There’s a vast gulf between possessing knowledge and having influence.

As a leader, what you know makes little impact unless you find effective ways to share it with others.

The truth is, if you are going to lead, there must be people who not only know what you do, but put it into practice.

The question is how to you infect them?

Looking back on my own growth and development, the people who had the greatest influence on me, carved out and spent time with me.  Fishing.  Hunting.  Eating cheeseburgers.  Talking.  Helping me fix my car.  Praying with and for me.  After a while I knew more about who they were and what they believed.

How about you?  Do you long to impact the lives of others but don’t know where to start?

Maybe you desire to reestablish a strained relationship.  That’s important, in the words of an unknown source, “everything moves at the speed of relationships”.

Years ago, an older, wiser pastor came and preached at the church I was pastoring.  I am a bi-vocational pastor which means that I have a full-time job aside from my position as a pastor.  I actually commute about 2 hours each week to preach.

The pastor’s text was John 14:6, “And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

In plain words, Jesus came to earth and pitched his tent with us.  At the time, I thought the message was for the congregation.  Now I know better.

God teaches us that if we want to make a difference in the lives of others, it means spending time with them.  Through thick and thin.  Good times and bad.  Night and day.  When we wake and when we sleep.

In fact, if you study the gospels in particular, you see that Jesus spent 3-3 ½ years making time for his disciples.  They ate together, traveled, debated, had fun, laughed, learned, loved and even cried together.

God knew we have a tendency to keep to ourselves, so he left us examples in both word and deed about how important it is to spend time with the people we are trying to shape and mold.

The fact is, the people we love will remember very few things that we said, but they will remember what it was like to spend time with us.  They’ll remember as one writer said, how we made them feel.

The good news is that we don’t need an advanced degree to show people we love them.  Kindness and proximity trump wisdom.  Wisdom takes years to attain; anybody can spend time with someone.  You don’t have to be a genius to influence others.  According to John 14:6, if you like camping and, that’s a good start.

God teaches us that leaders go where the people live.  But we live in a day and age when we expect everyone to come to us.

He also teaches us that we can’t fully impact others unless we make contact with them and hunker down for the long haul.

It often takes more than just one connection, it takes prolonged contact…sometimes over the course of years and decades.

Some of you know this first hand as parents.  As a parent, you spend decades with you child training them and sharing your values with them with the hope that they won’t be living in your basement until they’re 63.

God knew that training and shaping takes time, so he instituted the family unit.   Both as a learning lab for children and their parents.

It takes time.  It can also be incredibly heartbreaking.  Maybe you know that first hand.

But it’s what it’s going to take if you’re going to be a great leader.

Knowing this fact, you can begin the journey of providing a greatly needed resource in our era…relationships that are deep and wide.

The choice is yours.

If you’re like most, maybe there’s a particular relationship that you haven’t punched the timecard for in a while.

Maybe you need to even apologize or ask forgiveness.

The choice is yours, you can throw away the relationship that you have so much time invested in or begin again.

Maybe your friend is waiting for you to pick up the phone right now and be the first to call.

Perhaps it’s time to pick up with a mentoring relationship you’ve shifted away from.

Whatever the case may be, imagine if we started a movement and intentionally carved out time to spend with the people we care about?

Imagine if our children followed our example and became good friends at an early age with their peers and followed our example?

What if we all helped each other while spending time together and used our gifts and abilities to be a blessing to one another?

What if we shared meals together and laughed more and it reached the point where the people we love wanted to know more about our personal spiritual beliefs?

Imagine if we looked forward to our jobs because our friends worked with us and they eventually began to change and grow after spending time with us?

Imagine if people saw our example and we had the joy of helping them put their lives back together?

What if we looked at conversations during a drive as opportunities to model maturity?

Imagine if words grace and truth reminded our family, friends, and neighbors of us and the times they’ve spent with us?

The truth is we don’t need a license to impact the world for good.  Remember, “everything moves at the speed of relationships”.  So the major subject we must work on as leaders if we are going to be influential is others.

One of the best ways to pass on our wisdom is to spend time with people.