Culture & Christianity: The Allen Jackson Podcast - Why Christians Have Lost Their Voice and How to Get It Back

Episode Date: March 27, 2026

What happens when faith is kept private in a world that’s anything but neutral? In this episode, Pastor Allen Jackson challenges the idea that Christianity belongs only inside church walls and calls believers to reclaim their influence in everyday life. Through personal stories and biblical insight, he unpacks why silence has cost the Church cultural ground—and what it looks like to lead with faith right where you are. The insights he shares in this episode can be found in his book Lead with Faith, offering practical encouragement to help you use your influence for God’s purposes. This isn’t about being louder—it’s about being faithful.Buy your copy here: https://bit.ly/4rV11cM

Welcome back to culture and Christianity. Today, I just finished a book. It's called Lead with Faith. But I almost think that the subtitle is the best window into the theme of the book, Using Your Influence for God's Purposes. That's going to be our topic today. Spoiler alert, I've done about 25 interviews around the book. And I've been a little surprised.

I did this as a series in the church a few years ago. And we had a really good time with it here as a congregation. I felt like it gained some moments. In fact, behind the curtain a little bit, the topics that make it into books are the topics that we don't want to get lost in the unending series of messages. Some ideas seem so important that we want to capture them so they can be more easily shared and we put them in a book. And so we thought this idea had such an impact in the congregation that we put it in a book. Now, I've done about 20, 25 interviews with it. And I've been a little, I've been fascinated at the cool reception.

So I wanted the opportunity to sit down with you and unpack this idea a little bit because I really think it's important. And I watched the impact it had on the people in the congregation across age groups, across professional scales, across academic diversity. The idea found a way to resonate. So I'm going to try to do this and not do it as a sermon. I didn't bring a list of scriptures. I'm sure I'm going to refer to some because that's how I communicate. But your influence in your sphere, there are people that look at your life and they care about your opinion. Maybe not as many as you would like, maybe more than you would like, but there are people that care about your opinion.

They ask you for your opinion on a regular basis. Does this make me look fat? Or people that want your opinion about economic trends or about your NCAA bracket or about, is it time to plant tomatoes? I mean, there are people that care about your opinion. And so my question back to you is, do you use your influence for the sake of the purposes of God? And that's where I got to the title, Lead with Faith. I'm not trying to make you into a corporate CEO. I'm okay if you do that, but if you have that title, I hope you're using your influence for the sake of the kingdom of God.

And I've been thinking about it a lot more than when I wrote the sermon series and delivered it. But my parents came to faith. We were churched when I was a kid, but we weren't Christians. And so I didn't have much value for church because I didn't see the impact in my family when I was young. And when my mom faced death, the pastor, the professional Christian, was no help. He didn't believe in heaven or hell. So my mom says that little simple prayer. You know the story.

Let me know the truth before I die. And God sovereignly intervened. My mom lived to be 89. And I was seven when they told her she wouldn't live more than six. So I know about the power of God, but the outcome of that was my parents really changed. Their life transformed. I was old enough to know them, B.C., and I watched them after they got to know Jesus. And that's how I became a Christian.

Our home changed so much that I walked in the kitchen one day as a nine-year-old and said, what has happened here? This is a different place to live. I'm sure my words were different. And I remember my mom telling me they'd ask Jesus to live in their heart and ask me if I I wanted to do the same, and I knelt in the kitchen floor. We lived in Hollywood, Florida, on Jackson Street. That's an irony.

But at 48-11 Jackson Street, I knelt in the kitchen floor, and I became a Christian because of the tone change in my parents' home. And my dad was a veterinarian. And we moved to Tennessee, and he started a practice. So it was a small business. And they used to, after the church got started some years later, I can tell how old I am, they had cassette tapes of the services, and he'd keep baskets of cassette tapes on the counter where people would pay their vet bills. And integrating faith with his life was as normal to him as any behavior he had.

