1/2/2016-Measuring Up

What measuring stick do you use to validate your worth? Is it the measuring stick your spouse holds?? Or is it the one that your children wave about? Do you strive to measure up based on the measuring stick your friend's are holding or perhaps the one that those you admire carry with them?

I find the more we try to ‘measure up’ the more we end up being torn down. The more value we put in what others think causes us to shrink.

Is that what our society has become? A bunch of fragmented people trying to measure up on others yard sticks? Why do we so desperately want to be valued by what others deem valuable? We’ve become a world striving to become what we aren’t and as a result never becoming who we were created to be.

If you are so busy trying to measure up to your neighbor’s view of value will you ever find joy in the value you offer?

My desire for 2016 is that people would stop looking at the outside world to find their place and would begin to search within themselves. God has given each person unique gifts and talents and we need to start focusing on those.

There is a phrase I have heard that I think will help us understand…”If a fish spent its whole life striving to walk it would die believing it was a failure.” Stop striving to be something you’re not…start striving to be everything you are. You are valuable because God put breath into your lungs…you are significant because there is truly NONE like you.

Throw away the measuring sticks of the past and start this new year out by valuing who you are…God created you with purpose and passion…begin living that out!

“For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well”. Psalm 139: 13-14