Quit Comparing: Running The Race Set Before Us

Comparison is a sin we all struggle with, but it’s especially insidious when we’re comparing our spiritual walk to the journey of someone else. We need to run the race God has set before us. Not compare our beginning to another’s finish line.

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A few years ago, I was talking with a young wife in our church, discussing the amazing witness of another woman we both admire.

She is a beacon of light, hope, love and faith to all who meet her. She is an on her knees, give it all to God kind of woman. In the midst of the hardest times of her life, she serves everyone else.

“I can’t see myself ever being like her,” said my young friend, dejectedly.

“Of course you can’t see that today. Call me in twenty years,” I answered, “and tell me who you are.”

I am really looking forward to seeing this young woman grow in her faith. My heart rejoices to see her hear God’s word and be changed by it.

I’ve watched her cry under God’s conviction, but be so utterly changed that she calls me rejoicing. It is beautiful.

Yet, in that moment of comparison, she sounded so defeated.

I suspect many new believers get discouraged because they fall short when they compare their new walk with someone who has been walking God’s path for decades, because they cannot see how God can/will change them over time.

I prayed about how to encourage her, thinking how my mentor encourages me where I am, while still holding me accountable.

Quit Comparing: We must run the race set before us.

2 Corinthians 5:17 ESV  “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.”

What a miracle that truth is! We are new in Him!

Our journey begins when we joyfully surrender to the work of being transformed.

Your house has been sold to a new tenant, but you still have to clean out the attic with its years’ worth of things, garbage, junk. You still have to sort through it all, working in the clean up.

When the Holy Spirit opened my eyes, I did have a miraculous change in perspective, but my entire life was not instantly changed.

My heart instantly wanted to change, but I still had a lot of sins I’d been hoarding, sinful choices I thought I could make and still have Jesus.

Several years ago, I watched some television that displayed blatantly sinful behavior. I thought I could keep watching these shows because I was an adult and wouldn’t let it affect me. Believing if my heart was His, it didn’t matter what my eyes saw or my ears heard. I thought I could serve God and still hold onto these earthly things.

Then one day, after my total surrender to Christ, I saw five minutes of a new show that changed my perspective. The darkness of that show was palpable, tangible to me.

I left the room. God whispered I didn’t need to put that in front of my eyes where it would seep into my brain and affect my heart.

All of a sudden, watching those shows didn’t feel like a freedom or Christian liberty. Sin was a weight drowning me in the muck of this world.

Sin no longer felt like freedom, but weights drowning me.

Christ paid my debts. I have no claim on my eyes, ears, tongue. He bought the whole package. I needed to give myself over to Him completely.

Hebrews 12:1-2 ESV  ” . . . let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith . . .

Christ is showing me the race set before me. He is gloriously perfecting my faith. My journey isn’t supposed to look like any other until the end, when we are all made perfect in Heaven.

I have cleaned up my television viewing, language, tone of voice, attitude, gradually peeling away the layers of sinfulness from my life and my heart.

Several years ago, I couldn’t have imagined being the woman I am today. I was drowning in shame over who I had been and who I was at the time.

But I started running my race. I can’t see whom I will become. But God can. I just have to have faith in Him and His plan for me.