Good morning everyone and welcome back to another mornings with the masters where we devote ourselves to the Lord daily with you. Good morning you guys. Good morning indeed as we were rounding out with day five of our killing comparison devotional in the Bible app.

There's a link to that in the description if you guys want to follow along with us and as always. I'm not going to read the scripture because it's all up in this devotional tour. He's going to take it from here. Yes, y'all. Let's do it. The devotional says this when I was on my journey to getting free from toxic comparison. God drew my attention to the life of Jonathan King saw son and David's best friend as a case study and healthy identity. I had honestly never studied him in any deep way. I saw him as a supporting character in the story of David

but not as someone to learn from yet the more I study the story of Saul and David I realized the real hero of the story was Jonathan. Here's why and first Samuel 18 for it says Jonathan took off the rope he was wearing and gave it to David along with his tunic and even his sword his bow and his belt. Although Saul gets the headlines for acting out and behaving poorly from the belief that David was a threat to his kingdom.

The truth is that David wasn't a threat to Saul because Saul was already king and truth David was a threat to Jonathan because if the people wanted David to be king it would have been after Saul died. Yet look at how Jonathan responds to David returning from battle victorious. Instead of feeling threatened by David's success he celebrated David's success.

He gave David his royal robe and weapons and this is the key to living free from comparison. Killing toxic comparison requires celebrating others. You aren't in competition with someone you are rooting to win. You aren't threatened by someone you are celebrating and this is why Jonathan was able to live with joy and peace as the people celebrated David.

Jonathan didn't secure his identity to being the future king. He secured his identity to being who God said he was at that moment and at that moment he was the son of the king. He was a servant of God and he was David's friend.

Jonathan knew a truth that many of us forget no man or woman is a threat to the purpose God has placed within you.

You don't have to measure yourself against someone else because there is no comparison. Their purpose is unique. God doesn't create duplicates or extras so stand firm in who you are and reject the lie that you aren't good enough. It's time to live free from comparison.

I love this one. I love it. I never really thought about that because the true successor to be king would be the son of the king. Jonathan is the one who should be all up and feathers about it. I see up and feathers.

I just thought that was really powerful and you've heard me say before as we've tackled the topic of comparison before but the only reason you should look at someone else's cup is to make sure that they have enough.

I just had a conversation with a friend this past weekend where we're talking about how the fastest and greatest way to success is to make other people successful.

There's nothing wrong with that. I feel like when it gets back to that topic of who's the main character in the story, it's easy for us to allow our fear that if someone else wins, I'm now losing. If someone else succeeds, I'm now failing.

If this person makes that money, I now can't make that like it's a zero sum game where there's say there's a hundred cards in the table and this person is 50, this person is 50, this person gets 70, this person gets 30, it's a zero sum game.

But that's not how things work in God's kingdom. God is infinite. He's limitless. And so we need to not live like he has limits. But there's a difference there.

That doesn't mean that now there's going to be 15,000 kings out there. What that means is that God has a unique limitless goal for your life and a purpose for your life that may look different than the way that the world sees it.

And now here we are thousands and thousands of years later admiring Jonathan who wasn't the king. And I just think it's so special that in a moment when he could have got on his dad's side and hunted down the future king David to kill him yet he chose to be a friend to him.

And here we are thousands and thousands and thousands of years later reading about Jonathan.

Yeah, that's so good. And I just remember we've shared this before. But when we were on our journey trying to conceive it, I remember towards the beginning when a lot of my other friends were getting pregnant.

It could have been so easy to slip into God. Why are you blessing them and not me? And I'd be lying if I said that that thought didn't cross my mind here and there.

But I was so encouraged by this one sermon that was saying it takes self discipline sometimes to celebrate others.

And celebration is going to bring so much fruit to your life because as you celebrate others, when it is your time, they also celebrate you.

And it's just a bigger celebration altogether. But I promise you, if you're praying for something, whether that's to get into that school, whether that's to meet the right person or get engaged or get married or have a baby, there's always going to be something you're praying for that someone else is currently walking in.

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