The Hard Work of Overcoming Myself
We live in a culture of competition. We love hearing news about who is the fastest, the richest, the strongest, the smartest. We revel in superlatives. But superlatives, by definition, deal in the tiniest of quantities. There aren’t dozens of gold medal winners in an Olympic race. There is one.
And so competition offers a minority of people a momentary boost of outward importance and reminds a majority of others that they are less than the best. What happens if we base our sense of worth or well-being in being best and someone else crosses the finish line before us?
Does our well-being really rest in beating everyone else? Is it really “out there” to be achieved? Is surpassing everyone else really the path to joy and fulfillment? Or might it not be that well-being comes instead as we rise above ourselves. There is a good that does not require rising above everyone else’s good. And I’m not talking about merely settling for “good enough.” What about winning the battle for becoming our best self in Christ?
For example, the good of love isn’t a good limited to just one superlative example. We don’t tend to think of love in terms of gold medal winners. While it’s true that we appreciate hearing about shining examples of compassion, we don’t usually assume that no one else can show compassion as a result.
Kingdom good is not limited to top performers. It is abundant and available to anyone and everyone who would reach for such eternal good. Blessed are the poor and the meek. They may not be considered winners in this world, but they are invited to be abundant recipients of generous grace.
To become all that God made me to be does not require that I conquer everyone else. Others are not the standard against which I must measure myself. Life is not finally a competitive event in which there can be only one winner. If it was, the winner would be God. But God has not chosen to play that game. Instead, Jesus comes not to be served as the winner of the race, but to serve everyone else in the field.
My greatest opponent is actually myself. The further I walk in this journey with Jesus, the more I realize this. It is overcoming my own negative thoughts, impulses and habits that is race enough for me.
I don’t need to surpass others to get what I need. I can receive all I need from my Maker, just like anyone else can, so that I might have something to sharewith others. Rather than seeing myself in competition with others for severely limited good, the kingdom of God is like a river that never stops running.
If I could somehow stand next to a river and take every ounce of water within my sight for myself, the river would simply fill in what I had taken and continue to flow. There is alwaysabundance in God’s kingdom. That’s not the vision of competition against the other.
What does this race looks like for you these days? In what way might Jesus be inviting you to a vision of His kingdom in which there is more than enough for you and for everyone else who will cross your path this week? What impulses or habits in your life are hindering you from fully enjoying, living into and living out of this grace-full kingdom? How would you wish to talk with God about this kind of race?
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Blog: “Identity: Roots or Pursuits?” (Alan)
Blog: “Embracing My True Self” (Gem)
Podcast: “Priorities – Keeping First Things First” (Alan & Gem)
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