The Most Dangerous Thought

There is a certain line of thought that will sneak into your brain and set fire to everything good, reversing the spiritual growth you’ve been working hard for and making you feel terrible about yourself. When this specific type of thinking sneaks in, it’s almost as if it goes over to your spiritual control center and turns down all the audio so that you can’t hear the Lord, you can’t get anything out of Scripture and you start to spiral downward emotionally. All the devil has to do to completely take you off your square and out of the game is just whisper one little idea to you and then your brain and heart do the rest.

So, what is this perilous line of thinking? What is that one thought that will take you out if you let it whisper its way through your heart?

“Look at that person over there... Why do they have it so good when I don’t?”

Comparison. Simple as that. All the devil has to do is ask you one little question: “Why does she get a guy like him? Why does he get all that money? Why do her parents care so much about her when yours are so unkind? Why is he good at everything he tries? Why is she so thin and perfect?” -- man, that one little question starts the ball rolling of discontent, self-doubt, bitterness and eventually hatred. Comparison can make the sweetest person into the most angry, small-minded person who is an emotional train wreck. Comparison will kill your joy, dismantle your love for the Lord and silence the still, small voice of the Lord in your heart. 

So, how do you stop those dangerous thoughts? Well, you just have to freaking stop them. 2 Corinthians 10:5 says “We take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” That means you arrest those thoughts. You have to detect them, chase them down and handcuff em. Get them off the streets of your mind and heart. Put them behind bars with no parole. To do that, you have to start to recognize what comparison is doing to you. You have to hate the way it makes you feel. You have to realize that no one else’s life is exactly what it seems and you have to trust Jesus - believing that His plan for you is something beautiful. And then, you have to populate your heart and mind with gratitude. Being thankful to Jesus for the stuff in your life is the best way to combat the poison of comparison. Be thankful for the stuff in your life that you love and then ask Him to strengthen you so that you can even be thankful for the stuff that’s not so good and that you don’t understand. 

After the Resurrection, Jesus told Peter that when he was an old man, people were going to make Peter die a painful death. Peter looked back at John and said, “Lord, what about him?” and Jesus said to Peter, “What’s it to you?” -- Comparison is the joy killer and the spiritual life killer. Let’s let Jesus do what He’s doing in other lives and ours and just learn to be thankful.