What Is Your Capacity?

Have you ever had a friend, significant other or any other person in your life, whom you felt was not giving as much of themselves to your relationship as you were. Even worse, it felt like they just didn’t get it. They didn’t understand why what they were giving wasn’t enough. They were looking at you like you had the problem!

Well last night, I heard a sermon from T.D. Jakes that posed a very interesting question:

What is your capacity?

Bishop’s sermon came from Exodus, the story of the Manna and the Quail. If you’ve never read it, check out chapter 16 of Exodus.

The part of the sermon that spoke to me was God and fairness. In the scripture, God provides manna, which is food, for the people. Some got more manna than others, but the people who got little, got enough, and the people who got a lot, got enough. One would think, well that's not fair, why did some get more than others. And to this point Bishop pointed out:

Who said God is fair? The bible does not say anywhere that God is fair. It says that God is just.  He further pointed out the difference between these two words:

Fair is to divide equally. Just is to respond to capacity. If you haven’t caught on yet, this means, God gives however much each person has the capacity to handle. For those families that had the capacity to eat more food he gave more, for those who did not, he gave less.

Bishop Jakes went on to compare this to relationships (this is where it gets relevant y'all). He pointed out that the problem with a lot of the relationships and marriages of today is that folks don’t have the same capacity. The man or woman you are in love with but you don’t feel like they’re loving you equally in return, may not have the same capacity to give as much love as you do. Sometimes, a person can be loving you as best they know how, with all of their might, giving you everything they have to give, but they may only have the capacity to give a “cup” while you have the capacity to give a “quart.” So that cup will never be enough for you. And you will burn up all of your energy trying to force that person to give you more than they are capable of giving.

  

Now I'm sure you're asking, as was I, how does one build their capacity? Bishop covered this as well: Your hunger (or drive) allows you to gain more capacity. As you push to love better, live better and do better, you gain the ability to handle more. On the other hand, if you remain complacent, your capacity will never grow.

Definitely an "a-ha" moment, as Oprah would say, for me. I'm sure we can all think back on past relationships that didn't work out for whatever reason and now realize that maybe the other person wasn't a bad person per se, maybe they just didn't have the capacity to give the same to the relationship that we did. Conversely, for those of us who have been left by someone when we felt like we were giving things our all, maybe we were giving it our all but they had the capacity to give a little bit more and thus expected more. The key, to finding SUCCESS in a relationship, is to find a person with the same capacity as you. And at the very least, we should all be pushing to love better, live better and do better, so that we will be able to give (and receive) the biggest capacity possible.

Chuch

For those of you who would like to hear this sermon, I've attached the video. The video is from the first time he preached this sermon at The Potters House (Bishop Jakes' church). The sermon starts about half way through the video.