No Service Or Job Is More Important Than Another
“There is no service or job that is more important IF what you are being called to do is done from the love of God and loving your neighbor as yourself. You [all] get applause 🤗”
Recently I witnessed two very lovely women, who have a heart of gold, putting down what they were doing just to raise up what the other person was doing to be more important. Valuing what others do is so very important and I applaud these ladies for consistently having this development. But what about valuing, as well, what they are doing inside themselves? Many people are trained to think that highly valuing what we are doing is prideful. I sure was taught that way! I found out the OPPOSITE is true (IF what you are doing is being done from the love for God and loving your neighbor as yourself)!
So many times in my life I have thought that what someone else was called to do was more important than what I was doing. I would feel small and weak like I did not matter and what I did was not significant compared to what others were doing. For example, when I was in middle school and high school, we had a family cleaning business. We cleaned bars, strip malls, health clinics, and condos, as just a partial list of activities. Cleaning something over and over, and then coming back to see it dirty and clean it again was not my idea of a good time. Plus, it was lonely work as obviously, we cleaned when things were closed.
I remember thinking over and over again as I was cleaning yet another disgusting ashtray or bathroom, “I wish I was doing something in the world that really makes a difference. Instead, I am stuck here where no one sees the hard work that we do here and we definitely don’t get any thank yous. We only hear from people when they are not pleased with something we have done or not gotten to. And it seems these companies that pay us don’t really value what we do. It’s like they think they are better than us and what we do is not as important as what they do. If they could only see that we help support them to be able to do their job. We work hard and help by keeping their buildings from deteriorating and stinking. We help so that their customers don’t get grossed out by a dirty place. But somehow we are less than them and not important.” I’m telling you – those attitudes observed by my young self really hurt and also shaped part of how I saw myself – a third-class citizen of the world.
Feeling like an unimportant slave that was not valuable to my owners
If that was not bad enough, society, the church I grew up in, and even my own family had this stigma that girls’ and women’s work was LESS valuable and applaudable than boys’ and men’s work. I felt like an unimportant slave that was not valuable to my owners. I was treated that way as well from my point of view. And let me just add, my point of view may be terrifically different from other people’s view of my life experiences. But this is what I felt in my reality.
I don’t feel sorry for myself. I am glad I had these difficult situations to deal with for decades of my life. I have chosen to use them to grow in compassion for absolutely everyone because I can relate to their difficult feelings and situations. Life has been such a great teacher!
I think that if I had not had those experiences, I probably would have grown up more entitled and believed that somehow I was better than someone else. Feeling better than or even lower than someone else usually means being in pride.
Oh yeah, you heard me – feeling lower than someone else is just as dangerous as feeling better than someone else. Why?
If a person perceives someone to be lower or higher than themselves, then there is to some degree or another a disconnect between them. This disconnect leads to looking down on others and despising them, OR thinking too highly of others and worshiping them. These paths of perception leave the person separated from the heart from themselves, from others, and even from God. God loved and loves the WHOLE world which makes us all equal. He made it. He let His Son sacrifice for it all. It is ALL redeemed and precious to Him. And this is good news because it means YOU are included with everyone and everything else in being loved and accepted! And yeah, yeah – to all those who added in their head and heart after just reading that last part, “but God loves those that believe in His Son more than those that don’t”, go to the footnote at the bottom of this writing and then come back and read the rest of this article.*
It is prideful to not choose to have the same opinion that God has. If you think too highly of yourself or too lowly of yourself compared to what God thinks, that is pride: You think your beliefs are more important than God’s beliefs.
Paul really brings these points of thinking too highly or lowly of yourself in 1 Corinthians chapter 3, the whole chapter. Um yeah, I think I will let you look that up yourself just for some amount of brevity of this post. Lol! Yeah, I can write on and on with excitement about these things. And really, look up that chapter because you won’t be convinced of what I am saying so far if you don’t. Anyhooo, let’s get back to this article…
How do we grow in seeing ourselves as EQUAL to everyone else and being able to connect?
The first step: Slow down and listen
Slow down and recognize when you are feeling and thinking you are worse or better than someone else. This exercise will definitely be very painful to do over and over again at the beginning based on my own experience and the experience of those I have helped. Ugh! Listening to the pride we have inside is embarrassing and scary but it's the only way I have found to crush through some pride in ourselves!-
Just ‘listen’ to the chitter-chatter of your mind and heart and let them just talk to you and to God and share what you really think in detail. Hey, God already knows what is going on in there that you are trying to suppress. He is not shocked. Ya gotta get honest with yourself before you can be honest with God. He loves honesty and when you tell Him how you really feel about yourself and others, you give yourself a chance to feel listened to fully first. He is a GREAT and compassionate listener even to the junk stuff that comes up out of our minds and hearts. Actually, it is He who is bringing to light those areas when you do this exercise. It must be exposed to then be healed.
The second step: Do you want to be right or do you want to be happy?
Usually, after all that junk is expressed, then the mind and heart want to go into justifying why you are right to hold on to those beliefs and feelings. Or, a person’s mind and heart want to feel guilty and stay in guilt. Both choices are the ditch on each side of the narrow path that leads to Life.
