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Are you always comparing yourself to ______? And feel why do they have it better?

Mon, 28 Sep 2026 01:05:09 GMT

The Greatest Is the Least

"For it is the one who is least among you all who is the greatest." (Luke 9:48)

Have you ever felt that quiet sting when a colleague got the raise you were hoping for? Or when someone else got the promotion, and you know you worked harder, stayed later, and carried more of the load?

Maybe it isn't work. Maybe it's the friend who landed the better job, drives the nicer car, travels every other month, and lives in the house you've been dreaming about. You scroll through their perfectly curated posts, the beach sunsets, the fine dining, the new title on LinkedIn, and something in you shrinks a little.

If we're honest, most of us have been there. We compare salaries, titles, houses, vacations, even how "blessed" someone else seems to be. Comparison has a way of creeping into everything and everyone.

The Disciples Did It Too

If that sounds familiar, you're in good company. In Luke 9, the disciples, the very men who walked with Jesus, ate with Him, and witnessed His miracles, were arguing about which of them was the greatest.

Imagine that. They were standing next to the Son of God, and their minds were on rankings.

Jesus knew what was in their hearts. So instead of settling the debate, He did something unexpected. He took a little child, placed the child beside Him, and turned their whole idea of greatness upside down: the one who is least among you all is the greatest.

What Does "Least" Really Mean?

Have you ever really stopped to think about what that means?

In God's economy, greatness isn't measured by what we have, what we've achieved, or how impressive we look to others. It isn't the person with the biggest office, the most followers, or the longest list of accomplishments.

The "least" are the ones who don't need to be first. They are the humble, the ones who live simply, the ones who serve without keeping score. They're the ones who make room for others instead of competing with them. Like the child Jesus held up, they don't come with status or credentials, only an open heart.

Greatness, then, isn't about climbing higher. It's about bending lower.

Bringing It Back to Work

So what does this look like on a Monday morning?

It looks like celebrating a colleague's promotion sincerely, even when part of you wishes it were yours. It looks like doing excellent work even when no one notices, because your worth isn't determined by who sees it. It looks like helping a struggling teammate succeed, even if it means they shine brighter than you for a while.

It looks like leadership that serves rather than demands. The best leaders I've known weren't the ones who needed the spotlight. They were the ones who lifted others into it.

None of this means ambition is wrong, or that we shouldn't hope for growth, fair pay, or recognition. It means those things no longer get to define us. When our identity rests in God rather than in rankings, comparison loses its grip.

A Few Questions to Sit With

Whose success have I secretly resented lately, and what is that feeling trying to tell me?

Where am I measuring my worth by what I have instead of who I am becoming?

Who can I serve this week, quietly, without needing credit?

A Closing Prayer

Lord, forgive me for the times I've measured my life against someone else's. Free me from the need to be first, to have the most, or to look the best. Teach me the kind of greatness You showed us, the kind that kneels, serves, and loves without keeping score. Help me celebrate others freely and find my worth in You alone. Amen.

The next time you catch yourself comparing, pause and remember that the scoreboard you're looking at isn't the one that matters. Heaven keeps a different one, and on it, the least are the greatest.

Purpose and Passion

Mon, 21 Sep 2026 00:49:47 GMT

Are you waking up motivated or feeling meh?

Turns Out God Was Ghostwriting My Career Plan All Along

"Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge." — Psalm 19:2

The Problem

Almost every coaching conversation I have eventually circles back to some version of the same question: "Am I even doing the right thing with my life?"

People come to me exhausted from chasing a "passion" they haven't found yet. Others feel guilty for enjoying a job that doesn't sound impressive enough at parties. And a lot of high-performers are quietly terrified that they've built an entire career on autopilot, with no grand plan behind it — just decisions made because they seemed interesting at the time.

Sound familiar? It should. Because I was that client too.

The Reflection

For years, I prayed for clarity like it was a subscription I forgot to activate. Lord, just send the master plan. One PDF. That's all I'm asking.

Instead, I got certifications. A lot of them. I signed up for coaching programs because they looked interesting, not because they fit some grand strategy. I got certified in things because the curriculum caught my eye. No five-year plan. No vision board. Just curiosity, one credential at a time — secretly wondering if I was just avoiding a "real" decision by staying busy.

Looking back now? None of it was random. While I was demanding a map, one was already being drawn — using the exact things I'd dismissed as side interests.

This is basically Psalm 19's whole message: the heavens don't hold a press conference to announce God's glory. They just show up, day after day, night after night, until the pattern is unmistakable. Purpose works the same way. It's rarely a lightning bolt. It's an accumulation — usually only visible in the rearview mirror.

The Solution

Here's what I now tell clients stuck in the "do I even have a purpose" spiral: stop looking for the mission statement. Start looking for the pattern.

What have you kept returning to, even when it made no strategic sense? What skill did you pick up "just because"? That recurring curiosity isn't a distraction from your path — it's usually data about it. You don't need the whole map today. You need to notice the next quiet nudge.

The Tip

Try this: once a week, write down one thing you did that felt slightly you — even if it had nothing to do with your job title. Not the achievements. The instincts. Over a few months, read them back together.

You won't see a straight line. You'll see a shape. And that shape, more often than not, turns out to be the plan you were praying for all along.

Lord, help me notice what You're already building — even when I can't see the finished shape yet.

#purpose #motivation #coaching #leadership

We Detest This Worthless Food

Sun, 13 Sep 2026 23:59:27 GMT

I never realized how much I complained.

