It's not a competition

TODAY’S SPECIAL: 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a

TO CHEW ON: “But now God has set the members, each one of them, in the body just as He pleased.” 1 Corinthians 12:18

It’s a rare person who doesn’t sometimes look at him- or herself and wish to be different. I’ve had such thoughts: If only I were funnier, more flexible, less serious, had a talent for drawing, found it easier to make small talk… Even being part of a church, where we know we should have a realistic view of ourselves, doesn’t do away with the tendency to compare ourselves with others – and feel we come up short.

But those are not God’s thoughts about us. Rick Warren says it so well:

“You are not an accident.

Your birth was no mistake or mishap, and your life is no fluke of nature. Your parents may not have planned you, but God did…..

God prescribed every single detail of your body. He deliberately chose your race, the color of your skin, your hair and every other feature. He custom-made your body just the way he wanted it. He also determined the natural talents you would possess and the uniqueness of your personality. The Bible says, ‘You know me inside and out, you know every bone in my body; You know exactly how I was made, bit by bit, how I was sculpted from nothing into something.’” The Purpose-Driven Life – pp. 22-23

What is true of you in general is also true of you in the church. Whether you are most comfortable hidden away working with the babies in the nursery or heading up some high profile ministry, you don't have to justify yourself or compete with others. Rather do your job, whether hidden or public, without apology. In this way you will fulfill your own destiny and God’s destiny for earth and its people as He accomplishes it through His body, the church.

PRAYER: Dear God, please help me find my place in Your body. Help me to be content with who I am, knowing that someday I will need to account for what I’ve done with the strengths and talents you actually gave me – not the ones I wished I had. Amen.

MORE: So often our self worth is determined by the reaction toward us of the audience we are playing to. As Os Guinness says in his book The Call:

“Only madmen, geniuses, and supreme egotists do things purely for themselves. It is easy to buck a crowd, not too hard to march to a different drummer. But it is truly difficult – perhaps impossible - to march only to your own drumbeat. Most of us, whether we are aware of it or not, do things with an eye to the approval of some audience or other. The question is not whether we have an audience but which audience we have.

This observation underscores another vital feature of the truth of calling: A life lived listening to the decisive call of God is a life lived before one audience that trumps all others – the Audience of One. – p. 70