Hey hey fam! Sadie speaking 🙂 Today on the blog I am so excited to get to share with y’all a chapter from my latest book, LIVE! This particular chapter highlights the dangers of comparison and the power it can give the enemy if we’re not careful.
If you want to join along in reading the rest of my book with me and the fam over on the LO sister app now’s the perfect time! We just launched our LIVE book club where we are doing a deep dive into the book!
Tonight is our LIVE book club kickoff hang where we’ll be chatting and soaking up God’s special gift of community! So I invite you to join LO sister today and lets get this party started!!
Click HERE to get started!
Now, enjoy this chapter from my book!
I wonder: If Paul wrote a letter to the church today, would he phrase it that way? Could he say that we are already building each other up? Or would he say, “You all really should start building each other up and encouraging each other. You are not each other’s enemy. You have an Enemy. Don’t take each other out. Keep each other going strong.”
This is such an important message for our generation of Christians. We need each other. We need to start building up each other and keep doing it.
As I thought about this verse after reading it one day, I asked myself what would keep us from building up one another. What is it that causes us to tear each other down?
There may be more than one answer to those questions, but I know this: if we want to build each other up, comparison has to go. If we compare ourselves with others, we are looking at each other and sizing each other up, saying, “Who’s better at this? Who’s not good at this?” When this happens, we are not looking at each other with the lens of Jesus.
Instead, we need to have confidence in who we are and in what God’s doing in our lives so we can cheer on our sisters and brothers. If she is doing an amazing thing and he is doing an amazing thing, it doesn’t make what I am doing any less amazing. It makes us all winning for the kingdom of God.
Let me encourage you to restructure your mind to think that you, your sister, and your brother are all running the same race. That’s a kingdom mind-set, which is the path to truly living. When Jesus taught us how to pray, He said these words: “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10). A kingdom mind-set is one that strives for God’s will to be done right here, right now, on earth. It’s not about waiting until we’re all in heaven and made perfect and the pain has gone away. It is the mind-set that we have a job to do right here to advance God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. If you can have a kingdom mindset, you won’t be so disappointed when your worldly status doesn’t seem as impressive as that of the person beside you. In fact, you won’t even think about comparing yourself to other people because you will be so busy cheering them on.
The first book I wrote is called Live Original. The word original means much more to me now than it did when I wrote that book, and it has become a part of almost everything I do—my website, our tour, everything I speak about. With so many people all searching for identity, we need to be reminded that we are all created in the image of God (Genesis 1:27). We are His original masterpieces. I really want you to understand what the word original means and how it applies to comparison.
O·RIG·I·NAL / ‘RIJ NL / adjective
1. Present or existing from the beginning; first or earliest.
2. Created personally by a particular artist; not a copy.22
Do you see the end of the second definition? It says, “Not a copy.” So let me ask you this: What is it that drives us to compare ourselves with others? Yep, it’s usually the desire to copy or imitate someone— someone we think is prettier, smarter, more athletic, more popular, or more together. If each of us existed on our own little planet, with no one else to look at, there would be no comparison. We’d also be very lonely, but that’s not what I want to address here. My point is that we are created to live in community with other people. They are intended to bless us, as we are meant to bless them, but we can end up cursing each other because we are busy comparing instead of celebrating the good in one another. That’s not God’s plan.
So what is God’s plan? We can begin to see it when we think about Him as the Creator and about ourselves as His creations. He is the original Creator. There was not one before Him. He’s existed from before the beginning, and He is not a copy or an imitation.
God was the first to create. He made all of creation and designed and crafted each of us with amazing individuality. God saw no need to compare one of us with another one. He was only focused on making us unique. If you don’t believe me, just put this book down for a minute and look around you. Do you look exactly like anything or anyone you see? Even if you’re an identical twin, there are still differences!
In addition, we know that everything God made is good (1 Timothy 4:4). So you and I, God’s creations, are good, and we are made just as He wanted and chose to make us. This leaves no room for the complete lie of comparison. Comparison was not a part of God’s creative process, so it should not be a part of what was created. It’s an offense to what God created and calls “good.”
If we read Genesis 1 carefully, we notice that after God made every single part of creation, the Bible says, “It was good.” But the man, Adam, was not good all by himself. Only when God created a woman, Eve, did the two of them become good together. The man needed someone who was different than he was in order to enter into goodness.
God’s intention in creating Eve was not for Adam to compare himself to her or to compete with her. His divine design was for the two of them to come together for something good. This teaches us that comparison has no place in the life or thinking of anyone God has made. Everything God created was good—one thing wasn’t better than anything else.
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