‘A peaceful heart leads to a healthy body; jealousy is like cancer in the bones. ‘Proverbs 14:30
‘When the victorious Israelite army was returning home after David had killed the Philistine, women from all the towns of Israel came out to meet King Saul. They sang and danced for joy with tambourines and cymbals. This was their song: “Saul has killed his thousands, and David his ten thousands!” This made Saul very angry. “What’s this?” he said. “They credit David with ten thousands and me with only thousands. Next they’ll be making him their king!” So from that time on Saul kept a jealous eye on David. The very next day a tormenting spirit from God overwhelmed Saul, and he began to rave in his house like a madman. David was playing the harp, as he did each day. But Saul had a spear in his hand, and he suddenly hurled it at David, intending to pin him to the wall. But David escaped him twice. Saul was then afraid of David, for the Lord was with David and had turned away from Saul. Finally, Saul sent him away and appointed him commander over 1,000 men, and David faithfully led his troops into battle. David continued to succeed in everything he did, for the Lord was with him. When Saul recognized this, he became even more afraid of him. But all Israel and Judah loved David because he was so successful at leading his troops into battle. ‘ 1 Samuel 18:6-16
Picture this with me. Here you are getting ready for your day, You look in your closet and think to yourself “I wish I had Allison’s outfit she wore the other day”. You throw on a sweater and jeans and your knock off Doc Marten shoes and think “This is like Taylor’s everyday outfit, only she wears it better. I wish I could afford real Doc Martens” Then you grab your stuff and head out the door.
As you drive down the street you see people at the coffee kiosk and think “I wish I had the time and money to get coffee every morning like them.” You get to school and set your stuff down and think “I wish I could wear my hair like them” or “They probably got the homework done right after class.” After class you head on out to the hallway and all these people pass you by, with every person you think “I wish I” or “If only I” or “They’re better than me at this.”
Or how about this, you are on the JV team in basketball but you’ve gone to the Varsity games and watched them. You think to yourself “why do they get to be varsity when I’m just as good and stuck on JV?” It’s not fair that they get more recognition and attention just because of a title.
Comparison is a scary game to play. Not only does it make you feel less worthy, but it changes your thought patterns to make everything self focused. Every game of comparison is completely unfair because you are not “them” in fact it is physically impossible to be “them”.
You are your own person. No one can be Allison better than Allison so why would you want to be her? Why would you wish to be someone else when it’s hard enough just being yourself? The person you are best at being is yourself. Don’t ever let any game of comparison tell you that you are not as good as “they are.”
When we stumble across people who are better at stuff than us, we have to take a step back and evaluate objectively. Yes they can dunk the basketball better than you, but is that the only point of worthiness they have? So what, I bet you can do something better than them. Maybe they’re jealous of your blocking skills.
You see, everyone has a different set of skills and qualities that makes them unique. It is unfair to compare yourself to them. Instead compare yourself to who you were yesterday. Did you improve, or did you not, why? What can you do about it other than whine and complain? Is there an action step you need to take to become a better version of yourself for tomorrow? Haven’t you ever heard that comparison is the thief of joy?
Galatians 6:4-5, “Make a careful exploration of who you are and the work you have been given, and then sink yourself into that. Don’t be impressed with yourself. Don’t compare yourself with others. Each of you must take responsibility for doing the creative best you can with your own life.”
The only person you can control in this life is you. You cannot make other people be who you want them to be. You’ve heard the saying “the grass is greener on the other side”? Well did you ever stop to evaluate if maybe it’s greener because they chose to water their side? What would happen if you stop worrying about comparing yourself to them, and just start taking care of what you are responsible for, yourself.
2 Corinthians 10:12 “Oh, don’t worry; we wouldn’t dare say that we are as wonderful as these other men who tell you how important they are! But they are only comparing themselves with each other, using themselves as the standard of measurement. How ignorant!”
