“For we ourselves were once…passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another.” Tit. 3:3 I wonder if part of Jesus’ motive for rebuking Peter’s sinful comparison was to preserve Peter’s relationship with John. Envy is a relationship destroyer. It squelches love and stifles kindness. We cannot cherish our friends and envy them at the same time. “Love…does not envy” (1 Cor. 13:4). And as Jonathan Edwards put it, “Surely love to our neighbor does not dispose us to hate him for his prosperity or be unhappy at his good” So, for the sake of our relationships, the Savior asks: “If it is my will that she ___________ what is that to you?” Genuine love rejoices with those who rejoice (Rom 12: 15). It is happy when someone else gets honored, gets a promotion, gets married, gets pregnant, gets any good gift from the hand of God. So let us put away all envy and love one another.
Jesus had a job for Peter to do. He had good works prepared for him to walk in (Eph 2:10), which included a martyr’s death. The Lord knew that if Peter envied John he would be distracted from what God had called him to do.
Envy not only robs us of peace; it hinders our fruitfulness.
If we try to peer onto other people’s paths, comparing and envying others, we’ll be sidetracked from the good works God wants us to walk in. We’ll fail to bring glory to our Savior.
We can’t envy and obey at the same time.
For example, if God has called to walk in good works as a single, but we are envying our friends who are married, we’ll be distracted from the ways God has called us to glorify Him in our singleness.
Or, if God has assigned to us to be married to a man who is not exercising leadership in the home and we are sinfully comparing ourselves with friends whose husbands effectively lead them, then we will be diverted from our task of bringing glory to God in our marriage.
Or if God has called us to use our gifts and abilities in a specific arena and yet we refuse to do so because our gifts are not as great or glamorous as another’s, we will fail to do God’s will.
Envy always eats up time and energy that should be spent on the good works God has prepared for us. When we envy others, we miss out on God’s grace to bear fruit today.
This morning, our husbands boarded various planes headed for Louisville, KY and the Together for the Gospel conference. We miss them already!
Please pray for the conference—for safe travel for all 7000 registered, wisdom, grace, and clarity for the speakers, and that everyone who attends would be encouraged and strengthened in the gospel.
Tonight we’re hanging out and feeding the kids pizza and root beer floats. We’ll see you back here tomorrow!
I can relate to this little guy—always thinking about food! Thanks to Sandra for this cute story:
In preschool, Miss Sarah asked the class if they knew where Jesus went to pray with his disciples before he died on the cross.
My four year old David cried out, “Olive Garden!”
Happy Weekend,
Janelle for the girltalkers
The other day I was speaking with a friend about suffering. She told me that she still doesn’t understand why God allowed her dad to die so soon, but what helps her, what she goes back to in times of doubt, is that God is good. This is the truth she rests in.
And this is the truth that has always sustained Christians in difficult circumstances, including Nancy Guthrie, who has edited a new series of “25 classic and contemporary readings on the problem of pain” entitled, Be Still My Soul.
This book includes thoughts from great theologians who have walked through dark valleys, such as Charles Spurgeon, Jonathan Edwards, Jerry Bridges and Sinclair Ferguson; and women such as Corrie Ten Boom and Joni Eareckson Tada share what God has taught them through suffering.
In one chapter, Os Guiness describes the foundation of our trust in God:
“Christians do not say, ‘I do not understand you at all, but I trust you anyway.’ Rather, we say, ‘I do not understand you in this situation, but I understand why I trust you anyway. Therefore I can trust that you understand even though I don’t.’
If we do not know why we trust God in the beginning, then we will always need to know exactly what God is doing in order to trust him. Failing to grasp that, we may not be able to continue trusting him, for anything we do not understand may count decisively against what we are able to trust.
If, on the other hand, we do know why we trust God, we will be able to trust him in situations where we do not understand what he is doing….Faith does not know why in terms of the immediate, but it knows why it trusts God who knows why in terms of the ultimate.”
Why can we trust God even when we don’t understand the situation? Because Jesus “took on himself the full desolation of God’s silence so that after suffering in our place he might restore us to his Father, that then we might be sure that God is there and God is good.”
Whatever trial you are facing today, or will face in the future, may the truth of God’s goodness through Jesus Christ be your rest.
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