Monthly Thought

April 2006

Galatians 6:4 says, "Each person should judge his own actions and not compare himself with others. Then he can be proud for what he himself has done."

Do you ever find that whatever you do it seems that someone else does it better or more regularly? Do you ever wonder why you bother when other people seem obviously more gifted than you? Well, I know that I often find myself wondering exactly this. I try and comfort myself with the knowledge that we are all part of the body of Christ and that we each have different jobs to perform (see Romans 12), but sometimes this just doesn't cut it. Sometimes it can be hard to see what gift you have been given, particularly if you're surrounded by other people who are really obviously gifted. So eventually, after weeks of thinking over this problem, the answer I discovered was ( partly) in the passage above. We shouldn't compare our actions with others, but compare them against ourselves and against what we know God would want us to do. God will not compare us to others and He knows what use we make of the abilities we were given.

While I'm here, I think I should just point out the other side to this verse - it also means that if someone you look up to as a 'good' Christian does something that you don't think is right, it doesn't make it ok for you to do it. This might seem obvious but I'm pointing it out because it's a trap that I've fallen into before.

Now for the other passage that I found answered my concerns. Philippians 2:13 says, "God is working in you to make you willing and able to follow him."

Just take a moment to think about what this means before you carry on reading. This is absolutely brilliant! God understands that we have difficulty not only in doing a good job of His work, but also in convincing ourselves that we should make the effort and find the time. And he's not content to just accept that this is one of our flaws, he will work in us to help us get better!

Just so I don't give you the wrong interpretation here, let's step back a second and have a quick look at the context. Paul is talking to a group of people in this passage who, it seems, have worked hard at their work for God for some time. These are people who already put in the effort, so maybe this is the real lesson we can take away here. We should work as best we can for God, without comparing what we manage to do with others, and trust that God will take our efforts and make us better at what we do and make us more willing to give our time to Him. Phew! That was quite a sentence!

Looking through the Bible there are loads of verses which I could have used to make these same points, so take a look and decide for yourself - don't just take my word for it. Now, there is nothing left for me to say here but to leave you with this parting thought. How can we expect to find out what our gift is without doing work for God to see what we're good at?

"Each of you has been blessed with one of God's many wonderful gifts to be used in the service of others. So use your gift well." 1 Peter 4:10

If you have any questions, do email me lfs102@york.ac.uk

Luke Stratton