every once  in a while. You hear it and it has gone. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think you still don't do it. So we  don't want that to happen. Okay, with that we move on to not having a loving heart. Proverbs  15 Verse 17, better on meal of vegetables where there is love the fattened calf with hatred.  It's interesting reading up on this is there several things like one of the principles that you  have in the positive and the literature on influences, being likable. But another one is actually  being lovable. To me, just being a wonderful caring person, you know, you can have like, in  fact, some of the stuff talks this, like, you're gonna have all kinds of things, you can be smart,  you can manage money, well, you can know how to the techniques for making friends, all of  these things. But if someone believes and looks into your eyes and does not see love, you will not be that influence. You're trying to influence someone. But if they get the sense that you  don't care about them. People don't listen, they don't care about what you want, or your goals and all those things until they know you care about. So, you know, leading a church is not just having all the right answers the right direction and the right vision. If people don't have a  sense that you care about them, it doesn't matter all your preaching and your teaching and  your music and all those things. They got to know that you care, right? I mean, let me ask  you, do you care? Why are you in ministry? I feel guilty already. But I think you'll be able to  give them by God until they you know, I look at it because I'm an idea person. And if  anything, I'm sure the carrying part. And I always say that's for other people to do. Right. But I think it hurts my influence. That when I combined the division, and all the things that I feel  like I'm good at with, I actually care about you. Right? That's when it goes well. Yeah, isn't it  Test the next one cheating. Proverbs one, verse 19, such as the end of all who go after ill  gotten gain, it takes away from the lives of those who get it. Now, cheating is a lot of things.  You know, I know that our golf course if you are a person who cheats, and I have sort of the  theory of like, you know, no one's unrealistic that in one given year, a person every once in a  while, may cheat once in a while. I mean, just that I mean, we're humans are humans. But I  will tell you, anyone at the country club, the I'm at it's cheating in any habitual aspect. Oh,  they can go down in stature, like in a hurry. If cheating is in any way. I mean, one time is bad  enough, but if somebody 2, 3, 4 times. So what other examples of cheating? I guess, you  know, we have we have students that sometimes we do, we do copy things from, you can  look, today, you can cheat so easily, right? You can just look up somebody else's paper and  send it. Yes. So now I think schools are starting to have a logarithms where they can check to  algorithm where there's someone found that on the internet somewhere, right, and it's eight, 

you know, I guess cheating is, again, is focuses on you, you're trying to look better than you  are, instead of just admitting, you know, I blew it or something, right. I didn't do very well. So  we want to appear better than we are. Right? But then again, our focus is on ourselves, right?  We're not thinking about how we can help someone else. Do you feel like if someone has a  bad reputation in cheating, that they can repair that? Yeah, but it will take work. And you  probably would need a coach because cheating becomes a habit. Right? You know, it starts off with, I'm just going to do this for now, because I didn't have time to study. So I'm gonna write  a few answers on my notebook. Right? And then you know, I'll take the test. I'll do those. But  then that works so well, that you know, as time little by little, you've gotten the cheat more  and more about you're cutting corners everywhere. And you didn't you didn't intend to do  that. You started at a pickle. I'm just gonna lie this one time about this thing. And because  right now I'm under stress, there's a reason, right? But then we're suddenly, you know, we  start relying on all these ways that we, you know, basically cheat. We're cutting a corner, and  it works. And then we have to cut more corners, we have to defend our lives and then  eventually it catches up with you just like embezzling some people embezzled from their  company, they take money, that's not theirs. And they don't do it. Like, you know, I'm gonna  steal this money. Probably most do and I'm gonna take this money for now by gonna put it  back next week and just have this need, then they do but next week, they don't put it back  and then they take it again, they take it again. Next thing you know, they get caught for  stealing. Right? It just catches up with you. staying too long? Proverbs ten verse 19, when  words are many sin is absent, but you hold his tongue is wise state. Why is this an issue of  influence? And when I read some of the aspects of blogs about how the appropriate time and  meetings in hospitality the appropriate time of staying, when you hold a meeting, the  appropriate time to disband the meeting, to make sure the meetings are the appropriate  length and in them when you should end them. And people hurt their influence when they  don't honor this principle. Why is that? I think a lot of times that happens in the church where  you're having a Bible study, okay, we're gonna have a Bible study. It's an hour and a half. We  meet from seven till 8:30. Okay, so you, you have the Bible study at 8:30 rolls around and  you're having this incredible a great discussion. So you let it roll, and I know exactly. Let it roll. And everyone enjoyed every minute of it and then went till nine. Yeah. Everyone enjoyed it.  