A calibrated life

Calibrate : to correlate the readings of an instrument with those of a standard in order to check the instrument's accuracy.

Oxford Dictionary

At a military sniper course, each training mission starts with an objective - a goal. Why? Because everything you do to prepare for that mission is determined by its objective. Significant effort is spent in choosing and calibrating your gear. Here’s a non-exhaustive list:

• Rifle type

• Ammunition type

• Scope

• Camouflage

• Expected weather

You are expected to meticulously calibrate your weapon, ammunition, and scope for the expected conditions of the mission, to ensure that your first shot reaches the intended target. For scope calibrating, you’d consider elevation, range, windspeed, gravity, and even the rotation of the earth (the Coriolis effect).

Last week was thematic week, and our assignment was to come up with a non-fiction book proposal and outline for a topic we had some degree of expertise or lived experience in. For example, raising teenagers, home-schooling your kids, loosing weight.

I had to think hard about what topic I had lots of lived experience in as I’m not a recognised expert in anything. After a few false starts I settled on the topic of failure. Throughout my years I had no shortage of failures, and it was something that I had been consistently petitioning God for answers in.

It was a topic I believed that many people struggle with in their own life. No matter what outward trappings of success a person may have, it’s the feeling of failure that can infiltrate every part of their life, as it did with mine.

So I set about writing the book outline, but it was missing something important - the conclusion of the matter - and how I was going to help my readers overcome their feeling of failure. I was hoping that by writing the book I would finally get the answer myself.

God is good though, as a few days later he spoke clearly. In the end it was simple.

I had made success an idol.

It was something I had set my sights on, a mission goal so to speak. And because of that, everything was based on that objective. My vision, my plans, my efforts, my time. Success became the benchmark, the standard, that I had used to calibrate my life.

The problem is that success is not the standard God wants for us. The Bible is clear. Our standard, our target, our objective, should be twofold. Firstly, being absolutely and totally in love with Jesus. Secondly, have our ears and eyes open to His direction and be obedient to His voice, in the big things and the little things.

Being obedient doesn’t guarantee success in the way most of us would consider it, but see Gods promise below from Exodus: we’ll be God’s treasured possession and that’s pretty good if you ask me.

It’s time to recalibrate my life.

You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles' wings and brought you to myself. Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine.

Exodus 19:4-5