I've always hated math. And it's not an exaggeration when I say hate; I literally cannot stand it. Mostly it's because throughout school it was always something that I was really bad at. But the one part of math that I didn't completely loathe was Algebra and I think it was largely due to the fact that Algebra is just a bunch of formulas and processes; you plug in the numbers and do the function and the answer comes out perfectly; there is little to no work involved. But when there were no formulas and it required a lot of thinking: I was done for.

Over the past few months God has really been revealing a lot to me about myself and one of the things I've realized is: I always look for the formulas in life. One of the things I struggle with is comparing myself to other people; I will look at how God is working in other peoples' lives and automatically try to figure out how that fits in to my life. I look for the formula, "If x=______ then y=________." Plug in the numbers and the answer comes out perfectly. If it's working for them it has to work that way for me! But here's the silly mistake I often don't calculate which leads me to the wrong answer: I'm not them. Today it also really hit me that another component to this that I didn't keep in mind is that God doesn't work in formulas. A relationship and walk with God is not an algebraic formula.

Now, this is not to say that God doesn't work similarly with many things in many people's lives. He does! Because His character is unchanging and He gives all of His heirs the same certain things that are irrevocable gifts and promises, and sometimes the way it plays out looks very much the same. But I also think that it would be silly to say that He works in formulas because that would mean that He made every person the same and what He has specifically designed for one person He has designed for everyone. And when you get down to the specifics, that isn't the case. As I was thinking about this I was reminded of four people in the Bible with similar situations: Abraham and Sarah, and Elizabeth and Zechariah. Both of these couples had been promised a child, but were not able to conceive because they were barren. Their promise was the same, but the way that it was fulfilled looked a lot differently. God had Abraham and Sarah conceive to populate an entire nation, and He had Elizabeth and Zechariah conceive to have John the Baptist who would make way for the coming of the Lord. Both were promised the same promise of a child, but each promise was fulfilled a lot differently. What if Elizabeth and Zechariah tried to plug in their numbers into the Abraham and Sarah's formula? I mean I don't know, John the Baptist is a pretty big piece in God's plan for the salvation of the world! Their promise and process was no less important because it didn't look the same as Abraham and Sarah's!

Here's my point: we need to stop trying to plug our lives into other people's formulas. Even if our promise is the same, what gets one person from point A to point B may not be our method of transportation from point A to point B. God has got a huge plan for each one of our lives that you and I are designed specifically to fill. Don't lose that crucial truth. We were not made to live a copy of someone else's life; you and I need to stop comparing ourselves to other people. God may work similarly in your or my life as He did in someone else's life, but let's leave that up to Him.

I think Steven Furtick put it really well in his book, Crash the Chatterbox, when he said, "The reason we struggle with insecurity is because we compare our behind the scenes to someone else's highlight reel." We look at everyone else and their successes and think, "Wow they're successful and that worked for them, I want to be like them so I'll do that!" But we don't realize what went on behind the scenes that we didn't hear about. I'd say we (and I say we because this is such a challenge to me as well) need to start seeking God in our process and not hang on what He's done for other people in their process as our guarantee but rather what He's done in our process.