THE DANGER IN WANTING AND COVETING

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In Christ, Mark

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? 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. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.

James 4:1-3

This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

The matter of wanting has plagued mankind since biblical times and before I go too much further here, let me clarify that it’s not a sin to want things. Every person has wants as it’s an inherent part of our humanity. In fact, God’s word encourages believers to have strong desires for things, not just everything. The latter is what the world would suggest as Satan seeks to convince people that it’s okay to yearn for even sinful things, things that would draw God’s consternation and judgment.

So part of the problem is wanting is that we can find ourselves craving things we shouldn’t but it also can lead to us doing other sinful actions to get the things we long for, especially if we can’t afford to gain those things on our own or we see something that someone else had it’s better than our own, something known as coveting and God saw this as such a major issue that He addressed it in the Ten Commandments. Here’s what He said regarding the matter of wanting to the point of coveting:

“You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.” Exodus 20:17

Here the imagery is looking across the way at your next door neighbor and wishing you had what he does. Note there isn’t anything left out here. A person wasn’t to covet their neighbor’s home, his wife, his slaves, his livestock, or anything else that belonged to him. The things he had were his possessions, provided as blessings by God, and no one else had a right to take what was rightfully his.

And nothing has changed since God issued the command to the Israelite people through Moses at Mount Sinai during their exodus from Egypt to the Promised Land of Canaan. Unfortunately, we see the problem prevalent enough in New Testament times that James had to address it. Look again at his words in chapter 4:

What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? 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. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. Vv. 1-3

Note here how far people went to get what they didn’t have. They were willing to kill others and if they didn’t go that far they were at least fighting and quarreling with one another. James rebukes this behavior and strikes right at the root cause for the reason people were wanting and coveting is that they were chasing after their own desires and not including God, the only One who knows just what we need and when we need it.

Had the Old Testament Israelites or the New Testament Jewish Christians simply gone to God and ask for what He wanted them to have, then prayed for those things, then they would have been content because His desires for them would be the desires they had in life.

In other words, we have wants but our focus should be on our needs. They aren’t the same thing. God will provide what we need to live and serve Him but He isn’t going to give us everything we want. He’s smarter and wiser than that. And when we fully know and understand that God is meeting our needs as He provides what He knows is best for us, then something beautiful emerges out of the danger of wanting and coveting.

For the Christian believer becomes content and satisfied, thankful to God for what He does give, not craving or lusting after what He hasn’t given.

Friends, these opening verses from James, chapter 4 are screaming out at us for attention. They are asking us to examine ourselves to see if we are excessively in want to the point of coveting, and if we are, to reverse course and realize how blessed we are with what God has provided, at peace with what He has done and granted us.

I think the old saying goes something like this, a saying that is “kryptonite” for the problem of wanting and coveting. It goes like this:

“Carefully count your blessings and when you’re done, count them over again.”

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

PS: Feel free to leave a comment and please share this with anyone you feel might be blessed by it. Send any prayer requests to TheChristianWalkPrayers@gmail.com.