Three situations that you might find familiar:

  1. I sat in a conversation where everyone commiserated about how difficult it is to read their scriptures every day. I felt like I must be doing a great job, since that has been a natural part of my life. I thought that I must be awesome at living the gospel.

  1. I was part of a discussion where everyone started talking about how poorly they were doing at being ministering sisters, but then everyone revealed they were actually doing quite a bit more than what I was doing. I felt completely inadequate and like I was failing at living the gospel.

  1. I was chatting with a close friend about how we have both chosen to keep the Sabbath day differently. We justified our strengths and our weaknesses to each other and reassured each other that we were doing great.

Sound familiar?

I don’t think that anything is wrong about the conversations that I was part of.

In fact, many parts of the conversations were useful in healthy ways.

But my reaction to these conversations was that I was trying to judge and justify my own righteousness solely based on what other people around me were or weren’t doing.

Moroni advises us in Mormon 9:27:

“Come unto the Lord with all your heart, and work out your own salvation with fear and trembling before him.”

We are asked to humbly and sincerely work out our own salvation directly with our Savior.

Not falling into pride or self-loathing or justification based off of what other people around us do.

But to measure our success with the Lord.

To ask for confirmation on the things we are doing right, and correction on the things we should focus on.

It’s just Jesus and me.

There’s no race. There’s no comparison. We’ve all got a completely different set of circumstances, trials, sins, spiritual gifts, and blessings.

We can’t look around to see if we are behind or ahead.

We can only look up.

Beautiful artwork courtesy @scott_sligting_art

Happy Studying!

-Cali Black

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6 Responses

  1. Not comparing is so ingrained in us. So “natural man”. Being aware that you are comparing and telling yourself to stop is a step in the right direction. I’ll be glad when I can more consistently look at others as children of God and simply love.

    1. It’s a hard thing to consistently do, but it gets easier the more we try. I love that you’re aware of this and are making the effort to put off the natural man and look at others with God’s love.

  2. this is exaclty what i needed to hear this week! I have been doing the comparison game alot. i am the only one in my family that is even semi involved in church and it is hard to do it on your own, but that is just an excuse. Thank you for wording this perfectly!

    1. That’s got to be difficult and feel a bit lonely being the only one in your family who is semi involved in the church. Keep turning to the Savior to feel his love and remember that he knows your heart. He knows your circumstances. Look to the Savior for guidance. Thank you for taking the time to comment.

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