Are You A Perfect 10?

Are you a Perfect 10? Are you the best? I most definitely am not. Not in appearance. Not in talent. Not in my walk with God. Nowhere. Do you know someone who is? I sure don't. Yet, everywhere we turn in society we are pressured to be exactly that. Be the perfect actor or actress. Be the best mom, dad, running back, diver, writer, singer or speaker. Guys rank girls features on a scale of 1 to 10 and I'm convinced that some girls do the same to guys. We are all pressured to believe that if we aren't THE best at whatever we do then we will not meet our full potential of success. What is this struggle that pushes and also pulls us toward a mark that no one has reached in the last 2000 years? Here's my opinion on a spiritual level:

I am convinced that even though we can not be perfect, God requires us to strive for perfection.

Your immediate thoughts are probably something like this: "What? God doesn't expect me to be perfect. That's why He offers forgiveness and grace and mercy." You are exactly right. I know that God doesn't expect me to be perfect but I know that God wants me to strive to be exactly that. II Samuel chapter 10 tells a story of King David. I won't quote the entire story but I highly recommend reading it. Here it is or here's an excerpt.

9 Joab saw that there were battle lines in front of him and behind him; so he selected some of the best troops in Israel and deployed them against the Arameans. 10 He put the rest of the men under the command of Abishai his brother and deployed them against the Ammonites.

The awesome part in verse 9 is that we see that Joab selected "the best troops in Israel and deployed them against the Arameans." The reason this is so relative to my blog is because when we back up to verse 6 we read:

6 When the Ammonites realized that they had become a stench in David's nostrils, they hired twenty thousand Aramean foot soldiers from Beth Rehob and Zobah, as well as the king of Maacah with a thousand men, and also twelve thousand men from Tob.

Put 2 and 2 together yet? We understand that the Aramean army was, by far, the largest and strongest army in the battle.

So Joab chose the best troops to fight the hardest battle. Joab divided his army into two parts and, through the telling of this story, gave them two distinctive names: THE BEST TROOPS and.....the rest.

I don't know what this story speaks into your life today but here is what I hear from it. Regardless of what I give God, whether I give him 20% or 100%, I STILL HAVE TO FIGHT. I would much rather be known as a choice soldier, one of the best troops, than to be complacent, give God less than He deserves, and be considered one of "the rest".

I WILL strive to be a Perfect 10.