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Rich Toward God: True Abundance
Episode 365
The Danger Of Covetousness
Covetousness is what happens when you see someone else’s possessions and want them for yourself. It’s part envy and part greed, and completely sinful. But what’s so dangerous about that kind of desire?
Well, like any sin, its first effect is to draw you away from a right relationship with God. Envy can also destroy your relationships with other people. When you’re zeroing in on getting and keeping what you want, you’re putting your fleshly desires in God’s place. Selfishness obliterates your ability to love God and other people.
One problem with a materialistic mindset is that you start to believe “more is always better”, and you never have enough. Ultimately, covetousness is just a treadmill of frustration and desire. In Ecclesiastes, King Solomon calls it “chasing after the wind.”
Jesus warns his followers against this sin, but he also gives them-–and us-–the key to a better way of living: “One’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions”.
In other words, you won’t find lasting satisfaction in getting more stuff. Material things just can’t give you the life you crave. So, what kind of abundance does produce life?”
Finding Fulfillment In God
As Luke 12 recounts, Jesus gives the answer in a story we know as “The Parable of the Rich Fool”. He tells of a rich man who is so enamored of his possessions that he decides to tear down his storehouses and build bigger ones, promising himself a long and relaxing retirement.
Before the rich man can fulfill his selfish dreams, God comes to him and says, “You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?” Jesus’s next words serve as a warning, but also a promise for those who “have ears to hear”: “This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God.”
As always, Jesus is addressing the hearts of his followers. He knows we live in a physical world, surrounded by desirable things. But God created men and women for more than just temporary worldly pleasures and achievements. According to Ecclesiastes 3:11, He has also set eternity in the human heart.
What we really want, at our core, is abundant life. What we want is God Himself. To possess a relationship with the Lord is to be full of His abundance – to be “rich toward God”.
Here’s what Jesus says about this in John 10:9. “I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.”
Experiencing God’s Abundance
Throughout the New Testament, and specifically in the Parable of the Rich Fool, Jesus urges us to take the focus off “me” and “my stuff” and put it where it belongs–on Him. True abundance comes from a personal, intimate relationship with God, through Christ.
In John 15:5 Jesus confirms this: “Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.”
The tragedy of the Rich Fool is not that his life was cut short…but that he was looking for abundance in all the wrong places. In his pride and greed, he gave up the opportunity to abide in God and serve others. He failed to choose a life that was eternally “rich toward God”. Instead, he pursued a foolish life that was rich toward himself.
So, are you experiencing abundant life? If not, here’s what you can do right now to turn things around: First, get things right between you and the Lord. Surrender your life to Christ. Here’s the promise from John 1:12 “to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God”
When your desires are getting in the way, and pride and envy are making you miserable, tel
Published on 1 year, 8 months ago