How to be The One Who Makes a Difference
There’s always one. Right? There’s always that one coworker who’s difficult to get along with, that one person who leaves frustrating comments on your social media posts, that one family member who gives you grief about a certain topic, or that one friend who stubbornly insists on doing things her way. There’s always one! For any teachers out there, you know that there’s always one student who challenges you, pushing you to the very edge of your patience—sometimes multiple times every single day. There’s always one!
In my middle school journalism class this past semester, I had a lively roster full of distinct personalities. Put all of those personalities together in a room for 50 minutes every day, and it made for an interesting group. They were receptive to what I was teaching and overall fairly well behaved, but they kept me on my toes. I could never fully let down my guard, because it felt like they were pretty regularly toeing the line between compliance and mischievousness. Does that make sense?
One day, the youngest and tiniest boy of the bunch was absent, and the entire classroom atmosphere was noticeably different. He’s a great kid who is extremely eager to do his work and do it well, but he also has some energetic feistiness in him, if you know what I mean. He’s not ornery enough that I’d pegged him as the difference maker in our classroom environment, but on that day he was absent, it all became clear. As I walked around the room, going from student to student offering help on the newspaper article drafts they were working on, I literally stopped at one point, and thought to myself, Oh my goodness! He’s the one.
Let’s flip the script, shall we? There’s also that one person who’s the one—the one friend whose presence makes an entire room brighter, the one cousin whose jokes can always lighten the mood, the one colleague whose passion lights a fire in the hearts of the whole office, or the one person who raises everybody in the room’s standards and performance level. Keeping my teacher hat on for a minute longer… At many schools, when the principal walks into a classroom, students sit up a little bit straighter, they listen a little more carefully, and the sneaky ones hide their phones a little more thoroughly if they’d been texting under the table. Simply because the principal walked into the room, the atmosphere shifts in a positive way. One person can make a difference for the better, too!
God gives value to “the one” in Scripture.
What do you think? If a man owns a hundred sheep, and one of them wanders away, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go to look for the one that wandered off? And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he is happier about that one sheep than about the ninety-nine that did not wander off. -Matthew 18:12-13, emphasis added
God cares about the one, and I think He cares about how YOU, as one single but influential person, impact the space and place around you. When you walk into a room, you can be the one who takes everyone and everything in one direction or another. Let’s not even talk about the first option; let’s talk about the second. What is the hallmark of your personality and character? Can you just naturally encourage others to rise to your level in one way or another? Nobody is “the one” who’s perfect in every way, but each person made in God’s image is special in some way. Can you be the one who inspires everyone around you to be kind? thankful? enthusiastic? hardworking? or compassionate? Can you be the one who makes people feel more loved when you’re in the room? more seen? more inspired to try their best? more careful to treat others respectfully? more conscious about acting with integrity?
If I stop and think about somebody (other than Jesus) in the Bible whose presence was able to change the atmosphere of the space he was in, Paul immediately comes to mind. As you may remember, after his conversion, Paul traveled throughout Asia and Europe planting and building churches. We often see him starting a church, and then making sure to come back and visit that church, and even writing letters to the church when he couldn’t physically be there in person. For example… On his first missionary journey, Paul planted churches in Galatia, which you can read about in Acts 13-14. He went back to visit, check on, encourage and strengthen those churches on his second missionary journey (Acts 16) and then on his third trip, too (Acts 18). At one point, he also wrote a letter to the believers in Galatia, which we know today as the book of Galatians in the New Testament.
But thinking more specifically about his visits to the area, can’t you just imagine how impactful it was when he was there in person? When Paul was in town, I envision the church, its members and leaders feeling his presence in the best possible way. Paul taught them, clarified things for them, inspired them, equipped them, corrected them, celebrated them and pushed them forward. He was the one! When Paul was in town, their troubles felt a little lighter, and their joys felt a little brighter. Of course Paul worked together with plenty of other disciples and believers, but for the early church, in many cities and church communities, including those several scattered throughout Galatia, Paul was the one.
Somebody needs you to be the one. And God wants you to be the one. He created you with unique character traits, gifts and talents. Are you leveraging those to be a difference maker? When you step into a room, what changes? If you’re not sure about the answer to that question, pray about it. Ask God to tell you what kind of “one” He wants you to be. Don’t let yourself slip in and out of offices, classrooms, laundry rooms, grocery stores, restaurants, gymnasiums, ballfields and concert halls unnoticed. Set the temperature, change the atmosphere, and light the fire. You are the one!