Hey y’all, I am Caitlin Zick from Moral Revolution, and I’m so excited to be here for God Today with you. Today we’re going to dive into the topic of comparison. Nobody struggles with that, right? You’re like, “Oh, let me look over there. They must. But for me, that’d be easy.” Comparison is something that’s like an old quote that comes up on Pinterest or Instagram a lot. It says, “Comparison is the thief of joy.” It’s true. It is. It tries to steal our joy and rob our peace.
And what I would love to dive into today is, it kind of feels like it’s become a really easy label to just tap on like, “Oh, comparison. I struggle with comparison.” But I kind of actually picture it like a trap door. Right? A trap door on the ground where I had no idea that it was there, and then you just all of a sudden fall in. It’s like comparison’s like that trap door, like, “Oh, I’m okay. Even standing on that door, yeah, I struggle with that. Everybody does.” This kind of normalizes it.
But what happens when that door opens up and you realize what is comparison, really? It’s envy, it’s jealousy, it’s bitterness, it’s nasty. It’s bad. It is not something to be messed around with. And it’s sin. And I think sometimes it’s easy to put that pretty label on top. “Oh, comparison. It’s just part of our lives.” It’s almost like we come to accept it, but I’m like, “I will never settle for a life of sin.” Right? What sin am I in? Every time I scroll, if I’m getting stuck in jealousy and envy or thinking, “She doesn’t deserve that. How did they get to go there? Lord, what are You doing with me if that’s what you’re doing with them?” Let’s be real about what happens.
And so I would like to just give this simple reminder to slow your scroll. Ask your own soul what’s going on inside while you scroll and ask, “Lord, show me, catch me. Let me not be okay with it. Let me not be okay with jealousy or bitterness.” And then honestly being a woman, I know what even that can fall to sometimes – we can gossip like, “Oh, did you see, can you believe?” Goodness no! Let’s be called higher. We are better. God does not see us that way. He did not call us to be daughters or sons that get trapped in jealousy, envy, and bitterness.
In James 3:16 it says, “For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice.” Another translation says, “Wherever it is, you’ll find all kinds of evil disorders.” That’s what happens. It just grows, right? Because we let it live. We’re like, “Oh, just here and there and there.” And then it just grows and grows and we have to say, “Nope, I’m stopping.”
I came up with this really simple trick, and I realized I needed to teach this because I needed this. I needed this to get me to slow my scroll, stop the jealousy and envy, stop the gossip, and be able to say, “You know what, Lord, I want to turn my jealousy, comparison, all that, into gratitude and into thankfulness.” I don’t know if you’re anything like this, but I just hate the devil. So I’m like, he will not win. He will not get that on me today or tomorrow or the next day. So when I realize those feelings coming up at me, I’m like, “Nope, I’m going to get you back. I’m going to give God praise for it. I’m going to give God thanks for it. I’m going to go the opposite way and put it in your face.”
So I created this little thing I call the gratitude game. I think social media, we all know, has its pros and cons – beautiful things, negative things. But I’m not going to let the enemy win there and get off social media because I’m going to figure out how to be victorious in it. And so here I am. What I decided to do is go to my social media feed and scroll through my own life. Imagine. Because when I go look at my life, I have so many things.
It’s like the old saying that you might’ve had on your kitchen door when you were a little kid, “count your blessings.” That’s what happens when I play the gratitude game because I go to my own feed. I go to my own life and I’m so thankful. God, look at the life You’ve given me, look at the family You’ve given me, the friends, the relationships, all of it.
I try to put Scripture on my feed. So then I open my feed and see, “God, that’s what You said.” So when you get there, instead of just being like, “Social media is evil,” we can turn it for good. We can use it for good. And we can have self-control over our own lives to not get stuck in comparison and be like, “Oh no, Lord, You have so much more. You have so much more for me than to get stuck in that trap door, falling into all kinds of evil disorders when I get stuck in jealousy, envy, and bitterness.”
And so today I just want to pray for you to be able to be victorious over that. Instead of it being a label that we as Christians own, that we would be like, “No, we are unique. We are who God has made us to be.” There’s no one on the earth that is like you. There is nobody on the earth that can do exactly what you do. I don’t know if you’ve ever also had that feeling of comparison. “Oh, that person’s already doing it. Why would I do anything like that? They’ve got that covered.” Do you need a reminder of how many billions of people are on the planet?
And sometimes people are like, “Oh, I’m not even leading.” You’re leading your life. You’re leading those that are in your circle of influence – your neighborhood, your school, your grocery store, your workplace. And so it’s so important that you get free from this. You lead in this and you say, “I don’t care if somebody else is doing it. I’m going to do it, Lord, for what I’m called to do with my unique voice.”
So it might look the same, but sometimes I feel like even that comparison gets us stuck, so frozen in fear. And we are not called to be frozen in fear. We’re called to go forward with what God has put in our hearts. And so it might look familiar, but it’s only what you have to say, what you can do and bring to the table and the circles of influence you’re in.
So Lord, we pray right now that the lies of comparison – because sometimes they’re so seated in that we don’t even recognize them – I pray that God, You would show us where comparison has been winning and where it really is a sin of jealousy, envy, bitterness, selfish ambition. I don’t want to get stuck in that, Lord. So God, we pray that You would show us where we get stuck in those mental pathways of thinking where those have been interwoven into our everyday life and that we might’ve even settled for that sin. We say no to settling for sin, no to being frozen in fear, and we say yes to You, God. Yes to all that You have for us.
So Lord, forgive us for when we’ve settled. Forgive us for when we’re like, “I like that feeling of envy because I feel very much like I have a right to be envious.” Let us lay down our rights at Your cross, God, and be like, “I’m so sorry, Lord. Forgive me, forgive us for doing it.” And then let us live it out loud. When we walk in this freedom from comparison, let us live it out loud to show it’s possible. It is possible to be free from all of those kinds of evil disorders in our hearts and in our minds and our souls and our lives. And let us be good friends and family members and leaders because we’re living comparison-free.