I’ll start with the steps for those of you in the “I need to be right” camp and then move on to the healing steps for the “I feel guilty” camp.
We LOVE to be right! Our insides feel safe in being right! We use being right as a shield so that we either don’t have to feel guilt, or we don’t have to feel vulnerable and out of control. You are protecting yourself. The side effect though is being right blocks you from making it any further in these steps of healing. You are stuck in the spiritual mud my friend with pride being your only friend there with ya!
This is where genuinely asking God to help you feel safe in being loving instead of right has to be pursued like it is the most precious thing you desire to have. Being right FEELS safer than being loving. Everything inside you is gonna put up a fight to not give up your rightness, and you will probably quote scripture to justify your rightness as well. Hey, I am just guessing at all this because I have never done this over and over for years (Rolling my eyes and laughing out loud at that last lie I just told). Yeah, I still can be guilty of wanting to be right more than loving, just less often. It’s a lifelong process to face and punch each piece of pride that comes up out into the light and have God take it.
If you get caught in this ditch then do this…
Just observe how it feels to be right. Feel how it makes you feel powerful and in control. Feel how it makes you feel better than someone else, OR makes you feel bad about yourself. Both come up at various times. Feel how it also separates you from others. You feel lonely in that little world of being right you have made of either feeling lowly about yourself or highly of yourself. People might give you attention because you are playing this power game, but it is just them catering to you, not truly connecting with you. Truly feel its loneliness and don’t stop. You will never get to the next step until you are tired of feeling separated from yourself, from others, and even that God is distant unless you get sick and tired of feeling the loneliness of having to be right.
There is a famous psychologist on television, named Dr. Phil, who always says, “Do you want to be right or do you want to be happy?” At first, being right feels like you are happy. But if you really stick with that feeling long enough, you start to experience and feel the separation from yourself and everyone else and feel its loneliness. Baaaad side effects! And instead of reaching for that ice cream, or watching television, or porn, to distract yourself from the lonely feeling, I suggest feeling it until you are sick of it and then when you are 100 % sick of it, go to the next step.
The third step: Ask God for help to help you give up your need to be right
Tell God and mean it that you want Him to be right and you want to give up your rightness and be loving toward God, others, AND yourself instead. Tell God love is more important to you and you choose to sacrifice your Shield of Rightness and pick up your Shield of Faith instead. The shield of rightness tries to make someone, ANYONE wrong. The Shield of Faith says The Blood forgives EVERYONE and has to be applied to EVERYONE (yeah, that includes you, just in case there was a question there). It’s the only way back to connection in the sections of yourself that got disconnected. We all have areas we are connected to properly and areas that are disconnected. Sorry to break it to you, but I must lovingly do so, we are all fellow humans struggling to grow up and be more Christ-like, including you. I know, shocking right?!! Lol!
The point is that all of us end up being THE SAME whatever job we do or status we have because we all need the same thing in the end, which is forgiveness through The Blood. Getting out of feeling better or less than anyone else is just about shifting what you are focusing on and making the new focus your new habit of thinking in mind and heart when you practice it over and over, and over, and over, and…I still practice it and I have been at this for decades. You grow in it, and with time you see its sweet fruits of feeling better about yourself and everyone around you.
The fourth step: Rinse and repeat
This last step is pretty much just as I said. You go back to step one and go through the cycle over and over again and never stop. Trust me, I have not found many people wanting to do these steps unless they are desperate and nothing is working for them spiritually or physically any longer. They feel miserable and they feel their lives are miserable enough that they want things to change. The change that anyone is looking for, even in seeing changes in others, really happens inside of YOU. You teach people how to treat you based on how you are in the world. If you don’t change, your world tends to not change. And, if you do not treat yourself with the respect that God treats you by Him forgiving you and accepting you, then you will also be stuck in an emotional prison of your own making.
So what if your mind and heart jumped into the other ditch of feeling guilty and staying in guilt?
Don’t worry, I did not forget all of you who are in that other ditch. Hug!
Here are the steps for you:
Third step: Stop and feel the feeling
Trying to stay in guilt is another defense mechanism. Many of us are taught that if we feel guilty about something and we show it, then our punishment will be lighter or not at all because obviously, we are sorry. If we beat ourselves, then maybe God and others will not beat us as bad and juuuust maybe forgive us (like I don’t know the games we fellow humans play on each other to manipulate us with guilt to get us to do what we want. Ha!).
Now, I am not saying that you should not feel guilty. Feeling guilt for doing something not correct is a sign of emotional and spiritual health, BUT staying in it is a totally different matter! The first response of feeling guilt is like a red light on a road that tells you to stop for your own good and for the good of others. Definitely STOP. Breathe a few slow breaths and feel that guilt. Don’t distract yourself from it by doing anything else. Just feel it.
