Right Sized Living

1 Peter 5:6 MSG
“Be content with who you are, and don’t put on airs. God’s strong hand is on you; he’ll promote you at the right time. Live carefree before God; He is most careful with you.”

During my Master’s program, several times a year all the students and faculty would fill out a survey on myself. Then I filled one out on myself. It was revealing. I would graph the mean of their answers with my take on myself. What a surprise! What a learning!

There were a few topics on which we perfectly agreed. Others were very diverse. Most tracked to a great extent. The first time I saw the results I thought, “I’ve got to get these people to see me the way I see me.” There was about a 1 in 100 chance for that.

After a couple of these surveys I noticed we were lining up. What happened? 
The change was on my side. I was under no illusion. What they saw and determined WAS their reality. My self assessment was NOT their assessment. To change their assessment I had to change.

Then I learned humiliation and took behavioral steps to humble myself to their truth. If I wanted them to see me differently, I had to do something different.

After a year or so, I took this survey to my friends, family and the store clerks. My discovery was it that took about three years for my self assessment and ‘everyone else’s’ to correlate. Because of this I basically live in what I call ‘right size living’. If there is a difference, I have chosen to live with that difference.

With God the right sizing process is different. He has recreated you IN Christ Jesus for himself. He is the hand and you the glove. Unlike O. J. Simpson, the glove fits. If, like Adam and Eve, we try to make the glove bigger or we try to reduce the influence of the hand within, we are uncomfortable. We are not right sized. But, when we humble ourselves and see it God’s way we are right sized and the hand of God can be seen.

See John 3:14-21