There is the cancer of COMPARISON. One of the first questions you will hear at a Monday ministers’ conference is, “How many did you have in attendance yesterday?” The temptation then is to pout that we did not have more or to pride that we did. We may brand ourselves a failure and want to quit because others seem to be advancing while we are declining. Then, if we have the higher statistics in how many bottoms we put in a pew and how many bucks are placed in the plate, we may be headed for a fall that pride produces. Let us just be who God made us to be—the best we can be—where He has called us.
Further we face the cancer of COMPETITION. This is where comparison becomes a passion to see others fail and a desire to see ourselves succeed. In competition, there are winners and losers. The winners are adding to their attendance and the losers are seeing subtraction from their flock. While it is important to be used to grow the church, it is God who gives the increase. Truly, He uses us, but only the Spirit of God can birth new believers. But, it may not be that we are seeking the lost sheep but stealing the sheep from others! In a competitive spirit, we may profit by transfer growth while others are made poor from it. A test for us is, “How do you react when another church is reaching lost souls?” Can you rejoice with them? So long as the Kingdom progresses, we should be glad for we are on the same team!
Comparison and competition are really the cancer of COVETOUSNESS. In the Mosaic code, expressing God’s fundamental laws, the sum of obedience to the other nine is in that of the spirit of tenth. Covetousness causes us to seek to supplant God with our own authority. We may covet our own ideas of worship that become idolatry. We want to promote our own name at the expense of bringing glory to His name. We covet the time for our own pleasure that should be devoted to the refreshment of worshipping God. You get the point. Preacher, do you speak against covetousness from the pulpit while harboring it in your heart? It is such a subtle thing, and therefore all the more deadly. It can lead a man to assassinate the character of another pastor, to open himself to immorality because of his egotism, to become a rustler of someone else’s sheep, to engage in slander of another brother. Let us repent of covetousness!
May the Great Physician heal us from this cancer if it has invaded and strengthen our spiritual immune system with grace to prevent its incursion! I pray that the scalpel of Scripture will cut out this malignancy from me and all God’s servants!
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