Ebay!

Did you know you can buy cars on EBay? I was about to bid $.01 on a Porsche, then I looked at the shipping.....

I've been on eBay this week, looking for some other things. I think I've found Ann's Christmas presents, but since it's her eBay account, she won't be surprised. Oh well. I took a little detour into the electronics side, and got to thinking about how much some of those items sell for. Some people are paying almost the same as retail for items that are used, refurbished, or, in truth, possibly stolen. (I should look for my mower!!!) Why do they do it? Because in the excitement of competition, we don't think about the true cost. Even eBay's advertising about 'Shop Victoriously!' pushes us to toss aside the cost, and win!

Our competive nature causes us to do things without considering the true cost. We all want to be the best, we want to excel, we want to win. Even preachers are that way. I want our church to be the best. I want us to be so much better then those Methodists or Presbyterians or Missionary Baptists! I want to beat all the churches in our association in baptisms!! I want to be the best church in the Arkansas Convention, even the nation!!!! We'll stop at nothing to get there!!!


Ok, had to come back to this after calming down. Obviously, I got a little carried away in that last paragraph. My fingers could hardly move fast enough. Now, there's nothing wrong with wanting to be the best, with wanting to excel, it's that when we get wrapped up in it, and put that last sentence on there that we get in trouble. Usually we won't say it, but we think that, and worse, that thought becomes action. And if we can't get better, we'll work to undermine others, so that we will be better.

We do this because we're insecure. We live in a culture dominated by winning or losing, and we need to get past it. All the winning we need was done on one weekend, when sin lost to the blood of Christ, and death lost to His resurrection. Because our identity is in Him, and not in where we rank, we need to lay off the competition sometimes. We still want to do all things with excellence, because this will glorify God, but it's not about doing things better than Second Baptist, but about doing things to the standard of our Lord.