Stakeholders in my life

Stakeholder (corporate) - a person, group, organization, or system who affects or can be affected by an organization's actions

I'm working through some material with a few other men called the Life Development Planner. This is a tool to help gain better perspective of God's purposes in the world and how we can be involved in His plans. We look at how everything in our individual background has been purposefully arranged by God to make us the people we are. We create a timeline of what God has done in our lives and look for developmental gaps in our knowledge, character and skills. Then we are to design plans to address those gaps. I'm loving it. I'm pretty sure that God made me for doing this kind of stuff with people.

This morning, as I was working on one of the exercises, I took off on a tangent. I started to make a list of all the 'stakeholders' in my life - the people who affect me or are directly affected by my actions. My decisions (or lack of action) impact their lives. Many of them did not ask for this, they were born into it or someone else made a decision which put me in this position. It was sobering for me to think about my influence in their lives. What message am I sending them?

The people on that list will be affected by my personal develpment. This is no trite exercise. Paul talks about it his letter to Timothy (1 Tim 4:16 Pay close attention to yourself...).

Here's what I learned:
1) You influence more people than you think, so consider the message you're sending.
2) You are here for the benefit of others, so do not neglect sharpening yourself into an effective tool for their blessing.