He led more people to faith while he vaccinated their dogs than most ministers I have known because he helped people's pets get well and they trusted him. And he would take that simple expression of trust and use it as a way for influence for the gospel. So my imagination of helping people find momentum in their faith life wasn't about churches or pulpits or sermons or books or podcasts. They weren't a thing at the time. But from the influence of people's lives. And if we're truly going to see a cultural shift away from paganism, which has enormous momentum right now, if you haven't been paying attention, if we're going to see that change, it's going to be because people who believe Jesus is the son of God and have chosen to honor him, take their faith outside of church.

church. We're not going to sit in churches and change our world. It just isn't going to happen. It's not going to happen. It'll be because we take our faith outside the church and we use our influence wherever we go. And I think that terrifies most of us. I've had dozens and dozens and dozens of conversations with people in the church. And some of the people that I worship with are brilliant leaders. They have enormous influence, big titles, big jobs, big responsibilities, CEOs, presidents. Some of them in academia have had enormous. achievements and success, you know, advanced degrees and influence. Some of them are extraordinarily accomplished in their hobbies, you know, their world class. I mean, do they like to hunt or fish?

Or if, you know, if some of them bake and they do, they bake with such excellence that people want to buy their baked goods. And I mean, I know people with all kinds of expertise and incredible influence. And yet if I say to them, you know, would you be willing to say a prayer in public? Some of these hard-boiled professional or accomplished academics or very confident bakers of extraordinary things just go, I couldn't do that. And that's really where this whole study came from me was I realized that we had to change that somehow, that we had to gain the confidence to lit our influence, not just be in an area of technical expertise or a profession that we've learned or a hobby that we enjoy or some assignment that we, we've accepted like parenting or whatever it may be, but to let the primary commitment of our life, which we at least give verbal assent to typically is our faith, that we use that influence. So that's my goal in this.

I don't think it's overly complicated. There's a few analogies that I think help. You know, in polite company, we're generally taught that we don't talk about two things, or three things, maybe you don't talk about money, you don't talk about politics, and you don't talk about faith. So you wouldn't, in a casual conversation at work or with a group of friends, probably talk about your savings accounts and your financial management strategies. That's just probably not prudent. But in the same way, we've been told we shouldn't talk about our faith, and I think that's completely absurd. If the primary commitment of your life and your faith is the primary

commitment of your life, if it's not, it needs to be, and I would invite you to do that, you need to know Jesus is Lord, and for that to be the case. You can know Jesus as a historical figure. Jesus as a religious leader. Jesus is a miracle worker. Jesus is a healer. Jesus is a great teacher. Jesus is a moralist. You can only mean in all of those ways, and he can be integrated fully into the fabric of your life and subordinated to your wishes and your desires. But those won't change your eternity. You can believe all of those things that I just mentioned about Jesus and go directly to hell. When you choose to make Jesus Lord of your life, that changes priorities. Now, Jesus establishes the priorities of your life, and he becomes the primary commitment of your life.

Doesn't mean your other commitments aren't important. It's just the order of March for your life is established by Jesus of Nazareth. That's what making Jesus Lord means. Well, to have imagined that you've done that, and then that influence not be expressed in all of these other places where you spend the majority of your life, that's just nuts. So probably not smart to talk about your money in polite public. I think we have to talk about our faith, and I think we have to talk about current events. That's why I'm doing a podcast called Culture and Christianity. The analogy I often use is marriage.

I'm married. I have on a wedding ring. The ring doesn't make me married, but it's a symbol of a covenant I have made to another human being, to my wife. Well, imagine if I said to you, when I leave the house in the morning, I take the ring off. Now, before I come back in the house at the end of the day, I'm going to put the ring back on. When I'm home, I'll do my best to fulfill all the commitments that a good husband should have. But when I leave the home, I'm not encumbered by that. I'm going out into this big wide world, and I have professional responsibilities,

and I don't want to be encumbered by those commitments. Somebody might be offended because I'm married to a woman, and I don't want to limit those opportunities. Well, I think you would tell me that that's an absurd idea of marriage, that I'm either married 24-7 or I'm not merely married at all, and my concept is flawed. Well, I would say the same thing about you about your faith. If your faith is intact when you go to church, then you're very happy to be identified with the congregation or even the Christian faith and be present for a worship service. But when you leave the worship service, then you're stepping out into a secular culture and a secular society,

and you don't want to be encumbered by the commitments or the covenants of your service. faith because it could inhibit your professional life or your personal life, then I would tell you you have a faulty imagination of faith. It's just as absurd as my suggested imagination of a marriage. I believe Jesus is either Lord of all of our lives or he's not Lord at all. You know, you don't have to look far to see that our economy is in real turmoil. Our nation is $37 trillion in debt. inflation rates made it hard to buy and sell a house, even a car. We're all feeling it.

