Tuesday, January 12, 2010

How do you measure up?

I love to measure things, to count things, to contrast and compare and add up… it is true. As you may remember I was a measuring fool about my rapidly protruding mid-section when I was Prego with the Big Rigg. I have often fantasized about having a magical tape measure like the one Mary Poppins has, so you can see how people measure up…Cari Chastain, practically perfect in every wayahem…I was daydreaming again…sorry.


I love to know how tall/long Rigg is, how much he weighs. I like to know how many calories he has eaten (Rigg, not me…I never count my calories…hello!, like I really want to know that?!)
It is fun to know how many miles it is from one place to another, and how many waffle houses are from milemarker 103 on interstate 65 and Orlando Florida…93, or there was in the spring of 1998.

The idea of things being measurable is nice. We can count and see if we are doing more or less, we can build upon goals, or just add things up for fun…as in the waffle house addition game.

When I was in college I was involved in Navigators. It was so very good for me and my spiritual walk. At the end of each weekly study was an application. What will you do differently in your life because of what you have learned this week? A lot of bible studies have applications, and I think it is one of the best thing about bible studies…I mean what is the point of reading the bible if you are not going to conform or let Christ conform your life to it’s standards….anyway. One thing I learned from that great group called the Navigators is to make your applications measurable.

So if you finished an awe-inspiring study about God and His sovereignty and you put down for your application that you will trust Him more…how do you measure that? So, then our study leader would help us figure out how to make it measure able…so instead of saying that you will trust Him more, you can say I will find a promise in scripture about trusting God and claim that promise in prayer every morning. See the difference. This way you can make sure you are applying your applications. I just LOVE this!

So, now every time I decide on a goal or application from a study, I try to make it measurable. One of my goals this year is to memorize more scripture. I can make this measurable by deciding how many verses I want to memorize week, a month or over the course of the whole year…

Are your goals measurable?

I plan on finishing off some candy today…this is measurable, after they are gone I can count all of the empty wrappers and then burn them to hide all evidence! Ahh…sweet!

3 comments:

brittany said...

I love that you shared this very helpful tidbit about measuring your goals or applications. I feel a lot of times that I learn from the bible but I'm not sure how to apply it. I LOVE THIS!

I too have made a goal to memorize scripture, which I'm horrible at. I started a study about a year ago that is topical memorization that's really great but the name of it has slipped my memory. I'll get back with you on that one!

brittany said...

P.S. I didn't finish the study so yeah, that's probably why it's a goal again...

Deanna said...

I, too, have decided that this is the year to focus on memorizing scripture (well, not just this year, this year will only be the beginning).

I am implementing a system I found here:
http://www.krististephens.com/2009/06/tackle-it-tuesday-scripture-memory.html

I think this will work for me...maybe someone else will find it helpful too!