Who's Influencing You?

Arguably the first person to ever be influenced in human history was a woman named Eve. Prior to that day in the Garden of Eden, no person had ever experienced influence before. She was the first person that had to confront influence and she failed miserably.

So many things happened that day in the Garden of Eden that life was given a limit. A series of unfortunate events were set into motion and to this day, we’re still suffering from its repercussions.

This begs the question; what is influence? Wikipedia defines it as follows: Influence is a term that refers to the ability to indirectly control, shape or affect the actions, beliefs and attitudes of other people or things through your behavior, words or presence. The meaning of influence therefore depends on who or what is being affected, and to what end.

Clearly there can be good influences and bad influences. You can choose to influence your friends in a positive or a negative way, but who’s influencing you?

Genesis 3:1 – Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made.

The word of note here is SUBTLE. How many times have you made a bad decision, having been influenced by someone, and later question, “How could I have done that?” I would venture to say that the bad influence was presented to you in a “subtle” way. This is more evidence to the argument that we should pray about every decision, big or small, before we make it.

Genesis 3:7 – And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked…

This is significant use of language in that “the eyes of them both were opened”. Clearly
Adam and Eve could see before they ate the fruit, but now they were given a new vision.
They lost God-consciousness and gained Self-consciousness…all because of influence.

The next time you’re in a questionable situation and you are being influenced to make a certain decision, you ought to pray deeply about it…you never know if that decision could change your sight.