A little food for weekend thought--
Well, we're right in between: just finishing up the last of the Thanksgiving turkey and dressing (praise God for dressing!) and just contemplating the first Sunday of Advent tomorrow. Whew, like it or not, life continues at a breakneck pace, and so here we leap into yet another Christmas season.
But before the start of Advent and all the excitement, joy, and yes, the exhausting frenzy (not this year, Lord, by your grace!) of Christmas, why don't we pause for a few words of wisdom from one of my favorite writers--Paul David Tripp--on envy versus grace.
Because here's the thing: envy is the antithesis of thankfulness, don't you think? If we are envying others, we are refusing to notice and acknowledge God's extravagant goodness to us. We're rejecting all His many gifts in our lives, because we're too fixated on His gifts in the lives of others. Oh my, what an inevitable path to misery and bitterness.
We can even envy different seasons in our own lives. We look back with longing and even regret at the "good old days" of those carefree college years...or of having young children in the home...or of having no children in the home! Or we tragically wish away the days God has given us right now so that we forfeit the joy in our today while essentially envying some future time when we finally get married...or have children...or have grown children...or retire. Geez what a sad waste.
Here's what Paul David Tripp says: "when envy rules your heart, the love of God doesn't...Envy assumes that you deserve blessings that you don't deserve. When your heart is ruled by envy, the attitude of 'I am blessed' gets replaced with the attitude of 'I deserve.' Envy is selfish to the core. Envy always puts you in the center of the world. It makes everything all about you. It causes you to examine life from the sole perspective of your wants, needs, and feelings.
Sadly, envy causes you to question the goodness, faithfulness, and wisdom of God. Envy accuses God of not knowing what He's doing or of not being faithful to what He's promised to do. When you are convinced that a blessing that another person has ought to belong to you, you don't just have a problem with that person, you have a problem with God. When you begin to question God's goodness, you quit going to Him for help. Why? Because you don't seek the help of someone you've come to doubt.
Envy does something else that is spiritually deadly. It assumes understanding no one has. Envy not only assumes that you know more about that other person's life than you could ever know, it assumes that you have a clearer understanding of what is best than God does. Furthermore, envy causes you to forget God's amazing, rescuing, transforming, empowering, and delivering grace. You become so occupied with accounting for what you do not have that the enormous blessings of God's grace--blessings we could not have earned, achieved, or deserved--go unrecognized and uncelebrated."
Oh my, convicting words, are they not? Especially right here on the cusp of this season of too much buying, decorating, consuming...and sadly, envying. News flash: contrary to every magazine cover, there is no "perfect" Christmas. There is no ideal of "Making this the best Christmas ever!" complete with decorations, homemade gifts, and culinary masterpieces that would put Martha Stewart to shame. And there is no "most remarkable and meaningful Christmas devotions ever."
But here's what there is: grace. Extravagant, amazing grace showered upon us by a Savior who came to earth as a helpless infant, lived as a perfect man, died as the One condemned in our place and bearing our sins, and rose again to new, triumphant life to give us eternal life.
Boy, we all struggle with envy, don't we? But as Tripp says, "The only solution to envy is God's rescuing grace--grace that turns self-centered sinners into joyful and contented worshippers of God." Yes!
Oh praise God for grace. Praise God for Jesus. Praise God for Christmas...where we celebrate the dawn of indestructible grace, joy, hope, peace, and love. Here at the dawn of Advent, let's ask God to kill the sinful envy that all too often infects our souls and instead, by His grace, to turn us into joyful, thankful, contented worshippers.
To God be the glory.
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