Testing of Your Faith

2 Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, 3 for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. 4 And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. 

 The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. (2016). (Jas 1:2–4). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.

Abba,

As I was processing over the reality of Envy this morning, I thought of these words.   Your Spirit drew my mind to them.  When trial comes, when we feel like we lack some good thing, something that others enjoy, we grow discontent.  Envious.  Truth is though, blessing and riches are often found in that which we think we lack.  Blessings are sometimes “hidden” where we least expect them.  The cure for envy is not in gaining hold of that which we think we lack, but it is found in gaining hold of you.

Your blessings are shared and manifested in a plethora of ways and are never the same for two people.  And many times, your blessings are found in the hardest of places.  The cure for envy is to embrace you, to trust you, and to accept the blessings you grant to me instead of coveting the blessings you have granted to another.  Our blessings are hand picked by you, specific to each person you shower them upon. You hand pick them for us knowing exactly what is best and needed to draw us into intimate and personal relationship with you.  Someone else’s blessing would not be a blessing for me, but a curse, a stumbling block.  You have chosen exactly the right blessings and circumstances for us that move us towards yourself.  Even when trials and hardship come due to the broken world we live in, you can and do bring blessing out of them; out of brokenness.  As hard as it is, we have to accept that sometimes our deepest struggle is also the source of our greatest blessing; the absence of the thing we desire most in the flesh, may well be the greatest spiritual blessing we can enjoy.  As hard it is, we have to face the fact that someone else’s blessing may not be good for us and instead we need to learn to trust the blessing you have granted to us and simply rejoice with them over their blessing.

Do we trust you enough to humbly acknowledge, accept, and give thanks in those moments?  That is the real and terrifying question.

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Shades of Green

The green eyes of envy

Shade my view

Of the world

Robbing me of present joy

And eternal blessing

Trapping me in discontent

The world does not appear

As bright or as good

When shaded green

The rainbow of colors

Of variety and uniqueness

Is dampened and gone

When the world is seen

Through only one color

A prism of green

Abba, you never intended 

For Carbon copy lives

Duplicate blessings

Each life displays your

Eternal goodness

In a vast array of variance

The blessing another enjoys

Is not better than mine

Only different, unique.

The blessings selected for me

Are hand picked

Specially chosen

They come in all 

Shapes and sizes

Often unseen and misunderstood

Your grace often floods in

Granting sight to see

What eyes of flesh could not

And oh what a sight

It is

When the scales drop!

The blessings pop

Standing out conspicuously

Clear as day

The shade of green

Shattered

In the burst of blessing’s hue!

What have we to envy

When the Maker of all

Hand picks his blessings for us?

What a travesty

That we fail to see

Fail to grasp His goodness!

How terrible it is when we have

A temporal view of blessings

An immediate view

Your Spirit beckons us to see

The richness of color

In abundant blessing

Perhaps, it is true

In the worlds mind

We have missed out

Perhaps, it is true

In the flesh’s feeling

We somehow lack

Perhaps all we see 

Is pain or disappointment 

And envy those who know ease

But we don’t

Live forever in the flesh

This world is not our home

The opinion of the world

It’s ideals and desires

Hold no eternal delight

So we look to the one

Who made us

Who knows us

We look to the one 

Who loves us

And holds us

We look to the one

Who paid the ultimate price

To make us His

And we permit Him

To define blessing

To set the boundaries of goodness

And with the shades of green

Removed and discarded

We see

The kaleidoscope of color

Blessings and goodness

Abounding and proliferate

Then our eyes only see you

With love and devotion

At a love so lavish

The cure for envy

Is not 

In gaining hold of what we “lack”

The cure for envy

Is in

Gaining hold of YOU.