BVOV Magazine 2013 - present

1 6 : B V O V our time and energy trying to get what others have—whether in our ministry, career or home. People have been falling into the trap of the comparison pit for a long time, going all the way back to the early Church. The Apostle Paul dealt with it, and we're still dealing with it today. The good news is, the Word of God shows us the way out of the perilous pit of comparison and competition. An Atmosphere of Faith and Love In his letters to the churches, Paul wrote to several of them celebrating the good things that he had heard were happening among them. In Ephesians 1:15-16, he wrote, "Wherefore I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus, and love unto all the saints, cease not to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers." Paul couldn't stop giving thanks and praying for those believers because of their faith in God and their love for each other. That's powerful! And they weren't the only ones. He wrote similar letters to the Colossians and Thessalonians. Believers in those churches were putting their faith in Jesus, loving each other, giving to one another, and serving one another. That atmosphere of faith and love inspired Paul to intercede for them. When my wife, Sarah, and I founded Legacy Church in Green Mountain Falls, Colo., that's something we took to heart. The Lord gave us a clear directive that mirrored those early churches. He said, I want you to create an atmosphere full of faith and full of love. We received a vision for that mission. We wanted people to walk into the lobby of the church, take a deep breath, and sense the love of God. We wanted it to be intoxicating, like a warm scent that drew people in, comforted them and let them know they were in the house of God. But God's directive wasn't just for our church, or for those first-century churches. It's a directive for the entire Body of Christ. We're all to create places where faith and love permeate the atmosphere. Of course, those kinds of places don't happen by accident. We must be purposeful if we want those places to exist. We aren't faith people because we talked about faith one time a few months back. And we aren't automatically people of love because our pastors taught a six-week message on love a year ago. The atmosphere around us doesn't change because of what we do sporadically. It develops because of what we do habitually. We create atmospheres and cultures in our churches, offices and homes by what we do over and over again. Avoid Fixating on Outward Appearances Of course, not every church under Paul's leadership received this same glowing report. Take the church at Corinth, for example; believers there received two tough letters of correction from Paul. In 1 Corinthians 13, which we sometimes refer to as the "Love Chapter," Paul spent time defining the love of God because evidently, the Corinthians weren't practicing it. In his letter, Paul addressed "envy, strife, and divisions among you" (1 Corinthians 3:3, New King James Version), which resulted in people judging each other by outward appearances. The Corinthians were never going to have an atmosphere of faith and love if they continued to fixate solely on outward appearances. And guess what? Neither will we. In 2 Corinthians 10:7, Paul pointed to one of their problems when he asked, "Do you look at things according to the outward appearance? " (NKJV). He went on to warn of what happens when we judge by what we see outwardly instead of seeing the way God sees. Verse 12 says, "For we dare not class ourselves or compare ourselves with those who commend themselves. But they, measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves, are not wise" (NKJV). Resist Comparison and Competition Looking at outward appearances is how we fall into the pit of comparison. Reread verse 12 in the New Living Translation: "Oh, don't worry; we wouldn't dare say that we are as wonderful as these other men who tell you how important they are! But they are only comparing themselves with each other, using "It's a directive for the entire Body of Christ. We're all to create places where faith and love permeate the atmosphere." "We can't enjoy what God's called us to do if we're constantly looking at somebody else and thinking they're doing it bigger and better than we are. "

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