You’ve seen them before.
It’s the person at your job that everyone loves to hate. Everything always goes right for them. They get the promotion, has the biggest salary, the perfect family, and just returned from a two-weeks vacation.
Do you have that picture in your mind yet? Good!
Now, Imagine you’re on your way to work and by pass a police officer giving someone a ticket on the shoulder of the road. You take a double look and discover that the person getting the ticket is THAT person from your job. What are you feeling inside right now? Do you smile and whisper to yourself, “got ‘em!”
Welcome to the wonderful world of envy.
What Is Envy
Since we are living by the Spirit, let us follow the Spirit’s leading in every part of our lives. Let us not become conceited, or provoke one another, or be jealous of one another. Galatians 5:25-26
Envy is resenting God’s goodness in others’ lives and ignoring God’s goodness in our own life. In today’s society envy is encouraged. Take today’s commercials, they have nothing to do with the actual product, but more so, the product of selling envy. They’re subliminally saying, “buy our product and you will be envied! You’ll be the envy of everybody else!”
Conspicuous Consumption
Economists and sociologists all agree that people will buy inferior products if the products imply that they are expensive and if the products imply to the world that you are wealthy and you can afford it. They call it conspicuous consumption. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a good or bad product. If it has a certain name on it, it implies we can show off our wealth, status, power and we will buy it simply to make other people envy us. We work hard at being envied. How do we tame envy? How do we live at peace in the middle of competition?
[shareable]Envy is resenting God’s goodness in others’ lives and ignoring God’s goodness in our own life.[/shareable]
How to Deal With Envy
Stop Comparing
Oh, don’t worry; we wouldn’t dare say that we are as wonderful as these other men who tell you how important they are! But they are only comparing themselves with each other, using themselves as the standard of measurement. How ignorant! 2 Corinthians 10:12
In 2 Corinthians 10:12, God says that if I’m comparing myself to somebody else, it’s unproductive! There is always somebody better than me and I’ll get discouraged. There is always somebody that I’m better than and I’ll get full of pride. Either way, I lose. I personally don’t compare myself to other people. Comparing is the root of envy. If you’re going to stop envy, you’ve got to break it by stopping the mindset of comparing.
[shareable]God says that if I’m comparing myself to somebody else, it’s unproductive![/shareable]
Be Content
We’re grateful for what we’ve already got, but we’re so busy worrying about what we don’t have; we don’t enjoy what we do have. Eccl. 6:9 “It is better to be satisfied with what you have than to be always wanting something else.” There is a myth behind envy that says I must have more than you to be happy. This is far from the truth. Happiness has nothing to do with achievements or acquisitions. It has to do with accepting your uniqueness, not comparing, while rejoicing in what you love to do.
[shareable]There is a myth behind envy that says I must have more than you to be happy.[/shareable]
We’re content when we know that God has provided all that we need for our happiness, not for tomorrow or next year, but for right now. When we can understand this, then we have true happiness. So should I have ambition, goals, and desires? Of course you should. You can admire something somebody else has and not envy it. You can even say, “I’d like to have that one day,” and not envy it. Envy is when you say, “I wish he didn’t have it, because I don’t.” You resent it because he’s got it and you don’t. That’s envy.
Where are you struggling with envy today?