When you go to the grocery store and you spend an extra dollar or two in every item, that gets personal in a hurry. Well, the most important thing we can do during uncertain times is to invest ourselves in knowing God better. Read his word, pray. That's the only place we're really going to find stability we need for the disruption that I'm pretty certain is ahead of us. Beyond that, it's just plain wise to make the best decisions possible in our daily lives

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Go ahead and text them today. Now, we're broken and flawed people, so we're still working that out. I'm not suggesting that happens immediately when I first began in the ministry. I didn't have that fully intact. When I came back to serve this congregation, there was a handful of people, and we had a tent in the middle of a wheat field. And I'd grown up in this community. I'd left for education, and nobody thought I was coming back here as a pastor.

And I came back, and so I'm a pastor in a tent in the middle of a wheat field, then I'd meet some high school buddy, and they'd say, what are you doing? And I didn't want to tell them because I was embarrassed. I'm not saying that's good. I'm just confessing. And it took me some time to integrate my life well enough to be able to identify with my faith, even when it didn't seem like there was much momentum around it, or even when the people I was talking to had known me in a season when I wasn't always God honoring.

That's the influence of your faith, and I think we're hesitant, because we go into the corporate setting, and maybe the people haven't known us to always model Christian values or Christian virtues. And we think, well, if I bring my faith up now, they're going to laugh at me. Or they're going to know I'm a hypocrite or whatever. I mean, whatever the lie is that the enemy brings to you or whatever the reality may be. All those things being true, we have to grow through that. I had to come to the point that I was grateful to be an ambassador for Jesus of Nazareth,

whether I served in a tent the rest of my life, or we were fortunate enough to build a building or whatever that would look like. Today, I have to be willing to be an ambassador for Jesus and talk about things. I think when I say that marriage is between a man and a woman, that's not a political conversation. That's a biblical perspective. When I say, I don't believe there's multiple genders that God created is male and female and you're one or the other, I don't think that's a political conversation at all. I think that's a biblical conversation.

When we talk about sexual morality or immorality, I don't think that's a cultural capitulation. God has defined those categories and those boundaries, and I'll either embrace a biblical worldview or I will reject it. And if you reject it, you are not a part of the kingdom of God. I don't think those are political conversations at all. I've had to learn to submit to the authority of God. And to do that, I've had to be willing to identify with Jesus wherever I am and wherever I may go. I'm asked to come.

Professional responsibility is I'm asked frequently to come pray for something. Maybe they're opening a new building, a new hospital, or a new child care facility, or a new assisted living facility, and they want me to come pray. And from time to time, they used to say to me, you know, it's going to be a very diverse crowd or the investor in this project is Muslim or Hindu. And could you just minimize Jesus? And I would say, well, you know who I am, right? And you know where I work and you know what I represent.

And I said, you know, if I come, I'm going to bring Jesus with me. But it became kind of a personal challenge for me. And this is just a simple example. But if my wife, Kathy went along, if my wife went along, I would say count how many times. And she knew what I meant. I'd see how many times I could use the word Jesus in a 90-second prayer. Because if I'm going to go do that, I'm going in the name of the Lord. And I mean, I've cultivated the habit.

If you come to my home for dinner, we're probably going to have a prayer. And I don't mean before we have the evening meal or the whatever meal we're having. I want to integrate my faith into the, the entirety of my life. And I think absent that, our faith remains a mystery. And I think we've arrived at this place. For several decades now, we've been told that our faith isn't appropriate in the public square. Because if one person raises their hand and say, you know, I was offended by that expression, or you prayed in the name of Jesus. And I don't pray in the name of Jesus. And so I don't want you praying in the name of Jesus in this classroom or in this corporate boardroom

or in our cooking circle or whatever it may be or before a ballgame. And so we've stopped doing that because we wanted to be polite. We wanted to be respectful. We wanted to be kind. And we have withdrawn, for the most part, from the public square. And we did that in the name of an expression of kindness and tolerance. Or we were told to do that in those ways. And yet we find ourselves now some three decades or so on the other side of this experiment

in tolerance and kindness. And there is a worldview in place in academia. There's a worldview in place in the corporate setting. There's a worldview in place in the public square. And it's not the historic worldview that shaped our nation. It's not the worldview that shaped our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution and our academic system and our legal system. It's a very much modern secularized worldview that says your gender is fluid and you can

choose it depending on how you identify. That's reluctant to identify what a man and a woman is. You can even make it all the way to the Supreme Court with the most elite academic training that's available to you as an American citizen and not be able to identify a man or a woman in a public setting. That's absurd to me. That is not intellectualism. That's escapism because you have a worldview that does not want to identify with the boundaries around a Judeo-Christian worldview. And so I think what we find now is that these positions of great influence and great power are occupied people with a worldview. that's in opposition to the one that we hold as Christians.

