Have you ever wished you had someone else’s gifts and abilities? Someone who gets so much done. People listen to them. They have tremendous impact, and they look great too.

You have similar gifts and goals, but things just don’t work out the same for you. Try as you might, your impact just creates a smaller footprint. God doesn’t seem to use you the way he uses other people.

Here is the truth. God wants you, actually needs you, to be the best “you” that you can be and nothing more. He is the one who put you together. He has plans for you. He gave you his Spirit so you could become all he wanted you to be.

An Oscar-nominated musician, who has achieved some of his goals but failed in many more of them, wrote a note to himself which he keeps in his car. It says, “God is my only audience.”

God is our only audience, and he just wants you to be you.

Consider also that we each have no idea what our impact truly is (or isn’t). Only God really knows how we are changing the lives of those around us. You may smile at someone today, which could inspire kindness in them toward someone else, then that next person pays it forward, and so on. Your entire community can brighten because you genuinely smiled at someone.

The kingdom doesn’t need another Billy Graham, Chris Tomlin, Amy Carmichael, or Andy Stanley. The kingdom, and our King, needs you to be who he designed you to be. By being the best, Spirit-empowered you that you can be, you grow the kingdom, wherever you are and whatever you do.

So don’t fall into the comparing game. Keep God as your only audience, living to please him and bring him glory. Use every opportunity to share the gifts that he has given you to make a difference in your world. Leave everything else up to him.

You never know when you might be entertaining angels. (Hebrews 13:2)