Comparison is the thief of joy because social media has changed the landscape of life you know
it's amazing how you can be so content with where you are and so happy but then all of
a sudden awareness drives discontentment because it's a slippery slope when you start playing the
comparison game and nothing will steal your joy more than looking at somebody else and that thing
that's stealing from me and from you is comparison it's the way that we compare ourselves to other
people so comparison has been called the thief of joy it steals your joy and so I'm probably I
imagine not the only one who's who's been pretty happy until I look at what someone else has got
often we don't enjoy life when we compare ourselves to other people sometimes we think
if I just had a different life then I could enjoy my life or if I had his life or if I had her life
then I could enjoy my life or if I just had what someone else had then I would be happy
and I would enjoy life social media has made it so easy to compare ourselves to other people nowadays
but we have to learn to enjoy our own life we have to learn to enjoy the life that God has given us
enjoy the season that we're in enjoy the blessings that God has given us without
comparing ourselves to other people and we can ruin ourselves in this pursuit of comparison we
will get ourselves in debt over our head to have a better car a better house or kids in
better shoes we will kill ourselves dieting or do whatever we else can to alter ourselves physically
to look less like ourselves and more so like someone else we will damage relationships with
our kids to push them in arts and sports and academics so that they can be better than those
kids will strive for a promotion at work at the expense of our family and we will hurt ourselves
spiritually trying to be hard to be someone and beat someone instead of being grateful
for this one you represent a part of God's image that only you have
and if you spoil it by trying to be someone else
we lose a little bit of the image of God that we can only see in you
comparison corrupts God's creativity when he made you comparison is the enemy
of contentment if you want to be discontent if you want to be dissatisfied with your life with who
you are with what you have with what you do then just get in the business of comparing yourself
to everyone else and all of us as human beings do that we've been comparing ourselves to one
another as long as there have been human beings but there's consequences to it and and one of
the things that I've been discovering it does is it is it it enslaves you and it can stop you from
living the life that God has put ahead of you when we compare our lives with other people we stop
enjoying our own life the key is to enjoy the life God has given us enjoy the blessings that he's
given us and not compare ourselves to other people the scripture says Godliness with contentment
is great gain here the Apostle Paul is encouraging us to be content and enjoy life and enjoy the
blessings God has given us God the ultimate source of all things packs your bags with exactly what
you need for the journey he has laid out for you your journey is different from other journeys
God has laid out a journey for you and he has given you everything you need to do everything
he wants you to do there is this pointless pursuit in something called comparison
comparison it's easy to get our identity wrapped up in who I am compared to that person
do I have more than them or less than them who am I compared to that person am I more popular than
them or less popular than them do I have more friends than them or less friends than them it's easy to
get our identity up in how I measure up to other people and here's the thing we never grow out of
it because mostly what we do at night is scroll on the phone and just compare compare compare
compare and that's why what do they say about comparison comparison is the thief of joy it'll
steal you you can't find peace and contentment it never satisfies and the problem with comparison
is that it's a lie it's not my true identity who I am compared to them
it's not your true identity who you are compared to them and it's not who God created you to be
God never thought about comparing you when he made you he made us eight billion different ways
if the game you play is comparing your life what you do what you have
to what someone else has or what someone else does or to their life if that's the game you play
there is a very strong likelihood you are comparing yourself to something that's not real
now why would I say that because the only thing you know about other people for the
most part is what they want you to know about them I'll give you the recipe for living
a discontented life if you want to be dissatisfied with your life here's here is your action item
spend hours every day scrolling through Facebook posts
now why because Facebook posts aren't real they're superficial you understand people don't post their
mess on social media as a rule people post these superficial facades trying to portray something
that is not real so if you're scrolling through Facebook posts all day every day then you are going
to you're going to begin to compare your life with a life that is not real because of social media
and the effect and the way that it shaped us we have all gone comparison crazy
and um the way that social media works and you all know this because you're on it is uh we all want
to present the best version of ourselves don't we so we take the selfie we put the filter on it and
then we show it to the world we want to put the best version of ourselves out there and so what
we're doing when we look at social media is we begin to subconsciously and sometimes consciously
compare what we have to what everybody else has got and what it means is you end up comparing your
face to their filter and your face will always lose in that comparison any of our faces would and
so for our grandma you know it was like she woke up in the day she would compare herself to people
but just the people around her the people on the street or the people at work but we are
24 hours a day seven days a week getting bombarded and because it's all seemingly perfect all the
comparison becomes upward look at their perfect body look at the look at the money that they have
look at the cars that they can drive look at the jobs that they have and am I the only person who
looks at that and feels that in comparison my life is like this gray drab Monday morning experience
that never comes to an end and social media doesn't help us with it but it's not the only
place that we do it so we compare ourselves maybe for you you compare yourself to the pretty girl
in the youth group or uh you can compare yourself to the guy that seems to get all the girls
and what happens is when we do that comparison comes into the tent of our lives as it were and it
steals our joy and it steals our self-worth and we end up doing one of two things we either compete
I've got a match up so we get on the treadmill and we run as fast as we
can of trying to get all the filters out there trying to make sure that we match
up to everybody else we either compete or we give up I'm not going to compete with you but I'm just
my life's just rubbish and you make me feel rubbish about myself and it's like it enslaves us
and this has never been more important this has never been more important than the digital world
in which we all now inhabit because when I was growing up and for many of you if you're my age or
older the only people we had to compare ourselves to were actually the people in our hometown
maybe the neighboring town but now kids every day get to they get to compare their themselves
to every teenager on TikTok every teenager on Instagram and it's not just kids it's adults too
we go on Instagram and they're family photos they're unbelievable
