The Whole Man. Day 1.

A new series, running alongside In, Not Of. This one is personal.

I know a lot of brilliant people in tech. Deep, serious, world-class in their domain. And I've watched too many of them be world-class in exactly one domain while everything else quietly fell apart. Body. Marriage. Friendships. Soul.

Nobody plans that. It happens because we only measure what we're good at.

So I went looking for a scorecard. I found one in a single sentence about Jesus.

"And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man." Luke 2:52

That is the only verse we have about eighteen years of His life. Twelve to thirty. And it says He grew on four axes at once.

Wisdom. The mind. Knowledge, judgment, skill, understanding.

Stature. Primarily this is spiritual maturity, the measure of a man, the same word Paul uses for "the stature of the fulness of Christ." But it showed in the physical too. You cannot be a weakling and be a carpenter in Nazareth. He lifted beams, carried timber, worked stone. And years later that same body bore thirty-nine stripes and still carried a cross up a hill. The Lamb that was offered was a healthy Lamb. Inner stature produced outer strength, and both were part of His growth.

Favour with God. The spirit. Communion, obedience, intimacy with the Father.

Favour with man. Relationships. Family, friends, community, the people who actually knew Him.

Four dimensions. And the Son of God grew in all four at the same time, for eighteen years, before He ever preached a sermon.

Now hold that against the way most of us live.

We grow in wisdom, our craft, our stack, our domain, and call it growth. But stature is neglected, inside and out. God gets the leftovers. The people closest to us get the tired version. One axis at 95. Three in the red. And the one at 95 is what everyone congratulates us for.

Here is the uncomfortable truth. A man who is brilliant in one dimension and bankrupt in three is not a successful man with some weaknesses. He is an unbalanced man with one strength. Those are different things.

"What is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" Matthew 16:26. The gain is real. The loss is bigger.

Let me be clear about what this series is not. It's not a call to be mediocre at your work so you can be average everywhere. Jesus was not average. He was the finest carpenter in Nazareth, the finest Son in Israel, and the finest friend those twelve men ever had.

It is a call to stop grading yourself on one subject.

So here is the scorecard. Four lines. Be honest.

Mind: am I growing, or just busy?
Stature: am I maturing inside, and would my body say I've been faithful with it?
God: is He getting my first hour or my last?
People: do the people closest to me get the best of me, or what's left?

Over the coming weeks I'll take each one apart, with Scripture and with men who got it right and men who didn't.

Jesus increased in all four. So can you.

Wholeness is not a luxury for people with time. It is the shape of a life God can trust.

#TheWholeMan #Faith #Wellbeing #Leadership