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Guard Your Influence

September 4, 2026 | David Jeremiah

Then [the sailors] said to [Jonah], “Please tell us! For whose cause is this trouble upon us? What is your occupation? And where do you come from? What is your country? And of what people are you?”
Jonah 1:8
 
In 1624, the English poet John Donne penned a meditation whose title comes from the first line: “No Man Is an Island.” The theme of the short poem is the interconnectedness of human experience—what happens to one affects all.

When the prophet Jonah was fleeing from the call of God on his life, the ship he was on encountered a bad storm. The sailors concluded that it was Jonah who was the cause of their dangerous misfortune. They demanded to know who he was and what he had done to put them in danger. Jonah’s situation illustrates the point in John Donne’s poem: We do not act alone in life; our behavior impacts those around us. It raises the rarely discussed dimension of stewardship called the stewardship of influence. We are responsible for the influence we have on the lives of others.

Ask God today for grace to be a godly influence on those with whom you come in contact—to be salt and light in their life (Matthew 5:13-16).

Your influence is negative or positive, never neutral. 
Henrietta Mears

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