COME AS A CHILD – LESSON 150 – LEARNING TO BE CONTENT

THOU SHALT NOT COVET

(Written by Sheila Gail Landgraf)

Have you ever been envious of something that belonged to your neighbor? 

Maybe you love the style of their home, or maybe you enjoy the way their car drives, or maybe you think your neighbor’s husband is the BEST catch of the whole neighborhood, or perhaps you wish you had a job that was as much fun as your best friend’s. 

All of the above feelings are what we call envy; and full blown envy breaks the tenth commandment that God spoke to Moses about up on the Mountain. 

Isn’t a little envy perfectly harmless though? 

What possible harm could it do when usually no one even knows your feelings but you anyway? 

Envy is one of those self-inflicted types of sins.  The damage doesn’t usually hurt anyone but the person who is being envious. 

When you begin to dwell on those things that belong to others and covet them for your own you can actually bring damage to your own soul. 

It all starts with such simple little thoughts, and then it grows and grows until the thoughts of what you desire consume you and then begins to plague you with a constant form of unhappiness because you are lacking that thing; and now nothing but the thing you covet brings you satisfaction. 

When this feeling grows and escalates you might even commit some other sins in order to fulfill your desire for something that belongs to someone else. 

If you enjoy someone’s car, or house or even their clothes or furniture you are tempted to go into debt to buy the same things for yourself; and then you eventually suffer from financial disaster which your own lusts provoked. 

If you envy someone else’s mate you might catch yourself being flattered by their attention and spending just a little too much time talking with them.  You might catch yourself having visions of an adulterous affair with them; and sooner or later sin comes from that wrong desire of envy and covetousness that started out so very small and innocent and then grew and grew until it became bigger than you. 

Perhaps you wish to be as wealthy as the people you read about in magazines; and you long for the freedom that money can bring to you and you begin to feel that you will do almost anything to achieve more financial freedom.  You might just catch yourself scheming and planning to rob someone of their wealth in order to furnish your own selfish desires.

The little covetous feeling grows and grows until you have committed a crime; and you find yourself in the snares of robbery, adultery, debt, etc.; somewhere you never imagined you would go. 

The very freedom that you sought after by obtaining the wealth you coveted through illegal means now just feels like a horrible trap!  You begin to turn on yourself in anger and you inflict your guilt upon yourself day after day and you feel trapped.  You are always afraid of when the truth may become public and everyone will see you for the thief that you have become because of your original covetousness. 

It all starts with just one little thought; one little sliver of discontent; one little longing to be like someone else or to have what someone else has.  

Our very wise God knew the danger of these traps, so He had Moses to chisel those very important words in stone:  Thou shalt not covet (Exodus 20:17.) 

God spelled it out for us right from the beginning, so we would know when to stop and put on the breaks and protect ourselves from wrong temptations.  

This one little commandment, if followed correctly, can keep you from breaking all the rest of them!  These are four very important little words!

God’s word is infallible. 

If you keep this commandment you will have so much more joy and happiness in your days.

 

It is a very good commandment; but it isn’t an easy one!  It sort of sneaks up on you and presents itself when you aren’t paying attention.  It will catch you totally off guard.  This is why God so clearly spelled it out for us. 

So how do we avoid covetousness in our daily lives?

We must start by guarding our hearts. 

The heart is where we must learn how to respond to the things of life.  There is a constant war going on between the flesh and the spirit and the heart is the main force that can guard against that war; or give in to it.  Not one heart can make it without the reinforcement of the love of Christ living inside. 

It is Christ living in us that opens our eyes to the danger of covetousness, and it is God’s Holy Spirit that protects us from caving and giving in to this battle. 

If you are doing battle with this sin; the best thing you can do is to go to God and make a clean confession.  Do it out loud and be as thorough as you can.  Get the whole story out on the table and ask God to help you to learn how to avoid whatever it is that you struggle with the most.  You can’t do it on your own; but with God’s help all things become possible. 