And if we raise our hand and say, well, that's offensive to me. They don't withdraw in the way we did. They don't demurely say, well, excuse me, I'm so sorry. I won't use that language any longer. In fact, quite the opposite is true. They demand that their worldview be institutionalized into public policy. And that if someone violates that policy, you have broken a law. that you're a transgressor.

And so we've been banished from the public square, or at least strongly discouraged from it. So here's where we find ourselves. And what I'm suggesting to you is we can't say, okay. We can't abandon our children or our grandchildren or our friends to that secularist, godless worldview. We have to have the courage to go, it may not be popular, but I believe there is a God.

And I believe Jesus of Nazareth is his son. And if you come to my home, that's going to be a conversation. If you do business with me, it's going to be a conversation. If you hire me as an employee, you're probably going to find out that I'm an advocate and ambassador for Jesus of Nazareth. Doesn't mean I'm going to stand on my desk and preach sermons to all of my coworkers and try to take up an offering. But it does mean that I will be identified with Jesus, that I'm going to celebrate Easter. and that celebration will probably overflow into my work conversations, and we'll talk about what that look like for myself and my family

or why I pray for our nation or why I pray for our troops. Leading with your faith isn't about preaching and being judgmental. There's so many fun expressions of this. Our Secretary of War recently explained this. He's giving a press conference talking about the war in Iran, and he's encouraging his listeners to get down on their knees and pray for our men and women that are in the military. One of the women I worked with told me she went to a store in the last few days,

and they had a basket of little plastic. When I was a kid, we called them Army Men. She said that some were gray and some were green and they were different colors. And they were offering them to anybody that was shopping at the store that would take one with them and use it a reminder to pray for our troops. And I thought, how cool is that? Somebody was using their influence in an understated way as an expression of kindness for our men and women in the military. See, leading with your faith doesn't make you angry or critical or judgmental.

It doesn't mean you have to be belligerent, and it certainly doesn't mean you have to be violent, but you do have to be committed. You know, I make decisions every day based upon my commitment in the context of my marriage. I make decisions every day based upon my commitment to Jesus and my intent to honor. him. And I hope you're doing that too. This isn't nearly as mysterious as we've made it. And I do not want you to go sit in your churches or in your small groups or in your private life to read your Bible or your books about Jesus and then go live in a secular culture and deny those relationships and imagine you're at peace with God because I don't believe you are. I don't find really any model for that in my Bible that makes that okay.

If we go to the Book of Acts, which is kind of the story of Jesus' best friends, immediately following Jesus' return, his ascension, they very much went public with their faith. Now, before Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection, this Easter season, so I'm thinking about that a lot. Before Jesus' redemptive work, the disciples were kind of like keystone cops. It's like Jesus recruited from the slow group. Some of the women seem to get it right and have a lot more courage and boldness, but the guys especially were they had difficulty grasping some of the concepts. Jesus said to them frequently, are you really that dull?

And the answer is, yeah, they really were. But after his resurrection, after the redemptive work of Jesus, and after Acts chapter 2 in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, Peter and James and John and the crew, they are truly transformed. Acts 2, Peter stands up in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost and explains to the gathered people in the city of Jerusalem that Jesus was the Messiah and they had killed him. It was just not many days earlier when they had been shouting in the streets, some of them,

to Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, crucify him. So there's some risk if you'll stand up in front of those people and say, you killed our long-awaited Messiah. And yet on that particular day, it says the people were cut to the heart. It's Acts 236. The people were cut to the heart and said, what can we do? And Peter said, you have to repent. You have to change your minds and change your behaviors.

And then you can receive Jesus and be baptized. and 3,000 of them queued up to be baptized. 3,000 people. I've been doing this a long time. I haven't had 3,000 people in one day say they want to be baptized yet. I haven't given up hope or faith. But the disciples become very faith forward intentionally trying to use their influence for the sake of the kingdom of God.

