It is pretty hard to avoid the sin of coveting these days when we are literally bombarded with images daily. Whether it is our houses, crafts, fashion, hairstyles, homeschooling, whatever it is…you name it…there’s a photo showing you how it should look.
We want and want and want. It is our sin nature to seek after pleasures of the flesh and these images arouse our desires to fill our life with stuff. Things are beautiful. Things makes us feel good. Things make us feel accomplished. Whatever it is about things, we can’t deny the fact that they provide satisfaction to some degree. Yet, if they truly satisfied us, we would stop once we attained it. But we don’t. Once we have one thing, we simply move on to the next.
Living in an Internet world just appeals to our fleshy nature even more. We are visual beings and those images promise us something.
But what if we stop and step back and realize before we begin coveting the newest things…what are we truly going to achieve once we have it?
What if we called out our covetousness? What if we chose to seek what His Word says about stuff rather than what the world says?
We do have self-control. We do have a choice. We can choose the greater- the eternal– the only things that last.
It doesn’t mean we have to stop seeing images or spending time on the Internet, but we can control what we do with those images. We can see it for what it is- a fleeting enjoyment– and let it remind us even more of what is to come when the things of this world fade away.
We can stop being the victim of sin and understand Jesus has conquered our sin nature. Choose to embrace it and live in it. The things of this world don’t nearly seem so satisfying or pleasurable when we look at them through the lens of Jesus.
Stop and take a moment to look around you right now. Not one thing you see will last into eternity. Recognize it for the fleeting pleasure it is, and choose to seek after the things that will last.
Relationships, living out God’s Word, sharing the Gospel, and loving others. These have eternal value. These satisfy forever.
When we start to look at everything in this way, the appeal of images and things will no longer take hold of us, rather they will point us even further to the ultimate satisfaction of our souls- Jesus.
A great example of this in my life was several years ago when Steve lost his job. We were homeschooling and that year I had no budget for any fancy decor in our school room. There was no room for me to buy any extras for curriculum. And that was the year my homeschool truly changed.
When all the extras were stripped away, I was left with teaching my children beyond any distractions. My true purpose in teaching them at home was not hindered by me shopping for anything extra or focusing on the next best thing. I realized I already had all I needed. It was such a transformational time. All the cute little things I wanted for our school room and all the extra planning programs and curriculum were stripped away leaving me to teach my children and remember why we were homeschooling in the first place. I praise the Lord for stripping it all from us that year.
So today, choose to remember, if it all were stripped away, and you were left with the most important, what exactly would that look like? Are your priorities shifting? Take some time to seek His face and let Him show you the value of things that matter.
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