The fourth step: Hear yourself out
Write out what you feel guilty about. In this case, since the topic of this article is feeling better or worse than someone else, write out why you feel guilty that you feel this way. This step, if you just let yourself write whatever emotionally comes up, and don’t try to make it sound pretty, instead make it just be honest, will help you see more clearly what is going on for you, which brings me to the next step…
The fifth step: Read what you wrote
After you finish writing, go get a glass of water and take a few breaths because this will clear your head to then read SLOWLY what you wrote.
While you read it slowly, maybe many times, ask yourself gently and without judgment,
WHY do you feel that way?
Is this something God would find you guilty about, or is this the opposite called false guilt which comes from your mind?
What hurts from the past might be tainting my perceptions and adding to my feeling guilty?
What is this guilt doing for me? (For instance, do I think this guilt will somehow make me not do something wrong again, or do I think I am more humble before God, myself, and others by continuing to feel guilty? Maybe I like feeling guilty because I am familiar with its feeling and I would not know what to do with having another response?)
The sixth step: Work on trusting that God is bigger than your guilt
Ask yourself if you are willing to give up the guilt/ sacrifice it. You know, like decide The Blood of Christ actually does cover ALL mess-ups and it’s ok to be a human child growing and learning by making fabulous mistakes over and over? Novel thought, I know! Anyway, it was a novel one to me because I came from a childhood background where mistakes were made out to be the end of the world apocalyptic matters. Drastic things happened to me when I did not get things right whether by ignorance, emotional immaturity, or just plain incompetence.
If you fall into this ditch, guess what? You get to say over and over, “God, you know I have these weaknesses I struggle with. I know You are a perfect teacher and will help me grow out of this because I want your help. In the meantime, thank You that You always forgive me through Your Son’s Blood, and I accept Your patience with me and Your help. I accept it by forgiving myself too and having patience while You help me grow and develop and learn whatever is needed to let go of this feeling of being less than or more than someone else. I see it and I want it to change. Please help me! I know You will and I know I am not a lost cause. There are no lost causes with You for those, like me, who are trying, even if I fail over and over. You still love me fully, and I choose to love myself as You love me. Help me see myself as You truly see me, and help me sacrifice my own opinion of myself and take on Your opinion of me. Your opinion of me is that You love me and will finish the work you have started in me. I don’t have to overcome all of this alone! Hallelujah!
When you first start using this little prayer, it will probably feel very fake and uncomfortable It sure felt that way for me when I started praying this way. It really kinda got on my nerves because I felt guilty about giving up my guilt! Lol! It takes washing yourself with this type of prayer, which has truth in it, over and over again, to erode the untrue stuff of your guilt that has piled on for your whole life. Do it anyway and be patient. You will see the freedom that the truth gives and be rid of that prison of guilt little by little. Been down this path personally. It works if you work it.
Final thoughts: You are important, and so is everyone else
YOU ARE IMPORTANT, AND everyone else around you is just as important, not more, not less. It does not matter what job, education, social status, or money you have or don’t have, if you are doing WHATEVER needs to be done in front of you with love for God, and love for your neighbors AS yourself, then you have accomplished growing to become like Christ and those characteristics will last for ETERNITY. Everything else passes away according to 1 Corinthians chapter 13. (Yeah, the whole chapter- sheesh it is so hard to get people to slow down and actually look up these scriptures! I’m guilty of doing it myself at times. Eh- you will do it when you are desperate enough to need answers. That’s what it took me anyways.)
I love you, you fellow human! I thank you for everything you do no matter what job it is whether seen as menial or important. They are all important. You are important to me. You are important to God. I sure hope you decide to see your importance and everyone else’s importance with me. Mwah!
Christ said something that I aim to see happen and strive to help happen:
John 17:21 That they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.
(I am sharing a scripture paragraph from the middle of Christ’s prayer to God The Father.)
We CAN NOT be one if we think someone is better or worse than another. It’s impossible. We must get over ourselves and drop the games of needing importance or unimportance. We are all important! The Blood says so! And we are all just as unimportant as well.
A warm, important hug to each of you! Don’t give up on yourself or anyone else! The end is only when God comes back and tells us what that end is. He is love and will make it all right, even you. He already did!
We Are Owned By Love,
Katrina
P.S. Consider compassionately sharing this article with those you love who might be inspired and feel better through hearing God has compassion and patience with them.
*I say that The Bible can be taught and understood in so many different ways whether that is convenient for us Believers or not, and you can see that Christ LOVED the Samaritans and the Romans of His time who were known by the Jew as ‘dogs’ and ‘not called of God people’. He healed the Believers as well as the Unbelievers. He gave them ALL food and taught ALL of them. My perception is to err on the side of God being so big and awesome that He is better than what I was taught He was, even if they quote fifty scriptures to make their point. There are other scriptures to knock down their point as well. I’ve been on both sides of this personally.
And, even if the Bible is not supposed to have any private interpretations, I have never come across one person in all my decades of being in The Bible World that does not use interpretations and they have some things right and some things wrong. Maybe you know someone perfect in all understanding besides Christ? I don’t.
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Oh, and yeah!-
If you are really hungry and want more to munch on right now to become more Owned By Love, this video called “3 Tips When You’re Stuck in Prayer” might satisfy your spiritual taste buds. BON APPETIT!