And it's not very long until they're arrested for it. It's not much longer after that until the physical persecution and punishment begins. It's not many chapters after that. until Stephen is martyred, murdered in the streets, for his faith? You follow that all the way through the Book of Acts. There's a series of riots, arrests, challenges, false challenges, assassination attempts, all driven by men and women who were taking their faith into the public square. And somehow we've landed in this place with this mistaken notion that we can have a private faith,

a personal faith, a faith that exists in a church. building, but that when we go to the ball fields to watch the kids play, or we go into a business setting, or we can have a circle of friends who are not Christian, and we can hide our Christianity, and we're okay. Well, I do want to challenge that. I think if the people that you work with, or the people that you recreate with, or the people that you socialize with, don't know you're a Christian, I would submit to you that you're not just confused. I would think you're deceitful. If Jesus is the primary commitment of your life and the people that you spend significant time with don't know that. Why?

What are we hiding? Almost everybody I know wants to be healthy or healthier. And I think most of us would like it to happen to us by accident. But that hasn't been my experience. So what do we do in a world where there's so many options and diets seem to be like fashion trends? they change with every season. How do we respond? Well, I want to tell you about something that I trust,

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God's moving in the earth, and we can be a part of it by what we put on our fork and not just the pills we take. There have been some times in my life where I didn't do this well. As a young man, as I told you, my family had a God experience, and I came to faith as a young person. But as I got into my teenage years, I wasn't sure I wanted to be faith forward. I didn't want to lose social opportunities for the gospel. And there were parts of my life where I thought the gospel or my Christianity was a vulnerability. And so I buried it pretty deep. I played basketball through school.

And this was 100 years ago. So the rules were different. If you wanted to play, you had to play for a public school. And I did. And the last game I played for the high school where I went, we used to pray in the locker room before we'd go out for the game. And I got, they asked me to pray. And I did, nothing very dramatic, but I said a simple little prayer.

And when I got done, one of the guys that I played ball with, and I had played ball with him for four or five years. So we'd done, his comment, and he used some language that I won't use here. But he said, Jackson, I didn't know you knew how to pray. and I was ashamed. I mean, I didn't say anything, but I wanted to imagine myself a Christian, and it was so, I mean, he said it to me to my face.

He said, you know, I've spent five and six years, we've played a lot of ball, we spent a lot of time in a gym, we've been under stress and competed together, and I had no idea you had any faith. And then I had a follow-up event to that. Same high school, the night that we graduated, we went to a local, the university, It has a gymnasium and graduation took place in Murphy Center.

And just because of the way I had a part on the platform for graduation. And all my classmates are filing out. I'm standing at the podium watching that. First time in my life I ever felt like I heard God say something on the inside of me. I didn't hear a voice from the roof. But I heard it on the inside of me. And he said, you say you're a Christian. And I remember standing there thinking, yeah, I do.

And he said, well, you've gone to school with some of these students for six years or more. and you've never made one attempt to tell any one of them what you know about me. Now, at that point in my life, you could hit me in the mouth, and I would smile at you. You couldn't make me cry. I'd had teeth knocked out and my nose broken and my eye split, and I might spit blood at you, but you couldn't make me cry. And stand on that podium that night in front of all those people at Murphy Center, tears began rolling down my cheeks because I knew that was true.

I wanted enough faith that if some tragedy struck me that I didn't anticipate, that I would go to heaven. But I didn't want enough faith that it would encroach on my social agenda. And so that night began the journey that really resulted me ultimately, I think, in ending up in the ministry some years later. But I said to God, okay, I'm leaving home now because I was. I was done. And I said, if you're real, I'll honor you with my life.

But if you're not real, I don't want you to bother me anymore because I don't want to feel guilty. Because I knew I was living a straddle offense or in both camps or however you want to describe it. And so I began a process of reorienting my life. And it didn't happen in one day or one swift decision. It happened incrementally over a period of time that I increasingly brought more and more alignment of my life to honor the Lord. I'm still working on that. But it's what I'm inviting you to do. It's why I wrote this book. It's why I think using your influence for the sake of the kingdom of God is the difference. If we're going to see renewal or awakening or a transformation of culture, your faith, my faith, it's got to get outside of church.

