Your Own Skin

You need to be comfortable in your own skin.

I recently retired from almost 30 years of worship ministry & if there's one thing I've learned in that entire time it's this:

Comparison is deadly & it's a killer.

It kills your hopes, dreams, creativity & pretty much any chance of progress... sometimes death comes swiftly & other times it's like cancer = long & drawn out but death, in whatever form it takes, eventually & inevitably comes.

I saw it in worship ministry all the time: 2-3 people w/ beautiful voices who compared themselves w/ others on the team, “I can't sing like her” was the mindset & eventual mantra; My advice was “Don't worry about her, sing like you” & they would try to but in the back of their mind the comparison was always there, lurking...

Lead guitarists were/are the same way, trying to live in/through another person's skin, training, experience; instead of expressing themselves they expressed someone else & usually badly...

Preachers trying to act/sound like those they admire instead of being themselves & not some embarrassing knockoff...

Authors/bloggers, pounding out thoughts, writing & re-writing to emulate another writer's style instead of being transparent & pouring their heart out...

I Corinthians 15:38-41 AMP

“But God gives to it the body that He plans and sees fit, 

and to each kind of seed a body of its own.

For all flesh is not the same, but there is one kind for humans, 

another for beasts, another for birds, and another for fish.

There are heavenly bodies (sun, moon, and stars) 

and there are earthly bodies (men, animals, and plants), 

but the beauty and glory of the heavenly bodies is of one kind,

 while the beauty and glory of earthly bodies is a different kind.

The sun is glorious in one way, the moon is glorious in another way, 

and the stars are glorious in their own [distinctive] way;

 for one star differs from and surpasses another in its beauty and brilliance”

One of my mentors had a saying that I'll never forget: “God made the canary & the crow & He likes to hear them both”.

Sing like you.

Play like you.

Preach like you.

Write like you.

Be you.

Be comfortable in your own skin, it's glorious!