The Average Person

The Average Person

Studying the average person can reveal some unusual things such as:

1. The average person (in America) will eat 35,000 cookies in their lifetime.
2. The average person falls asleep in about 7 minutes.
3. The average person is about a 1/4 of an inch taller at night.
4. The average person loses between 40 and 100 strands of hair a day. (That is something I definitely cannot afford to keep doing!)
5. The average person walks the equivalent of twice around the world in their lifetime. (If that isn't a good argument for buying expensive shoes, I don't know what is)
6. An average woman says 7,000 words a day. ( A man - just over 2,000 words)
7. The average person laughs 15 times a day. (Definitely not enough for good mental health.)
   

But this devotion isn't about statistics and interesting facts about the average person. It is something much, much more serious: THE AVERAGE PERSON IS MISSING!!!!

The latest survey found that no-one feels they are "the average person". In fact, in almost every recent survey, the average person believes he or she is better than the average person. Sly And The Family Stone wrote the song Everyday People and end each verse with "I am everyday people". They may be the only average people left in our nation of over 300 million people.

But seriously, Paul wrote this in Romans 12:3

"For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought."

When we think of ourselves more highly than we should, we end up in denial about our problems, our weaknesses, and about who we really are. We end up seeing ourselves in a distorted fashion in which we exaggerate our strengths and minimize our shortcomings. And the problem that causes is that we lose an essential ingredient in changing - the ability to see ourselves as we really are. Jeremiah 17:9 says "the heart is deceitful above all things.....who can understand it?" When you stop to think of it, very few unfaithful people think they are unfaithful. Very few gossipers think they gossip. Very few mean-spirited people think they are mean-spirited, you get the idea.

Time after time, we rationalize our behavior, the choices and decisions we make and the way we treat others, rather than acknowledging to the Lord and to ourselves what we are really like. And we end up, just as Paul warned, thinking of ourselves more highly than we ought.

And therein is one reason that the Word of God has to have a significant place in our lives. As we read it, we see ourselves reflected in the words and in the stories and we can begin to make the changes needed to become men and women who can be used to reveal Christ to a lost and dying world.

God Bless,
Pastor Joe
Gateway Church