High Standards

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“Jesus came down from the mountain with them and stood on a large area of level ground. A great company of his disciples and a huge crowd of people from all around Judea and Jerusalem and the area around Tyre and Sidon joined him there. They came to hear him and to be healed from their diseases, and those bothered by unclean spirits were healed. The whole crowd wanted to touch him, because power was going out from him and he was healing everyone. Jesus raised his eyes to his disciples and said: “Happy are you who are poor, because God’s kingdom is yours. Happy are you who hunger now, because you will be satisfied. Happy are you who weep now, because you will laugh.”
Luke 6: 17-21 CEB
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There is a lot of pressure in life to be perfect. This pressure can often add up to a very heavy weight to carry. Somehow we are taught to measure our life by the length of our resume, AP classes, or our GPA. This high level of success can motivate us to reach for the starts and dream big for our life. Unfortunately, this high standard can also any small failure unacceptable and and extremely painful to how we see ourselves. How do we aim high in life, without letting our failures or successes define us? How do we have confidence in ourselves, when our past failures are always hanging over our heads? The problem here is that we are looking for our value in the world and not in God.


God doesn’t measure his love based on our accomplishments or anything else in our life. He doesn’t judge us for our good days, or our bad days we have. In this verse from Luke, Jesus is telling us that God’s kingdom is for everyone at every point of life. God does not ask us to create an impressive resume, have extracurricular activities, and obtain 100 service hours in order to receive His love and grace. Instead, God loves us relentlessly on the days when we have our best successes, and our most spectacular fails. God wants to be involved in everything we do in life. He is there when we are accomplishing our goals and reaching our dreams. God is also there on the days where we have failed our tests, missed assignments, or lost a UIL competition. God is there with us when we are defeated and feel like giving up. God’s love is so much more powerful than anything we can succeed or fail at. Aim for the stars, dream big, but don’t let these things define how you look at yourself. A great success can make us feel like we are on top of the world. Similarly, a great failure can make us feel like disappearing from the world. When we ground ourselves in what God says about us, we can face whatever success or failure may come our way. Dream big, shoot for the stars, but always remember that God’s love is the best, most powerful thing we could ever experience.

 To Read More: 2 Corinthians 12, Luke 6

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