Priscilla Shirer - You Can't Compare Your Real Life to Someone's Life

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Well, I love so much of them. You acknowledge the
fact that all of us are going to struggle with this,
particularly in our society right now, because everything we are
inundated with images from other people's lives, and we get
the finished product or the staged product of whatever their
transformation has been. So they've staged it, they've lit it,

(00:20):
they've had you know, it's a perfect selfie of it,
and we see that, and we don't get to see
the sweat they had to put in, the long nights,
the tears they cried, the angst of it. And so
we're measuring their end product against our journey and the
difficulty that we know we face. And there in lives,
with all the joy and the benefit of social media,

(00:40):
they're in lives. What is part of the what can
be the toxicity of it, is that we are inundated
with the end results of everybody else's story. And so
I have definitely noticed this in myself. I love when
you mentioned doctor Anita, the little voice that says to
you when you're doing stupid stuff and just stopping for
minute to acknowledge the stupidity of looking at someone's end

(01:05):
results and then trying to compare myself and measure myself
and longing for what they have without knowing the full story.
I don't know what they went through to get that.
Here's something that I have been challenging myself to do
every single time that happens. I've been challenging myself to

(01:26):
overtly and specifically practically bless that person. So most of
the time, because a lot of times it's people we
don't even know. So what I'll do is I will
literally write their name down and pray for that person
immediately and ask the Lord to increase their territory and
to shine his favor and his face on them, to

(01:48):
give them an explosion of His presence and power and
peace in their life and whatever that person is striving towards,
to give it to them in spades full and just
bless them big and in that way, it's sort of
redirects all of that negative energy into something then that
the Lord can be used by the Lord to be
a blessing to that person, and it helps me to

(02:09):
reorient and reorient my perspective at the exact same time.
So I appreciate you acknowledging that we all have a
tendency to put other people up on pedestals. People have
a tendency to do it to us because they're seeing
us on a screen, so it'll happen to us. When
we see people on a screen or at a distance,
we do it to them. And really we just need

(02:31):
to ask each other, just here, hold my purse while
I climb down off of that pedestal, and you see
that my life is just as real as yours. And
so every time we feel that, we have to remind
ourselves that they're human just like us. So let's bless
them and ask God's favor to be on them and
sort of translate some of that negative envious energy into

(02:53):
something that can be used by the Holy Spirit to
be a blessing to those people. That helps me.

Speaker 2 (02:58):
You're such an amazing, gifted speaker. A lot of people
could look at you and say, you know, she's got
something that I don't have. And if I think envy
a lot of times is if if I can't have it,
then you shouldn't have it either.

Speaker 1 (03:14):
Yeah, it eats a way at us to where, like
doctor Anita said, we've got this limp. Now we're walking
along with this handicap. We're so consumed now with concentrating
on what the other person is doing or isn't doing,
or how they're excelling or the way they're excelling. That
now all of that attention is focused in a way
that actually is leaving us lacking. So that the time

(03:36):
the energy to effort what we're supposed to be doing
to hone our own craft, devote to our own relationship
with the Lord or the ministry that he is entrusted
to us, we don't even have the reserves for that
anymore because we are now handicapped by how much time
and attention we're spending focus outward on another individual. I
was thinking about how when I see this pop up

(03:58):
in my life, most of the time, it is a
clue to me that my world has gotten way too
small and narrow that I have am now so in
this little bubble where I'm just looking at the people
that are in this little bubble. And the thing is,
when you're in that moment of feeling envious, that bubble
will feel like the whole world. It feels like the

(04:21):
people you follow on Twitter are the whole world, or
the people that are in your industry, or the people
that do this kind of thing you do, that you follow,
and that you're in connection with. It feels like the
whole entire world. So as soon as I start to
feel envious and I'm outward focused and picking apart and
being critical of what everybody else is doing, that's the

(04:42):
first sign that I have become narrow rigid, that my
world has gotten too small, and so that I begin
to ask the Lord to broaden my perspective, to broaden
my view of what he's doing that is so way
past my little part in the Kingdom. He's we got
stuff going on in other countries and on other continents

(05:02):
that have never heard my name, that have never heard
our name, that have maybe never yet even seen this program.
He's doing stuff so beyond our little heart that if
I'm so consumed with my part and how it connects
with other people and what they are are not doing,
what it means is that I have lost my view

(05:23):
of the great, grand, big, beautiful scope of the power
of our great God.

Speaker 2 (05:30):
Hi, everybody, I hope you enjoyed this video. Subscribe today
and you'll never miss a new upload. Thanks for being
a part of our Better Together community.