The Apostle Paul had a very good way of avoiding covetousness in his life.  He practiced contentment.  

Paul explains in Philippians 4:12:  “I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty.  I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed of hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.”

 

About thirty years ago I was a very unhappy woman.  There were many things that I had wanted in life that did not turn out the way that I had hoped.  I was always coveting the things that I did not get in the past and hoping that there was something that I could do that would change that situation and turn it around so that I could have all the things that had slipped right through my fingers. 

As I prayed about this, God showed me that verse from Philippians.  I had read it many times before and heard it repeated by others often; but it suddenly took on a whole new meaning for me.  I began to apply that verse to all of those situations where I was discontent.  The more I thought about it and faced the ghosts of my past mistakes and gave them to God and asked Him to replace the desires of my heart with the things He desired for me; the better I began to feel about everything. 

Soon a person who had been continuously moping and sad became a person with a quick smile and a joyful heart.  

I can truthfully say the laughter quotient in my days doubled!  

After several years of carefully applying Paul’s theory about contentment to my daily life I realized something very important:  The things that made me sad, the things I had longed for with all my heart in the past, were not the things that brought me joy.  Those things had only made me sad in actuality.  When I gave my will over to God and began to live in total contentment with just the things that He provided for me; my days began to fill up and run over with joyful living.  I realized that God had known what I needed all along and it wasn’t until I let Him furnish the things of my life in His way and in His time that I truly found contentment and I truly came to know who I was and what God had created me to do with my life. 

Had I obtained all those things that my heart so longed for before I became content and accepted God’s way; I would never have achieved total happiness. 

This isn’t the only commandment that works out that way; they all do in some form, shape or fashion. 

If you have gained nothing at all from this study of Moses on the Mountain receiving the Ten Commandments; I hope that you remember that each and every commandment that God gave; He gave out of a Father’s pure love. 

He wasn’t trying to create complications for us; He actually wanted to make things simpler for us. 

He wasn’t trying to withhold blessings from us; He wanted the blessings that we received to be REAL. 

Each commandment given to Moses on that day was another way for God to help us to find out just how unique we are in His eyes.  That is the only way to ever experience complete joy in this life. 

Not another person on this earth has been created just exactly like you!  God wants you to see that, and to know that you are who you are because He has planned a very special purpose and life out just for you.  He loves everything about every design that He put into each of us; and He has our backs, and knows exactly what is best for us.  We must trust that His commandments are to encourage us to believe and follow Him.

By avoiding covetousness in our lives we avoid so many other evils. 

Often covetousness brings that green-eyed monster called jealousy. If you want to find out how bad that can get; go read the story of Sarah in Genesis.  She had a bad case of jealousy; until God taught her what it was like to be content with the things that He provided whenever He decided to provide them.  That was when Sarah began to experience true joy. As humans operating in our own power and intellect, we get too competitive and this seeps into our relationships and we lose focus on God’s plan for our lives.   

If you have fallen victim to coveting simply stop right now and confess your sin to God. 

As you ponder your sin in your prayer just stop and take a little inventory of all the areas of discontent that you are experiencing.  Determine what you can do to be content in these areas and visualize yourself going through the correct motions instead of the wrong ones of the past.  Think through how you will handle the situation the next time it arises.  Accept God’s will in your life and begin to move forward as the person that God has truly made you to be.  Whenever you fill the discontentment raising it’s ugly head again; determine to be grateful for what God has designed specifically for you. 

Give God thanks for the things that He provides constantly.  Let go of the things you don’t really need and begin to live in the abundance of a grateful heart.  You will ace the requirements of this commandment and receive abundance and joy as a bonus! 

May God lead and direct each and every one of us as we remember all the commandments He gave to Moses on the mountain. 

May these ten best ways to live bring a new strength and hope into our days and make our lives full and abundant as we carry out God’s will within our own little part of the world through the course of every day living.