John Maxwell says that leadership is influence. When you say that you’re not a leader, you need to stop and check yourself. Is there ever an occasion when you might say to someone, “Oh, you’ve got to try this brand of chocolate,” or “listen to this music,” or anything else you love that you think they ought to experience? That is trying to influence and it is a form of leadership.

All of us have influencers in our lives. Some of them can be bad things we are being influenced toward and others can be good. That’s why we need to be careful about what or who those influencers are in our living, especially when we are younger. Let me follow that statement up with some of the common excuses thrown around all the time in regard to some of this bad behavior. “Well, boys will be boys,” or “They’re just youth feeling their oats.”

Now, I am not a horseman, so my knowledge about all things horse-wise is at best second hand. However, it is my understanding that the phrase “feeling their oats” has to do with horses. Their normal feed is grass. But sometimes, when they have been worked hard, they need a little extra boost. Feeding them oats is one way to give them some extra nourishment and help perk them up. The oats are a fortifier, kind of like us taking vitamins. It can energize them to the point that sometimes after eating the oats, they might behave a little “frisky,” “feeling their oats.”

Now youth, young people, can sometimes be like that. They are in the prime of life. I wondered about the word “youth,” what it means, and what the idea of the word was built on. I was surprised to find that the word carries the idea of “vital force”. Isn’t that descriptive of youth - a vital force, full of vigor? Sometimes full of too much force or energy for their own good.

Back to influence. With all this vital force, energy, and vigor running around, it can sometimes be influenced into bad choices. At times, so called friends can influence others into activities that should not have been pursued. I wrote, “so called friends,” because real friends want the best for you. Some of those who influence others into inappropriate behavior, have no interest in whether the results are good, bad or indifferent. They don’t care if you end up in trouble or not. They just want to have their fun and laughs. Maybe even laughing at you in your trouble. That’s not a true friend.

Roger and I were best friends as teens. We often went out on adventures together, and many times we were “feeling our oats” as well. One of the things that I have always appreciated about the friendship we shared, was that we had eachothers backs. We protected each other. Not by hiding things or lying for each other to keep each other out of trouble. No, instead of that kind of behavior, it seemed like every time one or the other of us was feeling a little too frisky and was ready to do something that we probably shouldn’t do, the other would push on the brakes and slow down our runaway before we got in trouble.

Ecclesiastes 4:9-10 (NLT) says, “Two people are better off than one, for they can help each other succeed. If one person falls, the other can reach out and help. But someone who falls alone is in real trouble.” Then 1 Thessalonians says, “So encourage each other and build each other up, just as you are already doing.”

We need to be influencers like that and we need to have an influencer like that in our lives.

- Just a Thought Dale Fillmore is lead pastor at New Day Church.