Faithbase

Hey faith-based friends and family. I have a confession and a small challenge for you. I just feel like the Lord reminded me of something that happened. What happened, but a lot of it was in the interior of my being quite a few months ago. I was having lunch with a very dear friend, someone I love deeply and respect, and somehow he asked about my daughter's ACT score, right, and I shared and she did very well. She's very intelligent. And then he shared and he shared how his son had gotten one point higher. I didn't like that. Something inside of me needed him to know that my daughter is the best. And so I communicated how my daughter was educated in a third-world country. Her education was not geared towards the ACT and that she was fluent in another language and conversational and other. And do you see this, like, ugliness? It's like, what in the world? Where did this come from? This, like, competition. And I know 1 Corinthians 9 says run the race in such a way as to win. I believe the Lord's just telling us let's be really faithful with what's been entrusted to us. Let's do it so well. Be disciplined and diligent. But I say let's cling to this posture of humility and love. Philippians 2 says do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others more highly than yourselves. So I say that as a confession about what was going on in here and even what came out of my mouth and I'm embarrassed about it. I laugh about it now. But I also say it as a challenge that we don't have to, like, one-up. We don't have to try to make people think certain things about us, about our family, about what we know, what we can do. Or at my age we say I used to be able to. We don't need to say those things. Let's just celebrate the other person. Let's just make them feel so honored, so valued. Let's celebrate their victories. Let's celebrate what they're celebrating. Let's esteem them more highly than ourselves. Just an encouragement is a challenge. I guess it's mostly an encouragement and challenge for myself, but I invite you to receive it as well. Blessings to you today.