what if you knew the whole story?...

the bible says over and over again, never compare yourself to anybody else and it gives two reasons.

one, you’re unique. GOD made you special. there’s nobody like you. HE made the mold and then HE broke it. you can’t be comparable to anybody else.

two, if you do start comparing, it’s always going to lead to one of two sins – pride or envy. when you start comparing yourself you think either “i’m doing better than them,” and you get full of pride. or “they’re doing better than me,” and you get full of envy. and they’re both sins. so GOD says never, never, never compare because it’s always going to lead to either pride or envy.

a lot of times we envy people because we don’t know the whole story behind their success or what we think they’ve got that we don’t have or ought to have. if you knew their background or you knew what sacrifices they’ve made to get where they are or if you knew their pain or their hurt of if you knew what it cost them to get what they have, you might not want it. you don’t know the whole story and that causes you to envy. you can’t see their pain and hurt from a distance. when you see people from a distance, it’s a whole lot easier to envy them.

that’s why this thing about celebrity worship is so unreal. i hope you’ll never again read a gossip column. it’s a total waste of time, and it only leads to envy. all those things are just airbrushed pr releases anyway. they’re not what people are really like.

let me tell you something. you can write this down, and take it to the bank! nobody is as cool as they appear. they may look like they’ve got it all together but if you get close, they don’t have it all together.

nobody is as happy as they seem to be. nobody is as carefree as they seem to be. nobody is as satisfied with their life or as successful as they appear to be. and that constant stream of celebrities checking into betty ford clinic isn’t doing it for fun. they’re doing it because their lives come unraveled. and honestly, behind the lives of celebrities, they often have more pain because they’re in the glare of the spotlight. you really don’t want what they’ve got.

the reality is every one of us has hidden hurts.

GOD has tailor made your cross. it’s just the one that’s right for you. so the first antidote to dealing with envy is just to get to know people. get to know them up close and personal and get to know them intimately. when you get to know people closely, you don’t envy them. but you can pray for them.

just a thought from the front porch…