Day 29 :: When I want what you have

We are always looking.  We can look out and around.

In the looking out and around the thoughts begin:

Wow, she put off that pregnancy weight really fast.

She always looks so put together.

Look at that house!  It’s just gorgeous!

And, just as the grumbles grow, so does the looking.

Why can’t I wear MY skinny jeans yet?

I wish I had enough money to buy those clothes.

My house just isn’t big enough.  We should move.

And so we look, and we compare, we become discontent, and then we covet.

Somehow it’s easier to deal with the sins other people can see.  But, when we start looking inside our hearts, we stop.  That’s too uncomfortable.

“Coveting, envy, jealousy – these words strike at the core of our beings, for they move beyond the outward actions of our lives and pierce the inward affections of our hearts” {Envy of Eve, Melissa Kruger, 21}.

But this sin of coveting is serious and leads us to grave discontentment, not only in our circumstances, or lack of circumstances, but in God.

We can see the sin of coveting quite easily in our children.  Just the other day my girls were playing with some toys.  The younger one had a stuffed lamb.  The older one wanted it.  Nothing I could say was helping.  Even though there were at least a dozen other stuffed animals upstairs to choose from, the older HAD to have the lamb.  She knelt down on the floor, draped her head on the couch and said, “I WANT IT! I WANT IT! I WANT IT!”

This same phrase, or maybe, “I DON’T WANT IT!” are often found screaming out to the walls of our hearts.

We battle with discontentment.

Our hearts are covetous.

But with the power of the Holy Spirit, we can seek to overcome this heart battle.

“His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desires.” {2 Peter 1:3-4}

And so I seek to not want what you have.

The Envy of Eve, written by Melissa Kruger, is an excellent book on contentment.  I would encourage you to pick it up, even if you think this isn’t an area of struggle.  It was amazing to me how much I learned about my own discontentment as I read her words, which are laden with biblical truth.

To see a list of other posts in this series go here.