Romans 12:3–For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.

In talking to some of my friends and family who are in our 40’s, we all remembered a time where this overwhelming “wave of positivity” about what you can accomplish in life was not mainstream.  Not to say that our parents were discouraging towards being “successful”, but you couldn’t get away from the reality of your capacity.  It wasn’t uncommon for a parent to encourage you in your aspirations, yet grasp the reality that you’re gonna have to get a job, and being a professional athlete was highly unlikely, so go to school or get a trade!

Nowadays, it seems that if you try and make someone consider “a plan” that seems more realistic, you’re labeled to be negative or a doubter of their abilities.  I do believe that encouragement, especially for young people is needed, but the extreme is to ignore a gift that needs time to develop, and wrongly think that you should be doing something that is not porportionate to your ability, at the time.  This mentality keeps us from doing “demeaning” jobs and tasks, that may be beneficial to developing the kind character and tools, that can eventually handle doing something great and impactful.

Contrary to popular belief, having a sober judgement of yourself is not bad.  As a matter of fact, it keeps us from comparing our worth to other people, who may have a greater capacity from God than us.  When we think we should be having the same impact and influence as someone in the same “field” as us, we tend to think we are not making an impact at all, or something is wrong.  When in reality, it may be that God has assigned us the type of influence we can handle at the time, with the measure of faith we have?

So when the apostle Paul tells us, “not to think more highly than we ought to think”, is he being negative?  Of course not!  He is saying that we should walk with God, and find out the grace given to us to make an impact, and not think beyond that.  Because when we do, we are usually comparing ourselves to other people.  For example, if I know I am called to help pastor, and then compare myself with others who pastor larger churches.  Those pastor’s have a huge demand, that would be too great for me to handle at this point in my life, which would kill me!

In my experience, I believe that a person should walk close with God not only to understand themselves, but also know what He has burdened us to do where we are.  When we take serious where God has us, and do it with a passion and desire for excellence in honor to Jesus, we fulfill our capacity, and realize we may have more to fulfill!  But we cannot have grandiose aspirations for our life as Christians without God.  Because we will settle to find our worth in comparisons, and not in what God gave us in faith to impact the world with.  Sober judgment of oneself doesn’t mean little impact, but rather God’s impact and a humility as to why we are on this earth.

In His Love, Ld