Have you ever felt like you just weren’t enough?  I’ll be honest, there are times when I struggle feeling like I am enough.  I wonder am I good enough, am I strong enough, am I smart enough, am I thin enough, am I ______________ enough.  You fill in the adjective, I’ve wondered about it.  Jon Acuff said recently, “Don’t compare your beginning to someone else’s middle.”  That’s tough for me.

Theodore Roosevelt said, “Comparison is the thief of joy”.  How true is that?

I was reading through Romans 12 the other morning when I came across verse 2 and it struck me in a whole new way.

Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think.  Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.

Romans 12:2 (the Message)

What a great reminder!  When I begin to play the comparison game and wonder where I am not measuring up I need to remember these few things…

1. Be Unique

Our world loves to put people into little boxes and categories.  If you dress a certain way, that means you are hipster, nerdy, sporty, or chic.  If you like to recycle you are a green tree hugger.  If you are a hunter you clearly don’t love animals.  Come on!  There are so many different pressures that we face.  The media, our peers, and the world around us want to desperately form us into their mold.  You don’t have to fit in that mold.

2. Be Flexible

God wants to transform you into a different person.  You don’t have to be like everyone else because God is in the business of making you, you.  The old me is exactly that- old.  It’s time to bring on the new.  This will happen over time and it will happen because He begins to change your thought process.  There are times when you need to be willing to not always be right, or change the way that you think about things.

3. Be Teachable

When you step back and see what God has been doing in you, the ways that He has been molding and shaping you, all of the experiences that you have had, and all of the pain that you have gone through, it is a little easier to see what God may want to do through you.  The last part of that verse says that you will begin to see what God wants to do through you, in you, and with you.  It will require you to be teachable.

I can easily get caught up in the comparison trap.  It is not a fun place to be.  I’m thankful that God doesn’t want us to stay there and provides a way out of it!

~Peter