One of my favorite messages from Joyce Meyer (see http://www.joycemeyer.org/ for podcasts, radio, and television ministry programs) was when she referred to the occurrence of some negative event by saying, "The devil may have intended it for evil, but GOD intended it for good." I both borrow and build from her message to discuss the following.
One of my many sins or character faults is that I can be jealous and competitive. Mind you, I am not competitive in any sort of productive way-- like training for a marathon or like striving to produce the highest sales numbers on a team. No, my competitive streak only takes shape in pitiful and utterly inane ways --- like when I race to my son's school in order to be first in the car line for pick up time. With the fearless determination of an Olympic athlete, I am single-focused about needing to beat the next parent who, to my warped ego, joyfully only comes in second.
So, now you get the picture of the me I'm dealing with! With this bit of background, you will better understand why my best friend and I intentionally engage in a spiritual competition. Yes, fools that we are, we half-jokingly agreed to race 'harder' toward God. Since each of our tendencies are toward talk and not action, we both decided that we would like to amp up our spiritual development (as if Grace can be hard won).
Because neither of us were going to church as often as we'd like, one day I called her an hour before heading out to my church and with a purposefully childish tone said, "I'M going to chur-urch. Na nee, na nee, NA NA!" She exclaimed, "What?! You're not supposed to tell me that when there's enough time for ME to get readyto go to MY church!" Long story short: we both went to our separate churches that day. Score: tied.
The next Sunday late afternoon, she called me to report, "I'M more spiritually advanced than YOU are" in the same 'na nee, na nee' sing-songy tone that we had established before. It turned out, not only had she gone to her church, but she had a kind of breakthrough in which she experienced a deep craving for God. She first relayed her experiences to me in a serious way, but then she became fiesty and decided to once again rub in the 'fact' that she was "MORE" washed in the Blood than I was. We both laughed, but even though I KNEW that kind of talk was all in good fun, there was still a part of me that was ticked that she had one-upped me in our spiritual competition.
I stewed over her alleged spiritual victory for a few hours before calling her back in the early evening of the same day. I had prepared a number of defenses of my spiritual development that were meant to trump hers. She had thrown down the spiritual gauntlet and declared a challenge. Not only was I ready to take up the challenge, my jealousy motivated me to try to win the competition. It was illogical and a bit theologically insane, but it was fun and energizing nonetheless.
The battle was ON. SHE started listening to Joyce Meyer first, but *I* started listening to Joyce DAILY. SHE started hanging out to make friends during fellowship. *I* mustered up my substandard, introverted social skills and tried to make more church friends on-line. SHE started going to Bible study mid-week. MID-Week!! *I* felt I was losing! I had intended to go to my mid-week Bible study, but had a tooth ache and failed to shower that day. She did not miss the opportunity to rub in my failure again by saying, "Why don't you tell God, 'God, I meant to go, but my tooth hurt and I felt gross.' Yeah, that's a perfectly good excuse I'd say!" She mocked me. I laughed with her, but my little ego secretly pouted.
Then it happened. I was watching Joyce Meyer, a.k.a. "Mama J" and felt truly inspired by her teaching. In this particular conference, she spoke about giving back. I decided that instead of feeling guilty about living comfortably, I was going to use my guilty feelings productively. I did not wait for the momentum of my resolve to piddle away with time. I got on my computer, found, and without hesitation applied to a volunteer position. I grinned with satisfaction, "I'm WINNING!" And the best part is that SHE doesn't even know! Perhaps she will relax her vigilance, falsely assuming she is well in the lead. Yes, these were my thoughts, however fleeting-- (Sick, sick, sick)!
Jealous competition is clearly ugly. The devil certainly means it for destruction. However, GOD can use any one's faults for good if God chooses. I acknowledge that it is Machiavellian (in which the end justifies the means), but: if the sinner ultimately finds her way both to a deeper relationship with God and to an improved form of faith-in-action, does it really matter how she was brought there?
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