We talk a lot in our society about our tendency to put others down in order to build ourselves up. But there's an opposite extreme (as there so often is) that is rarely discussed: building others up to such a degree, it leaves us feeling miserable and inadequate.
Don't get me wrong. We should be encouraging each other. Seeing the beautiful in our brothers and sisters, and calling it out. Believing great things for them, praying great things over them.
But there's a line, and we cross it. We start putting the people we admire on pedestals. We start attributing their goodness to their own selves instead of to God in them. We turn them into an idol. We place them high out of our reach, and then make excuses for ourselves. I can never be like them. I'm not as spiritual. I'm not as loving. I'm not as good. And on and on and on. Each lie bringing a new poison: envy, resentment, frustration, despair.
So here's the truth: There is no one better than you. The Spirit in them is the same Spirit in you. The grace available to them is the same grace available to you. The freedom, the faith, the power. These things have been promised to us as children of God. When we see a brother or sister in whom these gifts are strongly manifested, we should not be intimidated--we should say, Yes, God! Give me that! I want more!
Because the lives of the faithful are not impossibilities for us; they are testimonies, the evidence of a God--our God--through whom all things are possible.
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