We Detest This Worthless Food

So as I wrote this, I realized, how much I've read similar posts and how authors said lift up your work. So for awhile I thought I was "lifting up the work" but realized how my tiny actions were not aligned to it.

I never realized how much I complained. Not enormous complaints — small, everyday ones. Not enough of this, not the right quality of that. My husband's habits. My boss's leadership style. My colleagues' way of working. How long the elevator took. Decisions made by people I'd never meet. Why someone else seemed to get the better job, the easier life. It became a pattern so consistent that it eventually got me into trouble — and that was the moment I finally saw myself clearly.

It reminded me of a story in Numbers 21. The Israelites, freed from slavery and on their way to a promised land, grew impatient with the journey. "We detest this worthless food!" they cried — tired of the manna, tired of the wilderness, tired of waiting for something better. Their complaining wasn't really about the food. It was about control, about wanting the journey to look different than it did. And when I read that, I recognized myself in the crowd.

God's response wasn't to fix the complaint. He told Moses, "Make a snake and put it up on a pole; anyone who is bitten can look at it and live." The healing wasn't in getting what they wanted — it was in looking somewhere beyond themselves.

That's what shifted for me, eventually. I realized my complaints were rooted in wanting things done my way — expecting people to work in my style, meet my standards, move at my pace. I was pouring my energy into how things should be, instead of pouring my strengths into the work itself. So I made a decision: I would offer my work — my actual effort, skill, and care — not to prove myself, not to control outcomes, but to God. Not for me. For Him.

The moment that shift happened, something loosened. The work felt lighter. It had a different kind of purpose behind it — not "will this go the way I want," but "I'm offering this fully, and what happens next isn't mine to hold onto." My anxiety eased. The tightness I used to carry into meetings and deadlines eased with it. And strangely, more work came — more beautiful work, more meaningful opportunities — once I stopped gripping so tightly and started offering instead.

I'm not saying I've arrived. I'm human, and I still catch myself slipping back into old complaints now and then. But I no longer live there. And Matthew 11:28 comes to mind often now: "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest." Rest doesn't always mean the circumstances change. Sometimes it means you change — how you carry the work, who you're really doing it for.

If you find yourself complaining more than you'd like to admit, maybe the invitation isn't to fix everything around you. Maybe it's to look up, offer what you have, and let the rest be lighter than you thought it could be.

Stretch Out Your Hand

Sun, 06 Sep 2026 23:38:31 GMT

The Stretch

"Stretch out your hand." He did so, and his hand was completely restored. — Luke 6:6–11

The Stretch We Need

"Stretch out your hand." He did so, and his hand was completely restored. — Luke 6:6–11

There's a man in this story with a withered hand. He's in the synagogue (not in private but in public), and Jesus tells him to do the one thing his condition should have made impossible: stretch it out. Not "let me heal it and then you'll move it." Not "wait for the feeling to come back." Stretch it out — now, in front of everyone, before anything has changed.

He does it anyway. And that's when it's restored.

This resonated with me a lot this morning because it names something I see in myself, and honestly, in most people I work with: we get comfortable inside our limitations. We build a whole life around the thing we can't do, until "I can't" stops being a description and starts being an identity.

We are creatures of auto-pilot

Wake up. Commute. Complain. Work. Repeat. Somewhere in there, we tell ourselves we want a better life — more freedom, more impact, more of whatever "more" means to us that week. But we don't move toward it. We just keep circling it in our heads while the routine runs itself.

This isn't laziness. It's comfort. Autopilot is efficient — it asks nothing new of us. Change, on the other hand, asks for effort we haven't budgeted for. So we keep choosing the routine, quietly, every single day, and then wonder why nothing is different a year later.

Here's the part that stings a little: comfort isn't something that just happens to us. We maintain it. We protect it. Every time we say "not yet," "not this quarter," "when things settle down" — we're not delaying the stretch. We're choosing the withered hand, because at least it's familiar.

The stretch always looks impossible right before you do it

Think about what was actually being asked of that man. His hand didn't work. And the instruction was to use it — the exact motion his condition prevented. From the outside, it sounds almost cruel. From the inside, I imagine it felt absurd.

That's usually what our own stretch feels like too. It's rarely the easy next step. It's the thing that seems to require a capability we don't yet have — the conversation we're not ready to have, the offer we're not qualified to make, the version of the work we haven't proven we can do. We call it "can't." Most of the time, it's "haven't yet, because it's uncomfortable to try."

The stretch is where hope, inspiration, and the dream we're working toward actually live. Not in the comfort we're protecting — in the extension past it.

It happens in public

One more detail worth sitting with: he didn't stretch out his hand in private and report back that it worked. He did it in front of people who were watching — some of them hoping he'd fail, so they'd have something to accuse.

If part of what's keeping you on autopilot is the fear of being seen trying and possibly falling short, you're not alone, and you're not wrong to feel that. But it's worth noticing that the story doesn't offer a private version of restoration. The visible stretch was the whole point.

So — where's your stretch this week?

Not five years from now. Not "eventually." This week.

Maybe it's a conversation you've been avoiding. A version of your work you've been too polished, too careful, too comfortable to actually put out into the world. A boundary you know you need to set. A door you keep walking past because opening it means admitting you want something you haven't earned yet.

Whatever it is — it's probably the thing that feels most like stretching out a hand that doesn't work.

Stretch it out anyway. That's usually where the restoring happens.