Comparison Kills Contentment // S01E07 (EPISODE 7)

You don’t take cooking classes to swim better. The grass isn’t always greener. You are complete in Him. Comparison—it will destroy the joy God’s gifts can bring.

QUESTIONS WE TOUCH ON IN THIS EPISODE:

• What does comparison do?
• Has comparison made you hide your gifts?
• Are you walking in someone else’s purpose?

VERSES FROM COMPARISON KILLS CONTENTMENT 

 ^{2 Collosians 4-10, Romans 12:4, 1 Peter 4:10, Philippians 2:3}

QUOTES FROM  COMPARISON KILLS CONTENTMENT 

“You know, we never know when the comparisons we’re speaking of are planting bad seeds of thought in other people.”

Michelle Watson, The Pantry Podcast, S01E07 (Episode 7)

“But see, God has chosen our position. Just like he’s chosen the anemone and the hermit crab. He knew that the enemy could get onto the hermit crab and they would benefit one another. He knew this body. And then you skip down to verse 27. We’ve been purposed. You know, it’s like, now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. It doesn’t say that you’re anything else.”

Shea Watson, The Pantry Podcast, S01E07 (Episode 7)

Transcript

Michelle: Hello everybody.

Shea: It’s good to be back. Good to be here. It’s a crazy time. Right? Real, crazy time. I mean, I’ve learned something that no matter what, there’s always a far left and a far right on everything.

Michelle: There is a big gap between every issue

Shea: You know, Corona virus comes into the picture and you have those that are, you know, it’s nothing and you have the other side, it’s like, so apparently they buy all the toilet paper out.

Michelle: Like I never thought that that would be everyone’s greatest fear, not being able to wipe like that. That’s what it showed. It’s like, they’re not worried they’re going to starve. They’re not worried. They just go to the bathroom. Like a lot.

Shea: I got a secret. My bathtub is across from my toilet

Michelle: Life hack. Right. That’s a free bonus. Because we are not like an everyday life hack podcast, but like not that kind of. We are spiritual application life hack, not necessarily run out of toilet paper.

Shea: Right. But I think it also was down to kind of what the topic is tonight. Yeah. I think it does. Yeah. Um, comparison kills contentment. There’s all kinds of comparisons being thrown around from the secular world to the Christian role. What you, you know, this is actually, this is something that Michelle does really well. She teaches on comparison, kills contentment. I mean, look, we’re on the radio or podcast, but, uh, she has a beautiful, a beautiful class that she laid out. Of course you won’t be able to see all the cool slides and all the, all the illustrations. I think she even has a scroll with a jet pack or something.

Michelle: You and I probably will put it up on you. The thrityone25 or the pantrypodcast.com. One of the two, it’s a, it’s a resource I’m still refining, but I’d love to offer it up for people. If they want to use it in their own life.

Shea: Explain what you, what you think and what the Lord laid on your heart.

Michelle: I listened to several different pastors every once in a while, they’re all lining up on the same message. They say it all in different ways, but those tend to be the starts of new spiritual maturity seasons in me. Okay. This is the big one that started all of my little steps. You know, building towards what I’m building towards 

Shea: a background. Maybe. Like why, would that be one of your, your big steps?

Michelle: Our whole world is completely reliant on comparison and competition. When you look at that, you see how detrimental it is to your spiritual life, to constantly be competing and comparing, you know, I mean, it starts from childhood. I remember talking to someone who was saying, you know, well, our kid isn’t hitting the milestones and the milestones are the averages that kids reach certain gross and fine motor skills, speech, language, cognitive development. 

Michelle: They were really worried because their kid was not hitting, you know, that peak of the bell curve. They were so worried because their kid wasn’t in the average. And I’m not saying that every study, I think those milestones are beneficial because it does let you know what you can expect at a certain time, but you’ve got developmental milestones. You’ve got the SAT percentiles, you’ve got score rankings. You’ve got where I used to work. We have in the student newspaper, the salary guide where people could literally search everyone on campus and see how much they made. It makes sense because our money state money. Right. So it’s like, okay, well where’s your money going? Here’s how much people are getting paid on campus. So it was a transparency thing

Shea: Which is cool. Why I worked for the fed and we don’t post ours. Right, right, right, right.

