Self Assessment

Recently Pastor Downs preached about “self assessment” and the importance of assessing our walk with God against the Word of God, and no others. I was challenged to assess in my life and asked my self the following question. What do I do that makes me a Christian? Very often we tend to define our Christian walk by what we don't do. This involves no progress whatsoever. If fact we will find ourselves getting into "maintenance mode", just waiting for Jesus Christ to come back. I am not happy being AVERAGE!

There are associated dangers for Christians who stand for righteousness and want to be different from the world. There is an inherent danger when a Christian decides that they want to make a difference. When you have given up on being just a “run of the mill person” and you are not like everybody else around you, you become a target for the enemy.

I was reading a book review on an Apostolic Youth Site and they were reviewing a book called “An Enemy Called Average”. In this book the author John Mason says that the greatest enemy that people fight today is the enemy called average He was talking from a secular perspective. Although not a Christian author, this point can be applied to all Christians today. One of the greatest enemies facing the church is this age is the idea of mediocrity or being average. The idea that we are doing good enough just getting by. Just doing enough to make it to heaven, living as close to the world as possible.

Those that are satisfied with being average will very often examine themselves via a comparison with others. Very often, they will pick the weakest person in the church, the person who randomly comes to church, and we say “yeah, I’m doing OK compared to so and so”. To often we eagerly view our own accomplishments in the mirrors of our own design and ideas instead of the mirror of God’s word and His perfect plan for our life.

I believe God has a plan and a purpose for every single life. God has a desire to move us from ordinary to extraordinary. He wants to take our “natural” and make it “supernatural”. We need to make ourselves available to God, humbling ourselves and saying, “God, do your perfect work in my life”.

When God saves you, He doesn’t save you to be a “pew warmer”. God saved you for a reason and He has a plan and purpose for your life. Many people these days are sitting in churches waiting for God to come and knock them off their pew and give them something to do. Dare I say it….God isn’t going to do that. But every now and then, when the word of God comes forth and you feel the Holy Spirit tugging at your heart, when you feel challenged to do something for the Kingdom, this is God saying “Come on, do something for me. Stop being complacent”.

God has things in store for you because you have the ability to do what nobody else can do. God design a plan and that plan is specifically for you. God has given you special gifts.
That’s my five minutes!