2 Corinthians 10
Be still: Heavenly Father thank you for your presence, your kindness, your peace and your love, poured out on me again and again. Amen
Read: 2 Corinthians 10
'You are judging by appearances. If anyone is confident that they belong to Christ, they should consider again that we belong to Christ just as much as they do.' (v7)
Encounter: We are told that ‘Comparison is the thief of joy’ and we can find it a particularly potent struggle if we measure ourselves against Social Media posts, influencers, celebrities, families, and sometimes even others in our own church – usually leaving us feeling inadequate or jealous.
Yet we, too, are prone to ‘judging by appearances’. Here we see Paul wrestling with the outworking of this same issue, commenting on a lack of wisdom when the people he writes to ‘measure themselves by themselves’ and call him ‘unimpressive…his speaking amounts to nothing’ – I’m not sure I’d have the guts to say that of the super-apostle Paul!
However, this kind of mental and emotional struggle can be a real battle of the mind for us and not one we can easily fight with human weapons – the usual attempts at personal achievement, self-help or approval from others not amounting to much. This battleground can become an unhelpful stronghold for us. The good news is that we have access to spiritual weapons that ‘have divine power to demolish strongholds’ (v 4) – that even our thoughts, comparisons and need for approval can be ‘taken captive’ and made obedient to Christ who speaks truth and life over us.
Apply: When comparison or perhaps limitation threatens to hold us back or trip us up, it can be a helpful practice to imagine clothing ourselves in the spiritual ‘armour of God’ as described in Ephesians 6. We picture our minds and bodies dressed and ready with the ‘weapons’ of God’s truth, peace, righteousness and the knowledge that we have victory through the death and resurrection of Jesus. We remind ourselves of the divine reality that we do not earn approval through our own commendation or that of others, but rather, from the Lord himself who welcomes us in and calls us son or daughter.
Devote: Thank you, Father, that you accept me through the work of your Son, Jesus. Thank you that I am eternally ‘approved of’ by you. Remind me today that this is all that really matters.