Kill the Comparison Virus with Michael Cochren
When Family Life Radio talked with Michael Cochren from Cochren & Co., he emphasized the importance of perspective in your life.
“There’s a massive difference between sitting in a posture of entitlement versus a posture of gratitude,” he said. “If you walk around feeling like God owes you something, then everything that you see is not quite what it could be or what it should be. So, you look at every piece of your life, and you think you probably should have a bigger house, a nicer car, a better job. You may wish your spouse was a little different or your kids were a little smarter, or a little more athletic.”
But if you sit in a place of gratitude, a place of thanksgiving for things like drinkable and clean water coming out of your faucet and a place to live, when there are many who do not have these things, you begin to see everything differently.
You begin to view what you have as unearned blessings poured out because God is a merciful and gracious God.
As James says, “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change” (James 1:17 ESV).
Sometimes we become focused on the one gift we don’t have, instead of seeing that God has given us everything we need in life. This becomes amplified when we compare ourselves with others.
“I have got to kill the comparison virus in my life, or it will kill my joy,” Michael stated.
“I’ve got to put that to death because it’s so easy to look at people around you and think, ‘They’re so gifted. Look at all the things they have going on.’ Then you begin to miss everything that God is doing in your life.”
God wants you to focus on the calling He’s given you and not someone else’s calling. You are uniquely and wonderfully made (Psalm 139:14).
“Not that we dare to classify or compare ourselves with some of those who are commending themselves. But when they measure themselves by one another and compare themselves with one another, they are without understanding” (2 Corinthians 10:12 ESV).
The more you take time to intentionally thank God for what He has blessed you with, the less you will compare yourself with others and what they have or are doing. The more you focus your mind on things that are true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, commendable, excellent and worthy of praise, the more content and peaceful you become with God’s blessings and with what He gives you to do (Philippians 4:8 ESV).
Your dependance on God and His faithfulness gives you the assurance that He has equipped you for all He’s called you to do. Not only to do, but to be, no matter what that is.
Through Christ, God’s great power is at work in you. It’s what you were made for.
You, in Him, doing what He has called you to, brings God glory and is more fulfilling than anything else you could dream of. You don’t want to miss it by being too distracted, looking around and comparing yourself with others.
As you pray and spend time in God’s Word and as you listen for His Holy Spirit to direct you, He gives you the desires of your heart (Psalm 37:4). He puts desires into your heart that are pleasing and good for you, and that point others to Christ.
As Paul encouraged the Ephesians, “For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever” (Ephesians 3:14-21 ESV).
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