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Make a careful exploration of who you are and the work you have been given, and then sink yourself into that. Don’t be impressed with yourself. Don’t compare yourself with others. Each of you must take responsibility for doing the creative best you can with your own life. Galatians 6:4-5
I have a precious friend, who is truly one of the most beautiful and creative people I know. I can’t think of a single flaw about her, although common sense tells me that they’re there.
Do you have a friend like that? Someone you love, but you’re intimidated by or even slightly jealous of?
But as much as I would like to have her giftings, talents and dress size, I’ve been created to be me. (I literally just sighed loudly upon re-reading that sentence.)
Me: the person I could rattle off numerous negative traits about without missing a beat.
What’s the real issue here?
I’ve gotten into the comparison game. And it’s not very pretty.
But you know what’s worse?
I start doing it to those around me. Namely, my husband.
And guess what? Once again, the outcome is rather ugly.
Simply because I insist on holding my husband to someone else’s meausuring stick.
And regardless of meaning to or not, when I start thinking upon his failings and lack of “measuring up,” I start acting upon it.
Ladies, whose standard are you using to measure your husband and your marriage by?
Is it God’s standard or your own?
What does the true measuring stick, the one to love your husband by, look like?
Love never gives up.
Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have.
Love doesn’t strut,
Doesn’t have a swelled head,
Doesn’t force itself on others,
Isn’t always “me first,”
Doesn’t fly off the handle,
Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn’t revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything,
Trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.
1 Corinthians 13:4-7
Ladies, can I encourage you to put down anything you use to measure your husband by, that isn’t God’s word?
As Paul exhorts, will you make a careful exploration of who you are and the work you have been given, and then sink yourself into that (vs. 4)?
Praying for our marriages,
Barb
