Stop Comparing
Exodus 20:17 You must not want to take your neighbour’s house. You must not want his wife. And you must not want his men and women servants or his cattle or his donkeys. You must not want to take anything that belongs to another person.
Have you ever noticed how happy and successful everybody else seems to be? You compare your life to theirs, and it’s easy to come off feeling as though you’re second best. Or third best. Or … well, you know.
One of the worst things that you and I can ever do when it comes to our self-esteem, is to compare ourselves to other people. Because one of the things that leads to is envy. The desire to have what they have.
If you walk into a room of a hundred people, let’s say, how many of them would be identical? How many of them have the same coloured hair, the same face, height, body shape, skin colour? Answer? Well other than the very rare occurrence of identical twins, the answer is none.
So, we know that we’re all different, with different strengths and weaknesses, yet we still compare ourselves, not just against other people, but against a composite of the best attributes of all the people we know.
And then … we end up wishing we had what they had – their looks, their friends, their success, their fantastic marriage, their apparently well-balanced and well-behaved children!
Exodus 20:17 You must not want to take your neighbour’s house. You must not want his wife. And you must not want his men and women servants or his cattle or his donkeys. You must not want to take anything that belongs to another person.
God knew what He was doing when He made you. He knew what gifts and abilities He wanted you to have. He knew what family He wanted to give you. You are who you are by His sovereign choice. You have what you have by His sovereign choice.
Stop comparing. Stop wanting what others have. Enjoy what God’s given you.
That’s God’s Word. Fresh … for you … today.
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