Michelle: You know, I mean, for students, they sit there and they want to know who’s making the most, they look up every, every professor, every, you know, but for me, I was looking at like, okay, what’s everyone who does what I do on campus getting, and what’s everyone in my office getting, you know, and finding out you’re like the second lowest paid in the entire office kinda is like a second ago. I was fine with how much I was making comparison, killed the contentment. Right? 

Michelle: Because suddenly, now I’m like, wait, this ain’t fair. The best and worst dressed, the billboard 200, the top songs, the superlatives in the high school, yearbook, you know, the best colleges are you going to one our whole lives. There’s just all these comparisons. And so when I was looking for a really good section, I found 2 Collosians 4-10. 

Michelle: It says, now this, I say, lest, anyone should deceive you with persuasive words for though. I am absent in the flesh yet I am with you in spirit rejoicing to see your good order and the steadfastness of your faith in Christ, as you therefore have received Christ Jesus, the Lord. So walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith. As you have been taught abounding in it with Thanksgiving, beware, lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit. According to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world and not according to Christ for, in him dwells all the fullness of Godhead bodily, and you are complete in him, who is the head of all principality and power. 

Michelle: So whereas the world with its persuasive words about why you should care about all these comparisons, all these competitions, where there are winners and losers in this world where there’s philosophy and empty deceit, according to men’s traditions, there’s competition, there’s comparison, right? In Christ there’s completion. And when something’s complete, when you are complete, you can be content in that, right? You don’t have to constantly be comparing spiritually. You look in the church. Oh, that person would never understand because they have it. So together, Oh, that person’s a hot mess. You know? Like I’m much better than them. There’s always this, these weights, these measures,

Shea: Right. As I like that secret society of thought because no one really comes out and says, I can’t believe how much better you are than me. But you know, that people walk around in to include ourselves with this ideal of like, I don’t compare, I don’t level up to this. You know, we put these measurements in there. It’s just amazing. It’s amazing a secret society of the mind because it’s all internal.

Michelle: Yeah. It’s, it’s crazy. You know, comparison breeds all these other things. It can be in. You want what someone else has or prideful. You’re so glad you have what you have and not what they have. You can be worried about being inadequate or you can judge others for not having it. You can be hypercritical or you can be depressed. You can be complacent. You can have a low self esteem, can be living in defeat or be super cut throat because your standards are just so high or you could be a King. Right.

Shea: And all of a sudden feel like you’re nothing, you know, it’s kind of like solid David, you know, David just lays to Goliath. I mean, you have like Jonathan sitting there, is David and, and King Saul is like, ah, you know, you’re the man, you know, you’re going to be with me wherever you go. You don’t want to put you in charge of armies and all these things. Right. And then they get back into town or they get back into the kingdom. And it’s like, the women start to sing and dance and say, Saul has slain his thousands and David, his 10 thousands. Right. Bam. Whole story changes in that one, singing. They were, they were singing to the, to this, this, this, this victory. And in that one moment, Saul was angry and that

Michelle: They focus on Saul. You know, we never know when the comparisons that we’re speaking are planting bad seeds of thought in other people. Right. Look what, that bread, that bread so much. So yes. On his part. Right. Cause I’m not gonna shirk his responsibility. If he was more spiritually mature, he would have just been like, well, those are the facts. Right. Right. A few times I’m blown away by the whole way. Like David was just like, Oop move. And then he, like, he never, literally just runs after him.

Michelle: Yeah. It plants bad seeds of thought in us in, in those around us. And then we’re in this, what you always like to say this mental role. Right. So often I see people not serving. And I know some of the reasons I, I, I can’t always pinpoint that person’s not serving for this reason, but I know one reason is because they think that they don’t have anything to offer. Right. Or they think that what they have to offer doesn’t have a place or they think the place that they would like to be is full. Right. Like those kinds of thoughts. And they all go back to comparison. Right. And so I was thinking about all of the gifts that were given all of the talents that were given, right. Cause there are spiritual gifts, but then there’s also, you know, trades and skills and just talents across the board that the Lord gives us.