We've got to live like Christ followers everywhere we go. And if you go someplace and you don't live like a Christ follower, either change your behavior or stop going there. If you're in a relationship and you can't be a Christ follower in that relationship, what are you doing? Exactly why are you maintaining that relationship? What would cause you to compromise your allegiance to Jesus for the sake of that relationship? answer that question for yourself honestly, and it'll help you get to a healthier place. You know, then this gets wrapped up in some really bad Christian theology. Christians will go, you know, well, Alan, we don't, it's not works that cause us to please the Lord.

No, you're right, but your actions will get you condemned to hell. So you've got to reconcile this. I don't honor the Lord with my life because I'm trying to score brownie points. I honor the Lord with my life because it's an expression of my gratitude and my love for him. And if my life doesn't reflect that, my gratitude is small and my love is greatly diminished. It's not about earning something. It's about integrity of character. And I want that to grow in me every day.

And I would invite you to that as well. And since we've done this as a congregation, almost every week I see expressions of this in the most remarkable ways. There's a businessman in the church. He was the leader of a company, and it was foreign-owned, and the owners of the company were not Christian. And he came to me at Christmas time one year and asked me if I would do a Christmas video for all the employees. They did some weekly communications, and he wanted a Christmas message to push out to all the employees of the plant. And I said, well, you know, if I do that, I'm going to talk about Jesus. And he said, yeah, I know.

He said, but businesses, you know, he said, I want the people that work with me to know that's what Christmas is about. And so for a company that was not owned by Christians, the leader in that company, we did Christmas videos together for a number of years. He retired. And I'm grateful to say that sometime after that, the new management came back and asked for the same thing. but they asked him. They didn't come to the church, so it kind of came around the other way. But there's some other men in the church.

One of the men I know had an unexpected health challenge, and God restored his life. And they put clothing together that has Christian symbols and language on it, just so people will ask them about it so they can tell their God's story. And, I mean, they're not preachers or they're more normal than any normal people I know. But they're very willing to say that God blessed their lives. Again, I go back to the environment I grew up, and that would just kind of the, it seemed normal to me. And if that isn't normal to you, I have somebody I work with, we've been talking about the kitchen table lately.

I've been asking you to have one meal a week at your table with the people that live under your roof, no devices. And one of the women that works with me said, Alan, we grew up, we ate at the kitchen table every day. We couldn't afford to go out to eat. But she said, I don't have one memory in all of my life when I was young of sitting at the table with any conversation about God or faith or a prayer or anything. So it's the integration of all of those things. Lead with your faith. Be faith forward. Be faith first. Let the identifying characteristic of your life, not be your sense of style, not your academic achievement, not your financial assets, not your amazing vacations, not all of the things that you might post or share or celebrate. the thing I most want to be known for, the most identifying characteristic of my existence, I want to be my affiliation with Jesus of Nazareth and my intent to honor him.

That has a lot of expressions in my life, but it hasn't always had a lot of attention. I began developing that when nobody was paying much attention, and my circle influence was very small. In fact, the more determined I am to do that, oftentimes it feels like there's a separation that comes in my life. And I don't really like that, but I want to be certain that I honor Jesus. You know, I often hear people say that we have a real leadership deficit in our nation or in our communities or even in our churches. And I know there's some truth to that, but I would like to refine it a bit. I see people that are great leaders in lots of places. You're great leaders in your business environment, in your corporate settings, in classrooms.

You're great leaders in your community or in mobilizing your family. The place where I see this astounding leadership deficit is in our willingness to lead with our faith. We have confidence in the business setting or confidence in coaching an athletic team or coaching a group of students. But we don't have much confidence to bring our faith view to bear in the places where we have influence. If we don't lead with our faith, our other expressions of leadership are secondary. Well, I've written a new book on guess what? How to lead with faith. and the goal is to help give you the courage and the boldness to lead with your biblical

worldview on the matters that will impact our culture and help make our future better. Read the book, open your heart. God's raising up a whole new generation of leaders, and I want to be a part of that, and I believe you do too. And so what I want to give you today is a long-winded, rather elaborate invitation, not simply to recite the sinner's prayer, not just to be baptized, not just be determined to be a good person or a good husband or a good wife or a good parent, but that your relationship with Jesus becomes the most defining influence in your life,

not judging other people, not criticizing other people, not even preaching at other people, but it becomes an inescapable part of your conversation and your interaction with people wherever you go. I have a southern accent, no matter where I go in the world, somebody will say something to me about the South. And so I choose to celebrate the virtues of sweet tea and grit and some of the things that are characteristics of our life in the South. And my accent is just the entree to that. Well, in the same way, I have found that if you say you're a pastor, that opens a conversation. And I've had to learn to be willing to express that with enthusiasm as if it was the Nobel Prize or some great achievement or some elected office or something that would be celebrated in the secular culture because it opens a door for a conversation.

