God's Adoption for the FatherlessSample

Day Five – Competition vs God’s Purpose

My wife and I registered my four-year-old son for a soccer league, and he started out having fun but quickly got discouraged. The league didn’t keep score. It was just for fun. But he wanted to know who won or lost. Even at the age of four, my son was competitive.

If we believe the lie that performance brings value, then extreme competition naturally follows. Considering life in an orphanage, couples or families arrive, and children are measured against one another. As much as an organization might shield kids from that experience, some are chosen for a family and others aren’t, leading to feelings of rejection, all added to the original abandonment that caused them to be orphans.

The lie – to get love, we must be better than everyone else.

To the degree we deal with this spirit of competition, we struggle with collaboration, sharing, and being vulnerable, often beating others down to feel better about ourselves. Failure, whether real or imagined, becomes a crisis moment.

Lies are destructive, and living by competition brings distance and isolation. We pass on rejection and anger to others, causing more hurt and fracturing relationships, the opposite of the connection we desire.

The Truth – with Christ and the Father’s love, we’ve already won, and we each have a unique purpose within his family.

Through Jesus, we are reconciled with the Father. He is the prize. There’s no reason to keep score with others.

Our unique purposes and gifts are prepared in advance for us. We don’t have to achieve them. Our calling as disciples of Jesus is universal – reach out to people, declare God’s Kingdom, and invite them into his family. But our individual role within that purpose is unique, like a thumbprint. There is one Spirit but many manifestations of those gifts.

As we communicate God’s love, we can now share this victory, freedom, and purpose with others. It is Good News! We can appreciate and celebrate the diversity of gifts and roles in God’s family. None are better or worse. We need one another and can now work as one.

Father, thank you for sharing your secure and abundant love with me. I celebrate your unique purpose and gift for me in your eternal family. Give me the grace to see and enjoy the beauty of all people. Amen.