Woohoo! I’m a blogger!
I’d like to thank my good friend and co-worker Gene Markland who encouraged me to start blogging. He has a blog as well and I will set up link to his so you can see what he has to say. I will also link my sister-in-law, Heather King. She has some great stuff on her site.
I thought that before I posted anything of substance, significance, or lunacy, as the case may be, I should probably explain the title and emphasis of my blog. “Smoking Newspaper” isn’t exactly the kind of thing you hear about every day. It comes from an incident when I was a kid and I actually smoked a newspaper. I don’t want to go into a whole lot of detail at this point. You see, I have a book that is going to be published this summer and I don’t want to spoil the story. That newspaper incident is the very first chapter.
Needless to say, the lesson from that story is all about influence, hence my tag line – “Living Life Under the Influence.” That’s a very open phrase. Influence comes from a lot of places and none of us are immune to its effects, positive and negative alike. In fact, we are influencing others even as they influence us. All that is really needed is to spend time with a person and the influence game is on. That is why I chose Acts 4:13 as a theme verse for my blog. The disciples became who they were simply, as others had noted, because they had spent time with Jesus.
I’m not Jesus, let me just get that out right up front! But hopefully as you read my blog AND REPLY (I want to dialog with you) we can have a lot of fun and maybe influence each other to be more than what we are right now. Just promise me that you won’t smoke any newspapers.
John
