These words conjure up images of some sort of contest like the Olympic Games that are just about to start. They also conjure up images of children in a playground. Both of the images show people competing with each other, copying someone else’s behaviour or style or co-operating and working in a team. All of the words are good for us when used in the right place, but often we see them through the eyes of not good enough.
What do I mean by this? Well competing brings out the best in me and causes me to look and work out my strengths. Copying means I am learning a new skill or behaviour. Co-operating means I am part of a team and learning how to function and adapt to others. But too often as people, we use these behaviours in our lives in a negative way.
We compete with each other to prove our self-worth, we copy each other in dress, actions, friendship groups so we can become part of the “in” crowd and we only co-operate with others when we see the benefit of it. But how does God want us to act and more importantly what does God want us to believe about ourselves?
I am reminded of the story of Mary and Martha. If you don’t know the story, basically Jesus had come for dinner. Martha was busy in the kitchen preparing and serving the meal while Mary was seated at the feet of Jesus. Martha became very upset with Mary when she wouldn’t help so she asked Jesus to tell Mary to help her. Jesus reminded Martha that she was concerned about many things but Mary was where she needed to be. We don’t know this but maybe Martha had a gift for cooking and Mary had a gifting as a host.
You see Martha was competing against Mary to do her best for God, when Mary was already doing it. If Martha kept operating in her gifting, she would have known that she too was in the right place. We need to learn to co-operate with the giftings on our lives instead of competing with someone else or even worse copying someone else when we know we will never be able to do it.
God has an amazing plan and purpose for your life and wants you to be in the place of co-operating with God to get you there. Stop competing and comparing and start co-operating. You and your future will never be the same.
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