You know, next week, person is thinking about coming to your Bible study again. And he goes, went till nine. I don't know. I just, I mean, I enjoyed it. But I don't want to do that again this  week. Right? So even when you stay too long and it goes, well, the next time someone is  more or less reluctant to do it or because he doesn't want to, you said an hour and a half, and it went two, and it was fine that time, but I don't want to do that this time. So I don't trust  you. And I don't want to invest in it, because I don't know what it's really going to be. So I  think it comes down to that that. Don't, people don't like to be trapped into some situation.  You know, when you invite someone over to your house, and they stay forever? How do you  kick them out? Right? You want to go to bed. And now you're less likely to invite someone the  next time because so I think the mistake sometimes is you stay too long, even when it's good. Sometimes you just need to stick with what you said, right? So people can count someone's  like, leave it at good. Yeah. Good. And don't stay so long that a lot of people when they leave,  you know, they take like forever to say goodbye, right? They write off and they talk, okay, we  gotta go. And then they say a couple more things. And then they go to the door finally, and  then they stop. And now there's another story is like it's a half an hour process of someone  leaving, or getting off the phone, or getting off as Oh, yeah. And you know, the stain too long  to be staying too long on the phone call. And people are gracious enough that there's friendly, and they're talking to you. So you get the impression that they're enjoying every minute of it.  But half the time a person is going, I gotta get going here. I got things to do. Right. So again,  it's being aware of people in your setting and your situation. You know, and I think to allow  ministers, we can fall into this, because we're thinking valuable ministry is being done. If we  stay a little longer in we talk a little bit more, you know, my first elder my first church, Johnny  Venema. He he had the art of stopping in and encouraging and leaving down like no one I've  ever met. Really? Yeah, he would come. And he'd come to the door. And you say, Oh, Johnny,  come on. No, no, no, no, I am Elena second, I just wanted to say that I really appreciated this 

or this or that, or whatever. I know, when they were thinking of calling me he drove down an  hour and a half. We're seeing my grandfather's house. Yeah, hour and a half, he comes to the  door, come on it. You know, I'm just I just wanted to say, you know, the church is really  excited if you come and he just said, like, five minutes of stuff he wanted to say. And I kept  saying, you know, you gotta come in? No, no, no, no, I just wanted to I mean, he drove an  hour and a half hour and a half to five minutes. But he was good at that. And you felt  encouraged, he got his business done at the last. Right, it was so good. Wow, I suppose you  could make an argument that there should be a plan in your mind of how long and before you  arrive to stick with it, like already, and even on a phone call. You know, like today, I had a  phone call with an attorney as we're helping with the immigration issue with somebody in the  staff. And it was really fascinating. The meeting was one hour. It was it was long, and I learned more about immigration than I ever learned in that one hour. But it was really fascinating. At  five to the hour, was really good. You know, I gotta like another 15 minutes, a half hour, you  know, we can talk a little longer, you know, what I mean, was to be done. And I just  appreciate your time. Good crank. Excellent. And I felt when we hung up, like, you know, even though I was given permission, and we were in a good conversation, and there was terms,  you know, because this was a consulting a paid consulting thing. And I knowing why he was  gonna give some extra time. I just felt like, you know, the mean is over, and let's just honor  that. Right, even though I have a few more questions. Right. So being aware of how long you  stay, probably should talk. Same kind of issue telling us long story, right? You just told three  stories before that. Right? You're gonna catch the eyes rolling if it comes to the long story.  Well, we talked before about passive aggressive. This is aggressive in insulting someone else.  