How's Your Impact?

Anyone who knows me, knows that I am a fan of Skillet. Anyone who has come into my office, knows I am a HUGE fan of Skillet. From the time I first heard their music while deejaying at a radio station, I have gone to shows and bought the CDs and merchandise. I am even an official “Panhead” (their fan club moniker).

A couple of years ago, a few of their songs started to get mainstream radio air play. Suddenly their music as everywhere. Played at stadiums, on video games, on TV shows. The Denver Broncos even started the 2016 NFL season by running out the tunnel to one of their songs.

I had a unique opportunity to see them recently at a venue, which I would not normally go to. In Silver Spring, there is a place named the Fillmore, which is music hall that is small, and mostly standing room only. All sorts of bands play this place, many of them openly hostile to Christianity in their lyrics. Before this time, I had always seen the band play in huge arenas or at Christian music festivals, where most the attendees claimed to have a relationship with God. However, at the Fillmore, it was not like that.

While we were waiting for the concert to start, I overhead a girl talking, and the words she said stuck with me. She was there because she was a huge fan of one of the opening bands. While she liked Skillet, she didn’t like how they were “overtly Christian” in many of their songs. At first, I had to chuckle, thinking that she was acting like she was listening to Casting Crowns or Chris Tomlin. She went on to say that she struggled to listen to an entire Skillet album, because so many songs had stuff about God and Jesus.

Her words have stuck with me for the last six weeks and really pulled on my soul. There was friction in her heart. She said these things about Christianity as something negative, but what I see is a crack in the hardness in her heart. Here is what she probably doesn’t realize; for all her talk, she still listened to them. She still stayed through the concert, and was told that Jesus loved her.

This is not an article to state that Skillet is doing something special, but rather to ask the following questions, “Does what we say and do provide a friction point for the people God puts in our path?” Even more importantly, “Is what we are doing and saying keeping people listening, despite the friction in their soul?” When Jesus was giving the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5, He told those who were there to “Let your light shine before men, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in Heaven.”

For those in darkness, a light can be blinding and painful as their eyes adjust, but they are still drawn to it. Do you know what our prayer to God should be for those in our sphere of influence? Our prayer should be that our faith and service to Jesus Christ is so evident that it causes others to have friction in their souls, yet for all the “scratchiness” they can’t turn away.