Romans 12:3 For I say, through the grace given to me, to everyone who is among you, not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but to think soberly, as God has dealt to each one a measure of faith.

There is a law that is used in economics and other places, it is called Goodheart’s law. It was a theory created by Charles Goodheart. It states that when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. What does this mean? There was a test and the result ended up being called the Cobra effect. A government put a bounty on killing cobras to stop the proliferation of the species in their country. The effect was that people started breeding cobras to collect the bounty. Therefore, the measure at the end was that the cobra population increased which was opposite of the intended outcome.

We can equate this to our walk of faith. If it is our goal to become great in the kingdom of God, then our thought would be to work harder to get more credit. But the end result in this would be us hindering our effect to increase our faith. How? Matthew 20:26-27 tells us whoever desires to be great among you, let him become a servant, just as the Son of Man. Our faith is built on service and going through life helping others. We should not desire that our works leads us anywhere. But that through the love shown to us we should want to work out of an overflow of love that has been shown to us.

Jesus should be the focus of our mission in life. We should seek to glorify Him in all we do. He gives us the measure of faith we need. He gives us the tools we need also. We should put the two together and work out of humbleness and love to further spread His gospel. This is our purpose on this earth. Before we can though, it all starts with what to do with the question Jesus asks us. Who do you say that I am?