You shall not covet your neighbour's house. You shall not covet your neighbour's wife, or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbour. (Exodus 20:17)
Our desire is often for a better: job; salary; car; house; or to achieve fame or a particular lifestyle.
It is a common world view that "I'll lead my life how I want - no one can tell me. I'm not harming anyone."
It is all too common that we strive to reach our individual goal, but do lasting damage to our relationships. We see people whose marriage has broken down because they put too great an emphasis on achieving the ultimate goal in their career. Others risk putting far too much money into their prized possession, rather than using it for their family well being and supporting those in need.
Many people are getting into vast amounts of debt because they feel the need to use credit to fund the lifestyle that they feel they should be living.
God wants us to be loved; to feel worthwhile; to be content in our lives. Once we start to seek possessions then they can easily get in the way of our relationship with God, our family, our friends and our neighbours. God values all of our relationships and wants to protect us from the hurts of misplaced desire.
The tenth commandment; whilst last this is certainly no less important than the others. If we fail to control our
desires then the consequences are potentially disastrous in that we
will damage our most important relationships and proceed to break one
or more of the other commandments.
We will achieve contentment in our lives only when we:
It is easy to get taken in by adverts and caught up in the frenzy to acquire more and more possessions. It is worth doing a lifestyle check to make sure we are focussed on the right things:
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