Love Month: 14 days to a life of love: Day 3

Day 3... Envy

Love does not envy... this is a tough one. When I began to study about envy as you know I found all negative things. There isn't one good thing to say about envy. Yet we as women have a problem with this. "I wish I had parents like that", "If only I had enough money to dress like her," "If my child was as well behaved as hers I could live through the teenage years with sanity. I just can't keep it together like she does."  You know the thoughts. Envy begins as a fleeting thought in our minds and if we let it  will consume us every time we remember the situation. Let's take a look at what is does to us.
  Proverbs 14:30 tells us that "envy rots the bones."  That's pretty hard core stuff. God's answer to the root of envy is to submit your thoughts and actions to Him. James 4 tells us how to do this. Pay close attention to verses 7-10.

James 4

Submit Yourselves to God

 ¹ What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? ² You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. ³ When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.

 ⁴ You adulterous people,^[a] don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. ⁵ Or do you think Scripture says without reason that he jealously longs for the spirit he has caused to dwell in us^[b]? ⁶ But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says:

   “God opposes the proud
   but shows favor to the humble.”^[c]

 ⁷ Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. ⁸ Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. ⁹ Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. ¹⁰ Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.

 ¹¹ Brothers and sisters, do not slander one another. Anyone who speaks against a brother or sister^[d] or judges them speaks against the law and judges it. When you judge the law, you are not keeping it, but sitting in judgment on it. ¹² There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the one who is able to save and destroy. But you—who are you to judge your neighbor?

I want to encourage you today to stop your self in your thoughts of envy and humble yourself. "Take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ." - 2 Cor 10:5. This is how we overcome envy and exude love.

Examine yourself today and if you have an ounce of envy get rid of it!  It will only rot you to your very core. Stop yourself so that your life my be

2 Corinthians 10:5

New International Version (NIV)

⁵ We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.

Proverbs 14:30
A heart at peace gives life to the body, but envy rots the bones.

Job 5:2Resentment kills a fool, and envy slays the simple.

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