Enjoying Your Own Work
Being glad about what you did without measuring it against anyone.
You finished something and it turned out well. For about an hour you feel good about it. Then you see what someone else did, and the good feeling changes shape: either it deflates, or it starts needing their version to be worse. Left alone, pride is simple gladness. Set beside another person, it gets complicated.
But let every man prove his own work, and then shall he have rejoicing in himself alone, and not in another.
Galatians 6:4
Paul does not tell his readers to stop being pleased with their work. He tells them to test it. “Prove” here means examine, weigh the work on its own merits. The promised result is “rejoicing in himself alone, and not in another”. Comparison is what he removes, not the gladness. A verse earlier he warns about thinking yourself something when you are nothing. An untested estimate of yourself is not confidence, it is guessing.
So there is a pride Scripture leaves standing. If you worked hard and it is good, you are allowed to know that. What the verse removes is the need for someone else to come out lower so you can feel higher. That pride is expensive, because it never finishes. Work you have honestly examined can simply be good, and you can simply be glad.
Today, take one thing you did well this week and look at it on its own, without setting it beside anyone. Name what was actually good about it. Then thank God for the ability and the chance to use it. Keep both halves.
I can be glad about my work without needing anyone to be beneath it.
Galatians 6:4