Welcome once again to another wonderful week. I hope you had a great weekend and that you had some good experiences with people.

You know people can sometimes be our biggest hindrance. We saw last week on the subject of motivation how people can demotivate you. We also saw that the key is not to necessarily stay motivated, but to stop people from demotivating you.

Don't Be a Loner

You may want to just try to live your life without other people and think that the key to success is just to be a loner; to do it your way. That way you don't have to spend time explaining to other people and making up for their mistakes and errors. Just get in there and do the job.

If that is the way you have been doing it then you have a recipe for failure. Unfortunately you cannot succeed without those horrible people that demotivate you all the time.

Solomon said it very simply and clearly in Proverbs 18:1:

A man who keeps to himself and seeks only his own desires, goes against all possibilities of success.

You cannot succeed if you keep to yourself. You cannot succeed in this world if you are always trying to fulfill only your own desires.

Learn to Influence People

Unfortunately the world is only interested in one thing: fulfilling their own desires. So for you to succeed you are going to have to step back. And instead of trying to fulfill your own desires, you must learn to fulfill the desires of other people.

You need to know how to handle people, because if you don't know how to handle people you cannot succeed. Whether you are working in ministry or in business, or whatever you do in this world, you cannot succeed without other people.

Since we are stuck with other people and we can't succeed all by ourselves, you should be learning how to handle people. If you can learn how to do this effectively, then you will have a good chance of succeeding in whatever you set your hand to.

You see you need to learn how to influence people.

There was a very good book written a long time ago by a man by the name of Dale Carnegie. I am sure you have heard of him. He wrote a famous book called 'How to Win Friends and Influence People'. It's a very interesting book.

If you have never read it I suggest you order it. It is cheap. You can get it from Amazon.com for only a few dollars and you will find it very inspiring.

It will really stir you up, open your eyes and make you realize how simple it really is to win people over and to get friends; how to influence people to your way of thinking and to get them to do what you want them to do.

The Key is Love

The key to Dale Carnegie's entire teaching is a very simple principle that the Bible calls love. Love is all it takes. You see the key to influencing other people is quite simply love. It's the kind of love the Bible calls 'agape' love.

You can go and read 1 Corinthians 13 and look at all the different aspects of love. It has been preached through the years, and probably nobody has ever really picked it up or applied it.

So I am going to give you three basic principles of love that you can begin to apply right away. If you can do these you will begin to influence people. And if you can influence people you will succeed in what you are doing.

Love Gives

Firstly love always gives. In fact it is in the very nature of love to give. Love doesn't take. It always gives. The Bible is full of this.

For God so loved the world that He gave.

So your first step in influencing other people, building bridges to them and getting them to do what you want them to do, is to give them something.

Give them what? Well give them the thing that you are for the moment letting go of. Give them what they desire. Let go of your own desire for a while and give them what they desire.

If you continue to give other people what they desire, it will be just a matter of time and they will begin to say,

“You have given me so much. Is there anything you want? What can I do for you? Can I give you something?”

You see love automatically responds with love. And if you continually give to others and impart to them, the time will come when they will feel that they should start giving back to you again. That is when your desires are going to be fulfilled.

Loves Puts Others First

The second principle follows on from the first one. Love always puts others first. In other words if there is a choice between what you want and what they want, you let them make their choice first. You put your own needs aside for the moment and consider the needs of other people first.

This is the only way to succeed in both ministry and business. It is the only way to succeed in anything that you do in this life that involves other people. Let's face it, there is very little that you can do in this life that doesn't involve other people.

Love Perseveres

The third and most important quality of love is that love perseveres. Love doesn't give up. It doesn't get all angry and throw in the towel.

It doesn't say,

“I'm tired of giving and giving and never getting anything back.”

You see the moment you do that you lose, because you didn't flow in love in the first place did you? You were giving to people so you could get back from them again. You were giving to them with an ulterior motive.

But that is not the kind of love I am talking about. I am talking about sacrificial love; love that gives in order to be a blessing to others.

You say, “But if I did that in business I would go bankrupt. If I was to give away all my products instead of selling them, how could I do business?”

I didn't say give away all your products, but you could give away some of them.

It is a proven fact that if you will freely give many things, people will eventually come to you and ask you what you have to sell them. They will virtually ask you to sell them something, because you have given them so much and they feel they can trust you.

The world doesn't understand true love. You won't find it out there.

So if you want to stand out and be noticed above everybody else; if you want to have people talking about you more than anybody else, and if you want your business to be noticed more than any other business, here is the simple little rule: Learn to love.

I will share more with you again tomorrow.