don't let the internet define your worth crush your optimism dull your perspective
become your world don't let it define who you are let God define you it's not real it's not who you
are it's not your identity no matter it feel how much it feels like I have to measure up to them
they they are not who God created you to be and if you chase being someone else
you'll never arrive at becoming you the best person to compare yourself to is you yesterday
and not someone else today and the reason for that is you don't know anything about these people that
you're comparing yourself to usually like one of the things I've noticed is that it doesn't take
much discussion with someone no matter how successful they are you scratch below the
surface and you find that their life is consists of trouble and suffering in in proportions that
you could hardly imagine almost everyone is dealing with some serious problem personal
problem or problem in their family and so what you're comparing yourself to if you're envious is
it's an illusion and it's not a helpful illusion it it's not a fair race to to be racing
against someone else but it's a fair race to be racing against yourself you could be slightly
better than you are and that will actually the thing about that that's so cool and I think the
the psychological literature really indicates this is that slow incremental improvement from
your initial baseline can take you places that you couldn't possibly imagine and envy is only a it's
a impediment to that and that notion of putting our eyes onto others when we compare taking them
off the maker and putting them onto somebody else is something human beings have been doing as long
as they've been human beings they do it in the bible so probably one of the best examples is this
king called Saul he's the first king of Israel and he's got loads of stuff going for him so he's
a head and shoulders taller than everybody else in Israel he's a good looking guy he wins kind of
like he becomes the first king he wins all these battles if he had Instagram he'd have a million
followers life is going well for Saul but then what Saul does is he makes some mistakes and he
messes it up and this other guy comes on the scene called David and David starts to do quite well
and there's this particular moment where David and Saul go out to fight a battle with their
enemies the Philistines and they win they're victorious and then they turn around and they
come back to the town and as they come back the ladies of the town come dancing out to meet them
to greet them and they're singing this song and you can read it in 1 Samuel chapter 18 verse 7
it says as they danced they sang Saul has slain his thousands and David his tens of thousands
and Saul when he hears that he gets really angry and I can totally relate to him
on that right because it's not that he's comparing himself to David in this moment it's that he's
being compared by other people to David and he's coming up shore and then his response
is what loads of our response is when we find ourselves in that situation it says in verse 9
it says and from that time on Saul kept a close eye on David what we do is when there's certain
people that we're regularly comparing ourselves to maybe I'm just the only one here but I find that I
keep an eye on them more than anybody else I watch what they post I watch how their life is going and
the mistake he's made is he's taken his eyes off God and he's put them on to David I reckon
the reason we do experience jealousy and we do feel like what's going on with them and how come
that's not for me part of the reason anyway is because we don't understand what we've been given
we don't understand always or we forget maybe what we've received so king Solomon
was a king who had everything he had unbelievable riches and wealth and this is the coolest thing
Solomon is said was the wisest man on earth in fact this is what First Kings says about Solomon
God gave Solomon wisdom and very great insight and the breadth of understanding as measureless
as the sand on the seashore wouldn't you love for that to be said about you he could see the world
in ways that no one else could Solomon's wisdom was greater than all the wisdom of all the east
and greater than all the wisdom of Egypt he was wiser than anyone else what would you love for
it to be said of you that listen you can combine and compile all the wise people on planet earth
and this one person's wisdom is greater than them this is what he said and I saw
that all toil and all achievement Solomon says I see that all the striving in the world all the
all the blood sweat and tears that people are putting into things spring from one person's
envy of another it is because it is because they want more they want more than them
Solomon says I mean you would think he would be content and happy but he says it's all about envy
it's all about them wanting more more than her more than him more than them that so much of what
we do the striving in life is about comparison to others and he and here's the the quest the reason
this quest is such a pointless pursuit anyway listen listen to what Solomon says in the next
verse this chase this this striving and toil that's driven by envy this too is meaningless
and the reason it says too is because if you read Ecclesiastes you're gonna see so much of
what Solomon found that he tried to fulfill his life with was meaningless this too is meaningless
a chasing after the wind it is a road to nowhere nothing you'll get there and you'll eat it and
you'll still feel empty you'll still be hungry you'll catch it and you'll have a handful of wind
it's nothing it doesn't get you anywhere you you'll catch it and it was nothing to
there to start with that's why Solomon says this is such a chasing after the wind
because it their journey is not your journey and if you chase being someone else if you try
to be someone else then you will never arrive at becoming the you the unique you that God created
God had a vision when he created you he had an idea and you will never find your purpose
in him until you are at peace with your unique identity that he created in you
comparison will come for you come for your joy come for your self-worth come for the purpose
that's your purpose this your life the only one uh you're the only you it'll come for you
what comparison does is it doesn't just steal your joy it steals your strength because the joy of the
Lord is your strength and what he says is hey come back to me and see who you've got I'm the
incomparable one am I not enough and I forget and it's taking Jesus so long to teach me who we get
in him do you understand what you've received when you become a Christian you get a father
an everlasting dad do you have any idea how many people want that where it's like the love
is unconditional it was given to you before you were born that moment that you were born he said
yes you're mine he wrote his name on you your name on his hand he was like you're going to be mine
forever I'm going to love you always he doesn't just see you this dad he delights in you he takes
pleasure in you he's always wanting to be with you you receive not just a father but a savior the
perfect savior is the person of Jesus who comes with kindness he comes with compassion he comes
with mercy he comes with love but also with great power that no one can rival we sing the songs but
do we understand the truth of that no one comes close to him he has power to set you free what
it means is that he will take you your life as it is and he will use it for his glory and for his
kingdom you receive a savior who will transform every aspect of your being that you will look
like the God who made you be made into his image he's yours he's yours he's given himself to you
and so what are we comparing ourselves I've got the incomparable one