For whatever is born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world – our faith.
-1 John 5:4
I don’t know what it’s like in your house, but my wife and I always disagree about the temperature of the room. Cathe likes it warm, and I like it cool. Sometimes I find myself breaking out in a sweat, so I’ll walk over to the thermostat and see that it’s set at 78. Then I’ll ask Cathe why she set it that high.
“I was cold,” she says.
So I return it to an appropriate setting, like 70. She likes it warmer. I want it cooler. We go back to the thermostat again and again, because it controls the warmth or coolness of the room. Unlike a thermometer, which goes up and down with the temperature, a thermostat influences its surroundings. A thermostat controls the temperature around it.
With that in mind, are you a thermostat or a thermometer? Let me put it another way: Are you changing the culture, or is the culture changing you? Are you changing the world, or is the world changing you?
The Bible tells us the stories of great men and women who served God and, in effect, changed their world. These people were not perfect. In fact, they were far from it. They failed often. But they had faith in a great God, and we can have faith in the same great God.
Maybe it’s a tall order to change the world. But what about your world? What about your sphere of influence? What about your friends, family, and neighborhood? You can have an effect there. How do you do it? You do it through faith. As 1 John 5:4 tells us, “And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith” (NKJV).
You can be the change agent. You can be the thermostat. You can be a world changer.
Greg Laurie is senior pastor of Harvest Christian Fellowship in Riverside, California. This editorial first appeared on Laurie’s daily blog.
