“You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife,
or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.”
EXODUS 20:17
New International Version (NIV)
What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.
JAMES 4:1-3 (NIV)
You can admire, without having to acquire.
Soul: nephesh (Hebrew)
having a longing or wanting that nothing earthly can fill.
When the will has become enslaved by its need, when the mind has become obsessed with the object of its desire, when the appetite of the body
has become the master rather than the servant, the soul, is disordered. The ultimate reality behind
human dissatisfaction is sinful souls that have been cut off from the God we were made to rest in.
That’s why we’re dissatisfied.
JOHN ORTBERG, SOUL KEEPING, P. 163
The main thing we bring home from work is our soul. Work is a soul function. We’re made to create value. The writer of Ecclesiastes says, “There is nothing better for a person than that he should
make his soul enjoy good in his work. This too, I see, is from the hand of God.”
JOHN ORTBERG, SOUL KEEPING, PG. 164
And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.
COLOSSIANS 3:17 (NIV)
…give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.
1 THESSALONIANS 5:18 (NIV)
More gratitude will not come from acquiring more things or experiences, but from more of an awareness of God’s presence and his goodness. It’s a way of looking at life, always perceiving the good. Gratitude is a by-product of a way of seeing things,
and it always involves three factors. The language is a little unusual, so you will just have to bear with it. It comes from the old Latin word “bene,” which meant “good,” and gratitude will always
involve three “benes.”
JOHN ORTBERG, SOUL KEEPING, P. 170-171
Benefit – recognizing and receiving the good in something Benefactor – producing good
God is our benefactor!
Beneficiary – the one who receives the gifts of God
You are the beneficiary of the benefits of a God who has your best interests at heart, and this is going on all the time. When we take that for granted or believe we deserve his gifts, then we are no longer grateful; you can’t be grateful for something you believe you are entitled to, and without a grateful heart the soul suffers. Because the soul needs gratitude.
JOHN ORTBERG, SOUL KEEPING, P. 170
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.
JOHN 3:16-17(NIV)