A thought to end the week….<3

It looks the sun is going to shine on this cold day and that always makes everything better, doesn’t it?

We have had a rather full and busy week so on Monday I jotted down some ideas for thoughts and today’s may be a stretch for some of you, but hang with me please. 

I was pondering Philippians 2:3 one day and we can just start with the passage that was running through my mind. 

Instead of being motivated by selfish ambition or vanity, each of you should, in humility, be moved to treat one another as more important than yourself. NET

I just grabbed that translation, feel free to use any one you prefer or several. 

The part that got me thinking was the “treat one another as more important than yourself.”

And I thought about how twisted our thinking can get in the prosperity and luxury of living in this country with all the rights, privileges and stuff that we forget is completely uncommon in the majority of the rest of the world. 

We, here in America, are often so busy being caught up in the comparison game that we assess our own current “importance” by what we lack based on what we think others around us have. 

(This is the part where you are going to have to just stick with the flow of my thoughts for a moment…please….)

So we look around and we compare ourselves to others and we fail to be thankful and grateful and acknowledge not only the physical blessings but MORE IMPORTANT…the spiritual blessings we have and so we undervalue ourselves in our own eyes and then…when we go to apply a verse like this…we have a lowered standard of our worth and so to esteem someone as better than us is really not to esteem them very much at all.

By putting ourselves down, we can be lazy about how much we put others before us… in a resentful and bitter kind of way. Not all the time, I understand that…but it does happen. 

I realized as I mulled this over that my own tearing down of myself then bleeds over so that even a minor nod towards another person’s value and worth IS a step up. 

If we are berating ourselves (and I am NOT talking about repentance that is necessary before God….I am referring to when we sit on the judgment seat of our own frail selves and deem ourselves to be worthless…based on error in our thinking) by comparing ourselves to the highlights of other people’s lives…we will be looking around at others with a skewed mindset and we will not be IN HUMILITY…counting them better than us. 

We have to respect who we are in Christ and get a right mindset about that before we can esteem others and honor them with our actions, words and attitudes. 

Focusing on what God says about Himself, us and others is the best place to start if we want to realign our thinking into proper perspective. 

Just another reason why comparison is not a good idea…at all. 

Something to ponder…would love to hear your thoughts <3