Episode 627

TODAY’S READING

16 For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice. 

James 3:16

Some of us have a stronghold of envy over our lives. We look to others, and we look at what other people have, and we compare it to ours. And envy is an ugly word, and it’s a tainted word. And we don’t like to be associated with jealousy. We don’t like to be associated with envy. And so you might actually be listening to me right now and say, That’s not me. I don’t have those feelings. I’m pure of heart, I would never, but deep down when you simply compare yourself and your situation to another. It’s a form of envy. And so today, we’re just going to leave it at the altar. We’re going to leave it in our prayers. We’re going to surrender it to Jesus. And we’re gonna say, God, he took this to the grave with you. 

I acknowledge that it’s an ugly side of me that I continuously compare my life to others. I continuously compare my situation. I continuously question why you do something for someone and not for me. And so God, I give that up to you. And I surrender it to you. I surrender it to your entire authority, and we leave it here today. Now having that strength to do that and admitting that it might be a fault of yours. I will be the first to say that there are times in which I will compare my life to others. I’ll compare the success of this podcast to another, and that is such a worldly thing to do when I’ve always known that this is such a God thing. It’s such a spiritual thing that there should be no comparison, but the human in me compares. And so I’m here to remind you that I’m human and that you are human. And the comparison is a tool of the enemy. And it’s one that we are easily able to fall into. And so it’s no shame because God took the shame from us. And he took it to the grave, but it’s just acknowledgment that we don’t have to allow comparison and envy and jealousy to rule over our lives to have this stronghold over our lives, and in this series of the monsters under our bed, we are going to leave and the at the altar, and we’re going to pray over it today.

Prayer:

Father God, we thank you for this beautiful Tuesday. We thank you for your son and what he did for us. We thank you for all of these strongholds that we are breaking. We are breaking the stronghold of control of anxiety of depression. We are breaking the stronghold of being closed off to love, and today we’re breaking the strongholds of jealousy, envy, and comparison. God, we are so human, and you are so perfect, and you take our imperfections, you take the gap, and you fill it in. You give us the ability to walk in freedom, God, and so we’re after that today. We give it to you; we put it on the altar so that you can destroy it and so that we can continue to live a life after your goodness. We thank you day in and day out. That you continue to chase our hearts, even to chase us to live a life of freedom after you. We love you. We honor you. We pray this all in your son’s mighty name. Amen