Well thank you Paul for that obvious statement. Clearly the people of the world are not being stupid when they compare themselves to those around them. Humans are messed up, Romans 3:23 says “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” Why on earth would you use a bent ruler to try to measure something, you’re only going to get a skewed result. That’s what it looks like when someone tries to compare themself to another human.
Galatians 6:4, “Pay careful attention to your own work, for then you will get the satisfaction of a job well done, and you won’t need to compare yourself to anyone else.”
If you do focus on yourself and truly put the work in to become a better version of yourself, then you will forget all about the other people because you will be far too proud of yourself and who you are becoming. But proud in a good way. Proud of the accomplishments you’ve made and the trials you’ve overcome.
Galatians 1:10, “For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ.”
As Christian’s our standard of measurement should be Christ and His example. We should be following the example he set for us. Therefore, trying to seek the approval of man would be pulling you away from what should be your one focus, Christ.
‘ “No one can serve two masters. For you will hate one and love the other; you will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and be enslaved to money. ‘Matthew 6:24
Now this is a dramatic case talking about money, but we can replace that with anything so in this case I will replace that word with comparison. Now listen to that again; “No one can serve two masters. For you will hate one and love the other; you will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and be enslaved to comparison” Well, hold up that doesn’t make any sense. Can’t I be a Christian and love God but still fall into the trap of comparison? That doesn’t mean I hate God, does it? But this verse says it does.
What is at the very base of comparison? The root emotion is lack of self worth. Feeling like you are not good enough. But let’s whip all the way back to the beginning of this series, what does that say about how we think of God? When we doubt our true worth, we are doubting God and his sovereignty. Ouch!
Comparison is telling God “Hey you made a mistake, you were wrong. I actually hate your creation of me and I think you did a better job over there.” Now can you see how comparison can be devoting to one and despising the other or hating God and loving comparison? You latch on to that idea that you are less than God made you to be. That God failed on you. But instead, God just made you different from anyone else and that’s okay.
You see here’s the thing, Jesus doesn’t grade on a curve. That means He doesn’t look at all the humans on earth and pick the sum total of the prettiest, smartest, fastest, nicest, or whatever to die for. No, He takes the sum total of you, just you. He looks at your personal devotion to God, whether you lived a life that exemplified Christ or chose to go your own way and be “good enough.”
How about this, instead of comparing yourself to others, you compare yourself to Jesus. Instead of saying you wish you could be like Allison (from the earlier example) you say I wish I could be like Jesus, and strive for it. Really change the way you think, act, and live to reflect Jesus.
Comparing yourself to others is just simply mean to yourself. You absolutely can never be anyone other than yourself. It is foolish and worthless to try and stress about how different you are from others, and how much better than you they are. So why do we waste so much effort on comparing ourselves to others?
I am not saying you are bad for falling into this temptation. I’m simply saying, let’s work together to build your self worth and your self esteem. Let’s get to the root of where your confidence is lacking. Yes it’s foolish, but it’s also human nature. Humans are foolish and stupid without God. So let’s work to be different from everyone else.
I know I’m not perfect and I definitely need to work on this myself but I figure why not encourage others to struggle along with me? Let’s keep each other accountable.
Hopefully by now, seven lessons into our series, you have started to shift your thinking and started the process of redefining yourself to mirror God’s description of you. Have you noticed how each lesson has built upon the last? Have noticed how they’ve intertwined? That’s because there are building blocks that go into building a God given identity and protecting it. Everything works together to help you.
First we had to figure out who you are. Then we had to address that you are not here by accident. Because you are not here by accident we talked about how to be different from those around us. One of the factors of being different is changing the way you think. Because those thoughts affect your self worth and what you think about yourself.
Some of those thoughts have to do with comparing yourself to others. So naturally our next conversation will move into embracing this new identity and talking about why we are here and what our role as a Christian is. From there we will address some of the downsides to this life and the obstacles that get in our way.
Deep Thoughts With Nakia 