Walking With Christ

1 Corinthians 3:6 I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.(ESV)

Yesterday, we explored the generations of people who helped shape our faith. Some of them we know by name. Others lived and died long before we were born, never imagining that their influence might someday reach us. But there’s another side to that genealogy.

What about the people we’re influencing today?

Not just our children, our friends, or the people we intentionally teach. What about the stranger who watches how we respond to frustration? The coworker who notices how we treat someone who can’t do anything for us? The child who overhears a conversation we never intended them to hear?

We may never know their names. We may never even know they were watching. But that doesn’t mean they weren’t learning.

The Lessons We Never Intended to Teach

We tend to think of teaching as something intentional. A pastor stands behind a pulpit. A parent sits down with a child. A mentor offers guidance to someone seeking wisdom. But some of the most influential lessons we teach are delivered without a single word.

Consider a father who tells his children that honesty matters, then asks them to lie about why he can’t come to the phone. He may have spent years teaching them the importance of telling the truth. But in that moment, he teaches them something else.

He teaches them that honesty is important until dishonesty becomes convenient. Or consider someone who speaks constantly about forgiveness but carries bitterness toward a person who wronged them years ago.

Their words teach one lesson. Their behavior teaches another. And the person watching must decide which lesson to believe.

We don’t merely teach people what we believe. We teach them what our actions suggest we believe.

That doesn’t mean every mistake defines us. In fact, how we respond to our mistakes may become one of the most important lessons we ever teach.

A parent who admits being wrong and asks a child for forgiveness demonstrates something that a thousand lectures about humility might never communicate.

Sometimes the lesson isn’t that faithful people never fail. It’s that faithful people recognize their failures and seek to make things right.

The People Watching From a Distance

Jesus tells His followers in Matthew 5:16 to let their light shine before others so that their good works may be seen and bring glory to the Father.

There’s something worth noticing in that instruction. Jesus doesn’t limit the audience to people we know. He doesn’t suggest that our example matters only when we’re intentionally trying to influence someone.

Our lives are visible to people beyond our immediate relationships. A stranger might witness a moment of compassion. A coworker might notice that we refuse to participate in gossip. Someone might watch us endure a difficult season without abandoning our faith.

We may never hear what they thought about those moments. We may never know whether they remembered them. And we certainly can’t guarantee that they’ll interpret our actions correctly. But the possibility of influence remains.

That’s both encouraging and uncomfortable. Because if someone can learn something valuable by watching us, they can also learn something harmful.

Our impatience, dishonesty, pride, and indifference can become examples just as easily as our kindness, integrity, humility, and compassion.

We don’t get to choose which moments people notice. And we don’t always get to explain what they saw.

The Seed and the Water

When Paul wrote to the Corinthians, he addressed a church struggling with divisions over human leaders. Some identified themselves with Paul. Others favored Apollos.

Paul redirected their attention away from the people doing the work and toward God, who produced the growth.

Paul planted.  Apollos watered. God gave the growth.

Neither man could claim ownership of what God accomplished. And neither could claim that his contribution was the entire story.

That’s an important lesson for anyone concerned about spiritual influence.

We may be the person who introduces someone to the gospel. We may be the person who answers a question years later. We may simply be the person whose quiet example challenges someone to reconsider what they believe.

We don’t always know which role we’re playing. And we don’t have to.

Faithfulness doesn’t require us to know where our influence will lead.

It requires us to be faithful with the opportunities God has placed before us.

The seed doesn’t become ours simply because we planted it. The harvest doesn’t belong to us because we helped water the ground. The growth belongs to God.

The Danger of Measuring What We Can’t See

We like evidence that our efforts matter. We want to know that our words helped someone. That our encouragement made a difference. That our sacrifices weren’t wasted. And sometimes God allows us to see the results.

A person returns years later to thank a teacher for something they said. A child grows into an adult who demonstrates the values their parents worked to instill. Someone who once struggled with faith begins helping others through similar struggles.

Those moments are encouraging. But what happens when they never come?

What happens when we spend years investing in people and never receive confirmation that anything changed?

It’s tempting to assume our efforts accomplished nothing. Yet we rarely possess enough information to make that judgment.

We don’t know every conversation our words influenced. We don’t know every decision someone reconsidered after observing our example. We don’t know whether a small act of kindness became part of a much larger change in someone’s life.

Of course, we shouldn’t assume that every action produces some extraordinary hidden result. Scripture doesn’t promise that every seed we plant will grow. But neither should we assume that what we can’t measure has no value.

The absence of visible results isn’t proof that our faithfulness was meaningless.

When Our Influence Outlives Us

Consider the people who helped shape your faith. Some may still be part of your life. Others may have moved away, grown distant, or passed away. Yet their influence remains.

You may remember a lesson from someone who has been gone for decades. You may repeat a phrase your grandmother used without remembering where you first heard it. You may approach a difficult situation differently because someone once demonstrated a better way.

Their presence ended. Their influence didn’t. And the same possibility exists for us.

One day, someone may remember something we said or did long after we’ve forgotten the moment ourselves.

They may pass that lesson to their children. Those children may eventually pass it to someone else.

Our names may disappear from the story entirely. But something we contributed may continue traveling through generations.

That should give us a different perspective on the ordinary moments of life.

The conversations that seem insignificant. The kindness nobody acknowledges. The apologies that cost us our pride. The decisions to do what’s right when doing what’s wrong would be easier.

We don’t know which moments will become part of someone else’s spiritual history. So we shouldn’t reserve our faithfulness for the moments we consider important.

The Names We May Never Know

There’s a question worth asking ourselves. If someone learned what Christianity looks like simply by watching the way we live, what would they believe?

Would they see compassion or condemnation?

Humility or arrogance?

Integrity or convenience?

Would they see someone who claims to follow Christ, or someone whose life demonstrates an effort to actually follow Him?

None of us will answer those questions perfectly. We will fail. We will misunderstand people. We will sometimes become examples of the very things we warn others against. But our failures don’t have to become the final lesson.

Repentance, forgiveness, accountability, and change are also things people can learn by watching us.

The objective isn’t to convince the world that we’re perfect. It’s to point people toward the One who is.

Somewhere, someone may be watching your life today. You may never meet them. You may never know what they noticed or what they carried away. But the way you live may become one small part of the story that shapes who they eventually become.

You may never know whose spiritual genealogy contains your name. But that doesn’t make your responsibility to live faithfully any less important.

Yesterday, we considered the people who came before us. Today, we’ve considered the people around us. Next weekend, we’ll consider the generations that follow.

Because there’s a difference between influencing someone today and preparing them to faithfully carry the truth forward when we’re no longer there to guide them.