If we don’t find our significance and self-worth in our relationship with God, we’ll be people-pleasers. We’ll be tempted to spend our lives feeling insecure and trying to promote ourselves. That can be a dangerous place to be, because we can become resentful when other people seem to be ahead of us in life, and we might even be tempted to try and bring them down. In God’s kingdom we don’t achieve success on our own, we receive it from God. The Bible says: ‘It is God alone who judges; he decides who will rise and who will fall.’ While David’s brothers were striving to be Israel’s next king, David just kept tending his sheep and doing the job God gave him. We can be tempted to start competing and comparing, but we need to just stay faithful in what God has given us to do. When the time is right, He’ll use us for His glory. He has a plan for us all. We can’t compare our journey with others because they’re called to do something different from us. Jesus said, ‘For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.’ (Matthew 11:30 NIV). When we try to promote ourselves, we have to strain and struggle, but when we trust God and do things His way, it comes ‘easy’. That doesn’t mean we won’t have to work hard or make sacrifices in order to succeed. It just means we won’t have to strive to get it, or keep it. Knowing God is in control takes the strain out of serving Him. We don’t need to be stuck in a cycle of insecurity, people-pleasing, and comparison – we just need to let God do things His way.

What Now?

Every time you feel that you’re comparing yourself to others or trying to make yourself look good to gain people’s approval, remind yourself that you need to let God do things His way.