Today I read Proverbs 24 and I was struck by the very first verse, "Be not thou envious against evil men, neither desire to be with them". At first this sounds self evident, why would anyone be envious of evil men, but then as you think about it, it is obvious that people are envious of them. I don't think that anyone grows up thinking they want to do bad things, kill people, etc, but somewhere along the way, far too many people decide to walk the path of unrighteousness. Why? It's because of envy.
Envy is when we desire something to the point it consumes us. When we see those people that are getting ahead in life we are jealous of them. We want to be like they are and make the kind of money that they are making. At first doing the things they are doing seems abhorrent to us, but then little by little, the more we dwell on it, our defenses come down. Satan works on us the second he finds the tiniest imperfection in our spiritual armor. Money is tempting because you can quite literally buy anything with it if you know the right people. But we are selling our birthright for a mess of pottage when we do that. The veil was put on us so that we could choose for ourselves what we really desire. If we could remember our Heavenly Father and the life He has promised us, each of us would choose the righteous path hands down. But we are to choose if that is what we want without remembering what awaits us and because of that, far too many people sell the greatest gift God can give us, for a comfortable lifestyle in this life. Don't sell yourself short and give up an eternity of happiness and increase for a microsecond of cheap physical pleasure. Until tomorrow.
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