"What Number Are You?"

On a scale of one to ten? Intellectually? Physically? Temperamentally? Academically? Financially?

What is your worth? In your opinion...in every way?

Self evaluation changes (and it should) as a person matures. How do we see ourselves as a mature adult? Someone may ask: why do we care? What difference does it make?

As a pastor - and therefore a religious/sociological/philosophical teacher - my answer directy comes from the Bible...God's Word to humankind, and our final authority.

OUR ANSWER TO ALL OF THE ABOVE SHOULD BE "ZERO", and this is predicated upon what God's Word says in 1 Corinthians 4:7: "What do you have that you did not receive?, and if you did receive it, why do you boast as thought you did not"?

This comes from one of the world's all-time, smartest, wisest, most gifted, most highly motivated men, the Apostle Paul. And ALL of humankind's really knowledgeable personalities - from Adam until now - humbly
join Paul's ilk.

We have NOTHING that we were not given - beginning, and including, that tiny, gynechological spark of human life. SO many people claim that "I've worked hard and long for what I have", rarely, if ever, pausing to consider that our bodies and minds and abilities are freely-given gifts.

I love to read the testimony of probably the greatest warrior of human history, King David, where he states in three places (2 Samuel 22:35; Psalm 18:34; and Psalm 144:1), "He (God) teaches my hand to war".
Thinbk of it! every task we accomplish with our hands can be done because God created them with such marvelous, incredible strength and dexterity!

Again King David credits directly to God our ability to earn, spend and give. In 1 Chronicles 29:14
David says, "Who are we to be able to earn and give? for ALL THINGS come of You, and of Your Own (wealth) we have given (back) to You".

This I often repeat: All we are, and all we have, or ever will be and have, is because Jesus came. All praise and glory be to Him, now and forever!