Michelle:  And he has a place for all of us. And if you’re looking in Romans 12:4, it says for, as in one body, we have many members and the members do not all have the same function going into verse five. So we though many are one body in Christ and individually members of one another. I like to kind of put some verses like together. So in first Corinthians 12:4, there are diversities of gifts, but the same spirit. So again, there’s different things, different skills, different roles and responsibilities being doled out. But they’re all of God. The final one in that little set, 1 Peter 4:10 as each one has received a gift minister it to one another as good stewards of the manifold. Grace of God. It’s not always about trying to get what someone else has because that’s the standard, you know, in the world, that’s often the case where we downplay what we have and we magnify what someone else has. The grass is greener, kind of thing.

Shea: Very true people do it. It’s like so easy to fall into that car, that person, Oh, he speaks so well. She speaks so well. Oh, she has this. He has that. And it’s just

Michelle: Look where it got Moses, but I stutter Lord this constant. Even if you’re not comparing yourself to a specific person, you’re comparing yourself to a standard in your head that you aren’t

Shea: We should all be Aron’s. The oldest brother that says, okay, Moses, you can lead. I mean, come on right there. It’s like, okay. You know, take the rain.

Michelle: It’s so important to remember each role in a body, right? If you just think about a physical body, everybody, if they were like, well, what part of the body would you want to be? Someone’s probably not gonna be like, well, I would like to be the golgi body in an individual cell. You know? No one’s going to say, I want to be the mitochondria or the fingernail on the pinky. Right? Most people, I like to be the eyes or I’d like to be the ears or I’d like to be the heart. You know, maybe someone will even say the liver or the stomach, but they’re going to pick the things that are the most known, the most recognized, have very obvious functions. The problem is what if you are the mitochondria in a cell, you know, I’ve forgotten what a mitochondria does by the way.

Michelle: I just remember that it’s in a cell. Um, what if you are the little toe nail, you know, it has a purpose to protect the little toe that gets beat up all the time. But if you’re too busy trying to be the stomach or the eyes one, you’re not walking in your purpose, so you’re not going to do it well. But on top of that, now what you were helping or what you were supposed to be doing is not getting done. And that’s, and that’s huge. You know, I think of, um, I use a lot of animal analogies in the little presentation that I give people. Cause I love animals, but it also, I use animals because unlike us, they listen to the Lord. And so I love using animal analogies because they showed the order, God, in, in so many ways, one of my favorites is a hermit crab and a sea anemone.

Michelle: They both are totally fine alone. They live their life. What’s cool. Is there a certain hermit crabs that as they’re, they’re crawling along and they might encounter an anemone that hops onto their shell or they’ll put it on the shell now, not only does the hermit crab have its own shell to kind of duck into if it’s in danger, but now blends in better because it has the anemone and the anemone who would have had to exert tons of energy to move on its own gets a free ride anywhere. And when the hermit crabs eating the debris that it’s, you know, the, the, whatever leftovers are floating in the air, the anemone gets to eat them. Think about how, okay, I want to be a hermit crab, but you’re an anemone. You don’t have to be the hermit crab to take part in the benefits of the hermit crab. You know, you don’t have to be on the worship team where you don’t have to be a person who gets the credit for designing something or putting on an event to experience the blessings of that. If you don’t work in your purpose, you rob God of the opportunity of blessing you.

Shea: You know, when I, when I was going over the notes, I really, it really came like this thought. Cause I mean, when you read it for the first Corinthians, you know, you get to 12-18, and it says, but as it is, it goes right along with what you’re saying. It says, God arranged the members in the body. Each one of them, as he chose, see, we sit there and we try to place ourselves. 

Shea: But see, God has chosen our position. Just like he’s chosen the anemone and the, and the hermit crab. He knew that the enemy could get onto the hermit crab and they would benefit one another. He knew this body. And then you skip down to verse 27. We’ve been purposed. You know, it’s like, now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. It doesn’t say that you’re anything else.

Shea: It never says that you’re something else. You’re now an individual member of it. He’s not like, well, here you go. You’re nothing. No, no. Cause we’re all unique. We all have something that naturally put into us. Michelle, you asked her to draw you a horse, man. I’ll tell you what beautiful horse. That thing would be like, what? You’d be looking at you. Ah, yeah man, you could tell what kind of horse it was. And then you get me and my little niece sits and says, Hey, Hey, uncle shaky dropped me a horse. And things like park, dog, pig, horse. You don’t really know. I mean, you look at your life, but you know, that’s, that’s what God gave us though. Right? God gave us different abilities, different tasks. He made us what we’re supposed to be. Yeah. Look, people will sit there. I don’t know what to do. Well, you could have, right. Where do you strive? What can you offer that? You already have, you, you don’t have to drift so far out of the lane that you’re just an unrecognizable creation. Now we are unrecognizable from the first day we believe, of course, because, Hey, we’re a new mint, but he didn’t take away your uniqueness. And so we all fit into this piece and I love that as he chose.