Proverbs 12 Verse 14, from the fruit of his lips, a man is filled with good things. I think people  do this. When they feel insulted. Right okay, you say something negative about me. And now I want to say something. How come you're late? What do you mean I'm late, you're the one  that's usually late. Whatever you say to me, poked me in the poke you back, and some  misses related or not related. We tried to change the subject. So insulting someone, usually  the defensive reaction again you consume yourself or not the other person, why not? You  know, really when someone insults you and says some negative thing to you? And you're like,  I don't even get why this just doesn't make any sense. That's, that's a good indication that  you should listen to them. Right? Because you don't understand it doesn't make any sense.  Why would you say that? Why would you say that to me? You know, you're always right.  Would like to know more about why you think that? Right? Because if I just insult you back, I  still don't know why you said that. Right? And I can't clear it up. I can't change your mind. I  can't understand you more, or what's what I'm doing that pushes your buttons, right, I  learned nothing. And a lot of our husbands and wives do that. They insult each other back and forth, back and forth, and back and forth. And I just don't understand that woman. Right? I  just don't understand that guy that I married. Because all you're doing is exchanging insults,  and not talking and not. Okay, so why you say that? I want to understand why you're saying  these things. So really, every time anytime you get insulted is a great opportunity to learn  something, right. Love literature, Steve talks about back to social media, and back to the  blogging side. And a lot of people can utilize these things in become like an impersonal insult  or or they can write the ministry, online, Passive aggressive way, or if it does really hurt your  influence. Well, and it's so easy would online easily in a second. I'm not facing you. And I can  just say, stupid, you know, you can insult someone so easily because it's just a couple of  strokes. Where you're sitting here, right? I'm gonna insult you, and I'm gonna get something  back. And I'm right here here is so impersonal. So I think that's the problem in social media.  People are insulting each other back and forth. And no one's listening. No one's understanding no one. And it's a horrible forum for that. Because for me to understand you might take a half  an hour of listening and you're not gonna type out a half an hour with us tonight. Right? And  social media. Right? I know the Bible has stories of it doesn't go well. For the people who  insult or mock. You know, the story of Elijah is Elisha with those kids mocking. Elijah and then  even you see so many stories in the New Testament about insulters and mockers and just how it really takes away from ministry and frowning or an anxious heart. You know, we talked  about smiling, smiling, can someone smile and still have a frowning or anxious heart? 

Proverbs 12 Verse 25, in anxious heart ways a man down, but it came word cheers him up. So I think frowning. Frowning is just the external sign of the internal, stuff that's going inside of a  deeper one. If you have a frowning spirit, you're anxious heart is in ways you don't wave away 

in ways everyone down and there are a lot of pastors that are this way with their preaching,  like the church, if the pastor is up, and feeling good about his faith, and what's going on that  his messages are up, and we're off, but when he's down, he's discouraged. And then all the  messages like that was there all kinds of senses negative. And your anxiousness is bringing  everyone else's down everyone you know, but what I like about this proverb is it only takes a  kind word to cheer someone up, right? So that's influence. It takes a smile, instead of  frowning can take him down. Well what can a smile do. elders. Right, and they can, you know, like, church if people are the leaders are, hey, how you doing Bob and they got a smile and  they're positive. People can't help but feel that, right respond to that. And one little tiny word.  I mean, just right. People get so few kind words or encouraging words that if you say anything is like, influential Yeah, I still remember my fifth grade teacher was paper mache time. You  dip, you dip paper in wet flour and become sticky and it gets hard. Well, everyone was making pigs you know, you take a balloon and you wrap the paper around the tail, you got to  remember those. So I was sitting there and I had a penny in my pocket. Like this is a penny. A  penny and I took this penny out and what whose face do you see on it? Abraham Lincoln,  Abraham Lincoln. So I put this penny down. And I got the stuff and I started forming and I put  the beard and I made Abraham Lincoln head. Then I made the body you had a big lunch. I had an Abraham Lincoln about this big. Everyone else has never heard the story. We've been  friends for over three decades. And I've not heard this. I think there's one picture that has  survived in our family that this is a first timer for everybody. Anyway, so I made this Abraham  Lincoln thing and I'm making the coat and what have you. And the teacher walked by my fifth  grade teacher, Mrs. Friends. And she came by and she looked at my Abraham Lincoln. And  then she looked at me and she said, you're very creative. And then she walked away. Now I  don't know if I was creative before that, but but certainly after that is how I thought about  myself the rest of my life. From that one sentence. You're very