| Envy
February 19, 2006 - Jacob Larson
Loving one another becomes difficult when Envy is present
Bob Sorge: Envy, the enemy within <Buy at Amazon.com>
Wanting to excel beyond our friends can be the start of our hearts is having an envious attitude.
- Ask: What are we envious of?
- Money
- Family
- Relationships
- Power/Influence.
Envy – “the internal pain we feel over someone else's success.” – Bob Sorge
With an attitude of envy, our effectiveness for the kingdom is shrunk.
Envy releases dynamics that bind up the progress of the kingdom.
Admitting envy is tough…You are Admitting to potent weaknesses:
Pg 14-15 (1-8) of Envy the Enemy Within:
- I am not fully established and at rest in my identity in Christ.
- I have insecurities that have not been fully healed through the power of His grace. Work driven…proving to others like parents
- I am ungrateful for what God has given me. His gifts are not enough for me; I also want what He's given another.
- I am striving against God's sovereignty and wisdom by questioning His giving differing gifs and endowments grace to both me and my brother or sister.
- My heart is motivated at a fundamental level by an element of self-interest, self-preservation and self-promotion. I am not able to fully celebrate my brother's successes because of underlying feelings of competition and ambition in my soul.
- When all my energies should be focused upon the war against the enemy of our should, some of my energy has been diverted to struggling over the successes of my fellow believers.
- since envy, when it is full grown, culminates in murder, I have the seeds of murder within my heart.
- My carnality is impeding the unity of the body of Christ-the unity that is central to the bride's preparation. Hence, part of me is hindering, instead of hastening, Christ's return.
- Feel guilty with any of those accusations? Then you have, (I have) been given a revelation of the sneakiness of envy.
- When we know we are guilty we can confess easily…
- The consequences… When envy becomes easy to confess, victory comes within closer reach.
Envy desires to deprive another of what they have; jealousy desires to have the same or the same sort of thing for itself.
The downside of success: higher up on the latter, the more envied you are by the other climbers.
One New York pastor said, “envy is the natural by-product of being favored by God.”…OCCUPATIONAL HAZARD
Here is one of the lies told, believed that grows envy.
- “There is limited amount to go around” - see list
- Money
- Success
- Power
- Land
- Relationships
- Happiness
- This concept is not found in Scripture or in the Kingdom.
- God's resources are immeasurable…
- Ephesians 3:14-21…”now to him who can do more than we can ask or imagine according to the power that is at work within us, …to him be the power in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever and ever, Amen…
- When we believe the lie… “limited good” what happens?
- “Where envy and self seeking exist, confusion and every evil thing are there.”
- What evil things accompany envy?
- Slander
- Hatred
- cheating
- When we believe the lie we should ask, “Why am I bitter?”
- Most of the time it's towards God because he allegedly divvied out the limited goods and we came out short.
- If you want to catch yourself believing the lie…see if you are puffing yourself up, advertising your own merits…
- This is rooted in pride – an inflated opinion of ourselves.
Ambition can be used for the Kingdom of God but it requires a tortuous crucifixion before the self serving elements are totally driven from us.
The apostle Paul used his…from persecutor to gentile-gospel-teller
The dangers of Envy and How it gets in the way of one-anothering…
If Envy and Pride are married to each other…then its children are strife and division germinated through the struggle for superiority.
Scripture that supports the relationship of Envy and Strife/Division
Romans 1:29 “Being filled with all unrighteousness, sexual immorality, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, strife”
Romans 13:13 “Let us walk properly, as in the day, not in revelry and drunkenness, not in lewdness and lust, not is strife and envy”
Philippians 1:15 “ Some indeed preach Christ even from envy and strife”
To promoted their own ministry
I Timothy 6:4 “He is proud, knowing nothing, but is obsessed with diputes and arguments over words, from which come envy, strife, reviling, evil suspicions”
What God thinks
He hates it…It breaks His heart. What he wants for us is to know his love so that Comparison will be broken off of us and we can see that his love for us isn't based on our measure of Grace or sphere of influence. PRAY
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