Influence

My father was a career military man having joined the Air Force at the age of 18, fresh out of high school. He served faithfully during my childhood, for twenty years – retiring the same spring that I graduated from high school. The unique influence about being in the armed forces was that its reality permeated every aspect of your life.

Dad wore clothes that indicated he was an airman of a specific rank and function. We lived in base housing that was constantly subject to inspection both inside and outside at any time, as well as monthly. My brother and I usually attended a school that was “on base” until our high school years. Even mom’s grocery shopping was influenced by the military, since the Base Commissary was handy and cheaper than anything off base. Our hospital and dental services were all military, and many times those services were facilitated during school hours at the school since it was all “on base.”

All of our friends and acquaintances were also in the Air Force and shared that common influence in both employment and leisure time activities. There wasn’t an aspect of our lives that didn’t bear the mark or influence of the military somewhere. The ultimate influence, of course, was when dad got “orders.” That meant we had to pack up and move across the country even if we had grown to like the area we were living in.

In similar fashion, God, through the work and presence of His Holy Spirit, seeks to have that kind of influence permeating and effecting every aspect of our lives – not for the sake of control but for the freedom of life! Whether we realize it or not we have all been infiltrated by the influence of a less than holy world, and its ideas and attitudes control our actions to the point of debilitating, crippling death.

We live in sin’s “base housing” and move at its “orders” without even a second thought. Jesus made a way for us to escape sin’s dominion by allowing the Holy Spirit to translate us from the kingdom of darkness to God’s Kingdom of Light. Like the sun in its fullness, the effect of the sanctifying work of God to “warm” every cold, dead recess of our hearts brings real life as we learn to yield wholly to His complete influence!

How exciting to be His people,

Pastor David Vanderpool