Michelle: We all have different struggles that will, when we encounter them with the Holy spirit, guiding us, build us up in the way that he’s planned. That goes along with what we’re good at, right? That we encounter those in our purpose. The parable of the talents also kind of comes in here when he can trust you with what he’s already given you. And he sees that you’re using it for him and his glory. He can give you more. You don’t have to be on stage on the worship team or nothing. Right? Oh, I want that. Cause that’s like, you know, that’s the big deal. The responsibility of that is huge. They have their own struggles, but you, you might be the one who feels called to mop the floor and praise God for you because that is so important. And yeah, people might never know that that is what you’re doing, but that’s not God saying, that’s the only thing you’re good at. Right? It’s that in that obedience, in that humility, in that moment of whatever you’re doing, he can entrust you with more. You might expand. It’s so important. Cause I always say you don’t become a better swimmer by taking cooking classes. He’s got a plan for you. So rather than trying to force your way into another little shape, be who you are in Christ, growing, becoming more and more sanctified

Shea:That 1 Peter 4:10, you read in verse 11, that in all things, God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. That is that. That is the money. I want you to look at that section and just sit there and say, you know what, whatever I do it’s to his glory, trust me. I think some of my best worship when I was saying, when I sing is when I’m in the audience. It’s like, now don’t get me wrong. I mean, I, I still feel the presence. I still am. I’m still in the spirit. You’re right though. Especially I remember when we first hooked into the sound system. Now you could hear everything like you could not our microphone. Y’all just let you know, had a little nivo up microphone on the Meebo. So like music could ground out your mistakes and you would never ever know it. The minute you run that thing through a soundboard, the whole game changes

Michelle: And the contentment just out the window.

Shea: Oh my goodness. And you sit there. I remember the first two Sundays. It’s just, I’m just thinking like go back to the old school way of how I was trained, pronounce it, seeing it, you know, but you don’t have to have that position. I liked that. I loved what you said, my dad and I hope he hears this one day. All love Dad. But I know growing up, I used to look up at him as he was singing and cringe. I was like, I’m embarrassed, comparison. Of course always. You know, like even at that age, you’re comparing like horrible, but here’s the reality. He was in true worship. He didn’t care. It was him. And it was God.

Michelle: That’s the biggest thing. You might, will really want to do a specific thing that you just feel there’s no opportunity for right now. But there are some amazing identities that we already hold in, Christ all of us, that level, the playing field. And we need to cling to those so much more than what we look like, physically, what we sound like verbally, how well we might speak, you know, work conduits of Christ’s life. We are justified and redeemed. We’re a temple of the Holy spirit. We’re chosen Holy blameless, seated in heavenly places where God’s workmanship, we’re light in the Lord. We’re a citizen of heaven. We’re complete in Christ. We’re accepted. We’re a child of God. We’re a friend of Jesus. We’re free. We’re a Saint, we’re an air. We’re blessed with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places. We’re loved. Right? And that is where we need to sit.

Michelle: Because when you sit in that completeness that we talked about in the beginning, it doesn’t matter what the enemy or your flesh throws at you. And especially not with anyone outside of that does, you will be able to confidently sit in your purpose, knowing you are living in the best God has for you and nothing you might want outside of that, whatever compare, right? You don’t have to have tasted it to see, you know? And so that’s what we want to leave you with. Especially in this time where the negativity of other things might, tange your own outlook on yourself. You’re like, what am I doing with my life? Who am I really that’s who you are really, that’s what unlocks your purpose.

Shea: People get caught up in this as well. I could do it better. We start comparing it all kinds of ways. And let me tell you, it takes you into dark places, but watch Philippians 2:3, but in humility, count others more significant than yourself.

Michelle:  Amen. That’s a perfect place to leave it. Thanks for joining us again. And we will see you next time and just remember to go to the pantrypodcast.com to leave us prayer requests and thoughts and opinions and everything else till next time.

KEYWORDS: CONTENTMENT, COMPARISON, THEIF OF JOY.