Ten Words #10: Curb Your Desire

By -
"You shall not covet." The final word in the Ten Commandments loops us back to the first words. This command points once again to the primary question of the Decalogue. Can we be content with serving God and God alone? Or do we feel that we need to take matters into our own hands, placing ourselves on the throne of glory?

Desire can be good. It can push us to perform well, to expand our skills, and to accomplish things that require extra effort. God made the world good. It's filled with pleasant things that are delightful to see, touch and taste. Texts such as Song of Songs highlight the inherent beauty of relationships and the passion that accompanies them. This is a good world that God made, and we should enjoy it.

But desire slips from healthy and good to deadly and evil when we fail to control it. Desire becomes evil when it infringes on the rights of others, or when it harms our neighbor. In opposition to what some evolutionary scientists seem to think, desire should not always be acted upon. We are not free to do as we choose—or as nature might incline us.

We must understand the limits of desire and place our appetites under the Lordship of God. When we give desire a free reign, we forget that we are guests in our Master's house. Our lives are not our own. We should not seek to acquire everything that is beautiful, pleasurable or desirable. The 10th Word teaches that some things are off limits.

Uncurbed desire does more than harm our neighbor. It breaks our relationship with God and places us in jeopardy of becoming idolaters. An unchecked appetite prevents gratitude for what we already have. And it blocks the memory of how bad things used to be, opening the door for unhealthy feelings of nostalgia to grow within us, making us feel entitled to more than we need.

To put it succinctly, the simple life is often better than the complex life. As Paul said, "For I have learned to be content with whatever I have. I know what it is to have little, and I know what it is to have plenty. In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me" (Phil 4:11-13). As we conclude this series of meditations on the Ten Commandments, I pray that we find the ability to be content with serving God and with receiving the good gifts being poured out into our lives.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Love It or List It: We Sold Our Church Building

By -
Image
On October 8, 2023, we held our last worship service in our home of 59 years. We're moving on to a temporary location while we wait for God to reveal where our more permanent home will be. It's been a journey for which there is no solid road map, but we feel blessed by what's happening. We formed a giant circle for the final song at our longtime, northeast Fresno home. In late January, our elders announced a shock decision. We would be selling our church building and moving on. Among the elders, it was an uncontentious and unambiguous decision. They 100% believed it was in the church's best interest to put our property on the market and find a new home. Many congregations have hard choices to make about aging properties that are oversized for today's churches. Selling seemed the most desirable option to our board in our circumstances. I wrote about that decision back in January. You can read about it here . I had an inside seat to their decision-making process. As a
Read more

Galatians 4:1-7 & The Confusing Apostle Paul

By -
Image
Does Galatians 4:1-7 confuse anyone as much as it does me? After studying this for some time, I am prone to agree with the words of 2 Peter 3:16. "There are some things in [Paul's letters] hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other scriptures." I hope I'm not one of the ignorant and unstable people. But I'm in the camp of folks who can say that Paul's writings are occasionally hard to understand. Let me clarify what I'm having a hard time clarifying. I don't really think it's difficult to understand Paul's point in Gal 4:1-7. The broader context makes it clear. Paul says that the Law of Moses is inferior to the promise previously made to Abraham. Gentile Christians, he writes, are descendants of Abraham because they share the same faith in God (3:6-7) that Abraham had (Gen 15:6). They therefore don't need to obey Jewish rules and customs. That's his point. from Anthony
Read more

Still Freezing in Abilene

By -
Image
So I've been in a class all week titled "Missional Ecclesiology." It's taken me most of the week just to figure out what the title even means, but it's been a thoroughly invigorating week. Basically, the class is about how church can become a people who are more fully dedicated to the Kingdom of God. Of course this brings up all kinds of questions. If we are going to reshape our churches to more accurately resemble a pursuit of God designs for creation and humanity, what exactly is his aim? Is he merely interested in us going to heaven? Is that what salvation means? And how do we live our communal life in a way that nurtures this vision of salvation? These are deep questions and not so easily dismissed. For example, when I grew up in church, the primary concern was to be saved from sin and not go to hell. So how did we answer this concern? By baptizing people in the right way for the right reason so that they could have assurance of going to heaven. But as we look
Read more