“Comparison is the enemy of your contentment.”
I repeated that over and over during my messages this weekend at Mission.
I talked about my desperate attempt to climb the popularity ladder in high school. I worked at the mall and had stolen thousands and thousands of dollars in clothing while there. I worked at a few stores, and I won’t tell you which one in case you get sassy and want to convict me for a crime that’s like 15 years old. God forgave me, and so should the mall.
My closet was JAM PACKED with clothes. Shoes were everywhere too. I was stocked for life. I was ugly, but I had a lot of really nice clothes. Nicer than his, and his, and his… I was winning. But I was playing a lose-lose game.
When I became a Christian I still had a closet full of clothes. But I didn’t want to play the game any more, so I emptied my closet of everything that I had stolen and donated it all to a charity in Tempe. When I was done I had ONE shirt.
A white t-shirt with armpit stains.
But I was done playing the game. I was done caring about what everyone else was wearing, saying, doing, buying, and thinking. And I was done caring about what other people were thinking about what I was wearing, saying, doing, buying and thinking.
I was determined to be the best me I could be, and not the second-best anybody else.
I began to pursue the person who God was making ME to be.
Because God says I’m valued, loved, and worth dying for. Sometimes I don’t feel that was, but if God says it and I disagree then… one of us is wrong.
I can fully attest to the fact that “A heart at peace gives life to the body, but envy rots the bones“.
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