You can do the same. You have a God's story. God has impacted your life. He's changed your life. There's some way where the grace and mercy of God have brought something good to you. This is what I know. your God's story is irrefutable. People may disagree with it.

They may not believe it. God healed my mom. And I know Christians who don't believe in healing. And I'm going, well, you know, whether you believe or not, it's okay with me. My mom was dying and she didn't. I believe in healing. It's my story. And it's just irrefutable.

And so you can take that God's story wherever you go and let it become the defining characteristic of your life. And if you'll do that, I believe we'll change our culture. I believe that'll be more effective than whatever pastor you're praying will gain the courage to engage current events. I believe that'll be more impactful than whoever you think should be different. If every one of us will use our sphere of influence to acknowledge Jesus to lead with our faith, I believe we can truly change our culture, and it won't take hundreds of years. We can do it in a very short order. God recruited Saul of Tarsus, a violent, angry, murderous man,

to become an advocate for Jesus of Nazareth, and he made an enormous impact in his life, and he's still making an impact today. Wouldn't you like to do that? I think many of you would. You feel inadequate, so do I. You know, you feel like it's a bigger job than you can do. Me too. I understand all those feelings.

The outcomes aren't really my responsibility. My assignment is to be an advocate for Jesus. If I can do it, you can do it. If I could overcome those fears and anxieties, and I'm still working on that, so can you. In spite of the fact that our culture tells us to be quiet, I'm going to use my voice and my influence, whatever tools God gives me, whatever opportunities God gives me, to be an advocate for him. If you think you would do that, if you had a bigger platform and you're just waiting for that bigger platform, I don't agree. I don't think if you'll do it now, that you'll do it when the lights are brighter, any more than I think you'll be generous. when you have more money. If you're not generous when you have a little, you won't be generous when you have a lot.

It doesn't work that way. And so you start where you are with the influence you have, acknowledging Jesus, being grateful for his presence in your life, being willing to let other people know how important he is to you, and God will multiply your influence. If you have no idea how to begin that, then lead with faith, I think can be a help. It's not intended to be a scolding book. It's intended to be an invitation because I believe every person that Jesus welcomes into his kingdom, he intends to give a role of influence for an outcome in his kingdom. I want to commission. In fact, before we go, I want to pray, and I don't often pray at the end of these podcasts.

But I want to pray for you. The Spirit of God will open your heart to the influence he's given you to make an impact for his kingdom. There are people who care about your opinion. I know there's some people who don't. It hurts your feelings. It hurts mine too, but I'm going to get over it, and so should you. But there are people who do care about your opinion. Tell them how much the difference God has made in your life.

They know you're not perfect. You don't have to pretend to be. I'm not perfect. Ask the people that work with me. They'll tell you I'm not. But that's not going to dissuade me from being an advocate for Jesus. And I don't want it to discourage you. Father, I thank you for this time.

I thank you for a platform where I can talk with friends about what you're doing in our hearts, in our world, that your spirit is present to help us. Lord, we want to make a difference in this generation for the cause of Christ, for the kingdom of God. Help us to lead with our faith, to use our influence for the sake of the kingdom of God. Forgive us when we've been ashamed or embarrassed, when we've been quiet, when we could have used our voice. Forgive us when we have pretended not to notice. And now give us a new boldness. Give us a courage from you. Protect us, from the evil one. Lord, bring a fruitfulness to our lives that will enable the list to lay up

treasure in heaven. In Jesus' name, amen. All right, you've got a commission now. We're going to lead with our faith. We're not just going to sit in church and sing a chorus and act pious and then go live like the devil. We're going to take our enthusiasm for Jesus wherever God takes us. Have fun. I can't wait to hear the outcomes. God bless you. Thanks for joining me today. Before you go, please like the podcast and leave a comment so more people can hear about this topic too. If you haven't yet, be sure and subscribe to Alan Jackson Ministries YouTube channel and follow the Culture and Christianity podcast. You can do that on Spotify, Apple Podcast, wherever you get your podcast. Together, let's learn how to lead with our faith.

We can change our culture. I'll see you next time.