Ladies, the Lord has been placing on my heart how it breaks His when we compete with one another. His desire is for us to operate in grace, acceptance and love toward one another, yet we are so competitive with our sisters. Being driven by the need to always be on top—to look better, have longer hair, a better body, make more money, have a newer whip, a larger house, a husband or boyfriend with more money… it’s all killing us and robbing us from our purpose, which is in Him. I look at some of the competitiveness in my own sister-circles and it crushes me. My prayer is that each of us will hang up the gloves and stop sizing each other up.
The time we spend and energy we waste being competitive takes us away from sharpening our minds and spirits toward His word. Competitiveness is a trick of the enemy—satan wants you to remain insecure and to operate in immaturity towards one another. Your existence becomes a threat to him when you are razor-sharp focused on living out God’s calling for your life. However, as long as he can use deception to keep you preoccupied with meaningless thoughts and actions, he wins.
Points to Ponder:
- Philippians 3:14 reminds us that the reward we should most desire to receive is the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us.
- Our posture should be to remain humble. Matthew 5:5 teaches us that the meek will inherit the earth.
- Our goal in life, according to Colossians 3:17, should be for our words and deeds to align with our Lord Jesus.
- Colossians 3:23-24 instructs us to keep our focus on the prize– we are serving God and will receive an inheritance from the Lord as our reward. Earthly material gain doesn’t matter in heaven.
- We should not glorify ourselves or our accomplishments— Romans 12:3 urges us to self-assess and not to think of ourselves more highly than we are. The truth is, we are noting without the grace and goodness of God. Everything we have and all that we’ve become is because of Him, alone—because He master planned it and He allowed it to happen.
I urge you to spend time today reflecting on your own competitive nature and to join me in repenting— self-reflection will identify roots of competitiveness in each of our hearts. Let’s make immediate steps toward changing our thought patterns and actions. Let’s celebrate what God is doing in the lives of each of our beautiful sisters.
Employ purposed living,
Aziza Bailey
Hi Aziza,
Great post! I was caught up in comparison/competition for years before getting free. In my case however, the gloves I had on were to beat myself up, not others. I compared my self to others and always came up short. God later revealed it was a spirit of deep self-hate at the root of my comparison / competition. I believe this is issue is rampant in women today (in the world and in the church) and messages like yours are needed to help women get free. Thank you!
2 Cor 10:12-13 We do not dare to classify or compare ourselves with some who commend themselves. When they measure themselves by themselves and compare themselves with themselves, they are not wise. We, however, will not boast beyond proper limits, but will confine our boasting to the field God has assigned to us, a field that reaches even to you.
Great post! It is something I speak against all of the time. Thanks for sharing!