Jesus People: Give My BestНамуна

Give Your Best to Everyone

Do you give your best to your relationships? Who are the people that get your best?

These are important questions to ask because the answers reveal the value we place on others. It’s easy to give the best of ourselves and the people we value the most: your spouse, children, and closest friends. These are people we know on a deep level, people we’ve been there for, and who have been there for us. However, giving our best becomes more difficult when we start talking about people that we don’t value as high. Maybe it’s your coworker, neighbor, or person who cut you off in traffic. Often there is a difference between the version of ourselves that we present to those we are close to and those we are not. While that difference is a reality for most of us, we are called to something else, something higher.

In Philippians 2, Paul talks about Jesus’ example of humility and how we are to “have the same mindset as Christ Jesus” in our relationships. While many view humility as lowering oneself, Paul describes humility that is more about elevating the value of others than lowering ourselves.

Despite being God incarnate, Jesus didn’t take that posture here on Earth. Rather, Jesus came to this Earth with the posture of a servant because of the value He placed on God the Father and all of us. Jesus loved and honored the Father, and so He was obedient to Him. And Jesus cared for us so deeply that He died for us. When Jesus came to the cross and died for our sins, He placed a value on each of us equal to that of His own life. That means that every person we come in contact with has this inherent value placed on them by Jesus. Whether they choose to accept or acknowledge that value cannot determine whether we accept and acknowledge that value.

Jesus people give their best to everyone because everyone is loved and valued by God. When we accept that truth, it gets easier to give our best. We begin to serve with joy and ease because we recognize that if they were worthy of Jesus' death, then they are worthy of our best.

QUESTIONS:

When is it difficult to give your best to others?

What would it look like in your life to give everyone the value that Jesus placed on them?