creative. When I went to  college, that's what I looked for on all my papers. Whenever I wrote anything I was looking for this is interesting. This is all I cared about, right? Because I am creative. One sentence, one  word of encouragement, and it changed my life. So, you know, one frown can change a  person's life, right? You know, putting all your negativity on someone else can change their  lives, too. Right? Right. Not caring about the quality of your work. Proverbs 12 Verse 10-11, a  righteous man cares for the needs of his animals. He'll works his land will have abundant  food, but you chases fantasies lacks judgment. You know, I know that we have students,  Steve who do their profiles. And you know, we mentioned, you know, we perforate or just  someone and I remember being young in ministry being dyslexic. You know, I'm just doing the best I get, you know, and there was a minister in Colorado and I written this early, first 10  years of ministry or something. And I read an email. And this minister wrote me long,  perfectly proofread to read. Right now. Proof read, rebuke. And I remember, my first reaction  was just feeling negative and defensive. I'm just doing my best what do you do with all this  other stuff like that? And inside I read that and, and I realized that I was using my dyslexia as  an excuse. Okay. Now, it took me years. But one of the first thing is I did I really got a team  around me to help me like my wife, God just happened to give me an incredible wife who  loves to proofread and works with dyslexic husband, me. But I bring the story because it was  the quality of the work and you're in ministry. So you're writing a profile? Have someone  proofread. Your perfect perfection probably can never be attained. But just sort of saying, you  know, it's good enough. I'm moving on without really attempting even something small like  that. Right. What about the rest of your ministry? You that care that the rest of your ministry  has done? Well, what if a floor layer, you know, put out the tile down and then you know Part  of it goes, you know, I'm just I'm going to change the ground change that or, you know, I don't have a cricket in a lot of ways the quality of our work matters for influence. I remember, I was  on a softball team, and we had a coach. And he was a college guy he was, he was into  baseball at the college. And then he came to grade nine, I think. And he, he was going to be  our coach. And he did everything by the book. I mean, practices were, in the cut off, man, this

is how you the slide. practices were like a game. We all loved it. Right? We loved that, that  disk, he was a discipline, every minute was accounted for everything that you're doing, it was  just goofing around this, this is important. We love the practice itself. So I think it's this,  because he cared about this thing he cared about us learning and growing. So I think a person that, you know, has this sense that you know, I care about my work, I want it to be the best it  can be that you make it fun for the people that are with you. And they want to follow you and  be around, you know, how does it work in this person of perfectionism and quality of work,  because in some ways, there's only 24 hours in the day. And I've also seen people who go the  other end that they can't even get anything done. They're stymied in so much quality, that  they can't get even one thing done well, and the way to balance it is the thing called ROI  return on investment. Okay, you could take forever to paint your house. But your return on  investment would be the same that you're making $2 An hour or something, because taking  too long, and the extra quality that you get isn't worth twice as many hours. Right? So this is  a church, if you're spending all your time doing, you know, making one thing perfect, you just  let five things fall apart. And now that's gonna hurt your church more than that one thing  being perfect. In some ways, a lot of life is triage, right? You have only so much time and you  do the best you that you can quality as best you can with the time that you have, right. So if  you spend all your time writing a sermon, then you're not visiting anyone, you're encouraging  anyone you're not discipling anyone you're not doing outreach, right. But if they're really,  really good sermon, make it a 90% sermon to do all those other things. So when I know that  we have that Christian Leaders Institute in some ways, it'd be great to have this every single  class produced with a good sized budget. But the reality is we optimize meaning that we take  a digital content out of so you can see them on cell phones in Africa. You know, there's so  many issues, yes, we could be a lot better. But we're triage in some ways. It's good to have 95 classes right now in 2019, the firmer than to have like eight classes that are done really well  so well that you can almost make any impact. So what you're seeing only is in the context  determinants, but always give your best, right, whatever it is, and your best might be within a limited timeframe. Right doesn't mean it's the best you could possibly do. But it's the best  you could do with the time that you had. Right. Right. Interesting. Well, thanks for joining us,  and we look forward to the next session.