The 7 Mountains Of Influence In Society: The Arts & Business Series

“Sean knows what it’s like to face the impossible. Twice he beat unbeatable odds. At age thirteen he came down with Hodgkin’s disease. The doctors didn’t think he would survive, but he did. When he was sixteen, he contracted Askin’s sarcoma, a rare cancer that attaches itself to the walls of the chest. The prognosis is never optimistic, and its treatment has horrible side effects.

Sean may be the only person alive to have suffered both of these cancers. For sure, no one has gotten them both in such a short span of time. Doctors say that the odds of him overcoming both were the equivalent of winning four lottery tickets in a row using the same numbers. He survived his second cancer by being put in an induced coma for a year. At one point his parents were told that he had only two weeks to live, and a priest read his last rites. When he miraculously came out of that coma, he had only one functioning lung. Yet as he lay in his hospital bed watching the Ironman World Championship triathlon on television, he vowed that he would one day compete in it.

During the months of recovery that followed, an oft-quoted line inspired the teenager to go on: “The human body can live roughly thirty days without food. The human condition can sustain itself for roughly three days without water, but no human alive can live for more than thirty seconds without hope.” He decided to test the infinite possibilities of hope. His first challenge was to crawl eight feet from his hospital bed to the bathroom. A few years later he climbed Mount Kilimanjaro. But he hadn’t yet begun to test the infinite possibilities of hope. Over the next several years this cancer survivor with a single lung scaled the tallest mountain on each of the seven continents. He became the first cancer survivor to stand atop the granddaddy of them all: 29,229-foot-high Mount Everest. But he still hadn’t tested the limits of hope. In his forties, he skied to the South Pole. Now he had completed the Explorers Grand Slam. But there was still that one remaining impossible goal. You guessed it: Sean Swarner traveled to Hawaii and competed in the Ironman World Championship.

This cancer survivor who was read his last rites has redefined the meaning of impossible by being the only person in history to climb the seven great summits of the world, ski to both the North and South Poles, and complete the Ironman in Hawaii —all on one lung. Now he is helping other people discover the infinite possibilities of hope as one of the world’s top-ten motivational speakers.”-Robert A. Petterson, The One Year Book of Amazing Stories: 365 Days of Seeing God’s Hand in Unlikely Places

Just as Sean climbed those 7 peaks, I’m challenging us as the church to scale the battles taking place in society, to influence society for Jesus Christ.

Today we continue talking about the 7 Mountains of Influence in Society. As we know society can be broken down into general spheres of influence, and various worlds that people act within.

Last week talked about the spheres of influence in the realm of education, religion, and the media.

Today we talk about the arts, and business spheres. First, let’s talk about the arts. This can also be called the hill of celebration. This is art, music, movies, and all forms of entertainment.

And it’s important to remember that entertainment, and art, and creativity are all godly, good things. God does approve of entertainment, of celebration, of festivals, and of dancing, and of good things. He loves us. He wants to give us good things. He wants us to have times when we relax and enjoy ourselves.

The goal of Christians as we fight on this hill is to create and encourage manifestations of pure entertainment and art. Think of paintings by Van Gogh, or Monet or Da Vinci. Some incredibly beautiful paintings that encourage our better natures. Think of films like It’s a Wonderful Life, or The Jesus Film. Think of books like the Lord of the Rings or The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. These are all expressions of films that guide us toward the right. They are pure. In fact any film that encourages the good in us, whether calling us to courage, or love or friendship or nobility or protecting the weak, have at least some level of good content.

But the enemy is also at work on the hill of celebration. And in virtually any example, the enemy will take something that is pure, and twist it to become evil. Like sex, sex is a beautiful act between husband and wife. The enemy takes that, twists it and perverts it, and then distributes it in film, art, music, and so on. And it’s incredibly powerful how much this hill of arts influences our lives. Think of how powerful the television’s influence is on our culture. It’s very strong.