All posts tagged: comparing ourselves to others

It’s about how far you have come, not how much you have failed

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I read an interesting article on Facts & Trends that discussed a problem that many in the ministry are facing today. With the COVID crisis, churches are needing to find innovative ways to minister to their congregations including broadcasting services online. Of course, this is happening with varying degrees of success. But in their article, Kent Annan and Jamie Aten state that church leaders have fallen into the trap of comparing themselves to other ministries. They write: As people dedicated to serving others, church leaders naturally want to identify and use the most effective streaming technology, employ the most innovative strategies for offering pastoral care, and find new ways to continue to serve those in need. But when their Facebook feed shows a neighboring church leading worship from the roof of their building, transmitting the gospel drive-in movie style to the FM dials of cars lined up in the parking lot, it can be hard to celebrate the fresh, creative solution. More often, it simply feels like someone has raised the bar we all now …

My biggest struggle

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My greatest struggle over the years has been never feeling quite ‘good enough’ for anything, sports, art classes or trying out for the school musical. I suspect there are a few faces that cross your mind when I talk about women we have compared ourselves to over the years. Even as I talk about this subject, names and images of girls I compared my self over the years are popping up in my mind. I was never good enough to be included in the popular circle of girls who had it all together.  Where their looks landed a leading role in every musical, made every basketball team, and also attracted the most popular girls and guys to their social circles. My main nemesis was Susie who had different names over the years, but she was always there and I always compared myself to her no matter how often her face changed. Picture yourself caught in a mousetrap, and you are that mouse struggling to get out of the trap. This image gives us a clear …

Struggling to free yourself from the web of comparison

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Español: Luchando para liberarnos de las redes de la comparación I think we say sorry to often. Others may not like your opinion, but provided you weren’t harsh or mean in what you said, there is no reason to apologize. Yet many of us apologize for the silliest things.  Stop saying sorry for no real reason. Ask yourself if you really need to apologize or are those words another way of belittling yourself? Save your apology for the real stuff when you have really blown it and now you have to own it.  Do it when you want to run and hide or avoid acknowledging the mistake you made. That’s when you apologize and say those words, I’m sorry. But along with this we need to train ourselves to stop saying I’m sorry for things we are not responsible for which is also backwards. So why do we do this? We need to understand the root of our apologizing for everything may have been deeply ingrained in us from childhood. It is often rooted in …

Credit: Chris Campbell/Flickr/Creative Commons

Are you self harming?

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Whenever I heard the word ‘self-love,’ it made me cringe as I immediately thought of ‘selfishness’. I was pretty sure this was not the Christian way. In my mind, self-love and selfishness were the same thing. But as I pressed into my journey to wholeness — physically, emotionally and spiritually — the idea of needing to love yourself kept coming up. I wasn’t sure how Biblical this was but thought I needed to find out if it was or wasn’t. It seemed that to heal from past issues and recent traumas that constantly triggered me, I was being pointed in the direction of ‘self-love’. What was I getting myself into? And how did this fit with the verse, “deny yourself and take up your cross and follow after me?” Jesus shed His blood on the cross to save the world and it started to feel like I was doing the same thing, making personal sacrifices for others. But were these the sacrifices that God was asking me to make? Was I being motivated by love …