E-Valuated

In a digital age of electronic information, it is important to stay connected! How much do you depend on your computer and being connected to the Internet? What about your cell phone or what ever other communication device you have? How much of your life would be thrown into turmoil if you lost the information on your device or worse lost the device with which you are now communicating and doing much of your other daily work and interaction? Yes, it would be wise to consider some way of backing up the information you have in your devices, yet there is an even greater consideration I want to discuss today. What is it that you really value? If someone wanted to learn more about you and even what you value, how would the electronic information out there about you be seen? Are you being E-valuated?

Whether we like it or not, much information about us is out there for others to see and evaluate. Please do not live ignorantly! Much can be discovered by e-lectronically searching, but remember that those around you also watch you and judge you and perhaps even seek to imitate you. Children certainly do imitate and learn from their parents and their teachers and all the other influences in their lives! Adults also learn as they settle into some sort of work or education environment. You can put on a front before some people, but eventually, your actions will betray you. The fruit of your life serves to evaluate you!

Unfortunately, we are all often too quick to judge. Improper judgment and the pride underpinning it is a problem I have often addressed. If we are going to be able to properly discern and judge any person or situation, we must be certain to continually evaluate our own thoughts and actions. Whenever we fail to evaluate and take personal inventory, we most certainly will miss things and we will likely even mess up in our decision making and negatively impact the relationships we do have. Scripture clearly teaches that “if we would judge ourselves, we would not be judged” (1 Corinthians 11:31). The context of that is how we understand and remember our communion with GOD and thus our relationship with other people and how GOD Himself is involved in judging us. Principally, this is also true in regards to any judgment or evaluation by any other person. When you are regularly evaluating yourself, then the judgments and evaluations by others will not harm you and if proper, they will only validate your own judgments. Seeing your own frailty and failings will also help you be more careful in how you judge and evaluate!

Another important point to focus on here is how you evaluate yourself and others. Is your evaluation based on the collective thinking of others around you? Is it based solely on your upbringing? Perhaps your education is what you use to evaluate? Maybe your evaluations are based on the current thinking in the culture as expressed through television, movies, music and other media influences? The question to ask yourself there is whether or not GOD sees it the same way! Will HE evaluate you the way you are seeing yourself or the way that others do? How has HE already revealed the answer to that?!

Friend, the Bible teaches throughout that we all will one day stand before a Holy GOD and give an account for our lives! We will receive a proper, thorough evaluation then! We will then be evaluated by HIS perfect knowledge of every thing we have ever thought and every action we have ever done in accordance with every opportunity we have ever had. Oh, that you and I would live our lives in light of that perfect and righteous evaluation! When we do, it straightens up our lives and nothing else really matters! It is only then that we are able to really help others to better evaluate and even help them be ready for that Evaluation!

So, in this important time when many in America are beginning to evaluate more of the political direction we are to take and when we have so many obstacles to face, we must seriously consider this whole matter of being evaluated! How does our electronic information reveal us? How do our words? How does our work? What about our entertainment? What we value will become evident and one day HE will make it all (even the secret things) evident in HIS perfect Evaluation (Ecclesiastes 12:14)!