Coveting Day 6: Coveting: A Summary
When I reflect and honestly examine myself, I can see how much I covet. Do you find the same about yourself? God created us to have intelligent and complex minds that relate to other people and long for connection. With that, though, would come a struggle with things like coveting, comparison, and jealousy.
But He wants more for us; He wants the best for us. So whether it’s the tangible things that other people have, or their status, physique, abilities, or anything else, God wants us to surrender our hearts of covetousness and turn our focus to what really matters: using our lives to display His love—the love He showed to us when He gave us His Son. Jesus said, “Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be provided to you” (Matthew 6:33, NASB).
He also reminded us that giving up our desires in exchange for fully giving our lives for Him is worth everything. Holding on to our own lives and trying to chase after all our desires will ultimately get us nowhere; we may gain the whole world, but we’ll lose the life that He wants us to live—both now and eternally. “For whoever wants to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. For what good will it do a person if he gains the whole world, but forfeits his soul?” (Matthew 16:25-26, NASB).
Next time we are tempted to covet anything, I pray we’ll remember all that we’ve already been given in Jesus: “Live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and giving joyful thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of his holy people in the kingdom of light. For he has rescued us from the domain of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Colossians 1:10-14, NIV).
