Introduction:

·      Following the commandment not to covet is easier said than done.

·      This one is not focused on our actions, but on our thoughts, our desires, and our feelings.

·      Illustration: A survey of teenage girls found that shopping was the primary recreational activity of 93 percent, which is indicative of our culture.

·      Our culture is constantly telling us a big lie: “More will satisfy.”

·      God says, “Don’t let goods become your god.”

·      Christians need to hold up being content as a major goal for our lives.

·      Being content means your realize that God has already given you all you really need.

·      To overcome coveting, we need to learn how to be content in life.

One ingredient for contentment is to learn to live in the here and now.

·      Jesus pointed to the flowers and said, “Notice how pretty their ‘clothes’ are.”

·      Much of our dissatisfaction is caused by fretting over the past or placing false hopes on the future.

·      Obsessing about past mistakes ruins our here and now.

·      There is also a great danger in living only for the future, when our preconditions for happiness have been met.

-Illustration: The local youth complain about how boring the town is, but the kids in the place they wish they were instead also complain about how boring that place is.

·      If you choose not to be happy, you won’t be happy no matter where you live.

·      We need to see ourselves being satisfied right here, right now.

-Illustration: Leo Buscaglia assigned a paper, asking how students would spend their last five days. Then on each paper, he wrote, “Why don’t you do these things today?”

·      Contentment is for today.

Another ingredient for contentment is to learn to discern between needs and wants.

·      Illustration: Helt tells how he tries to convince his wife that things he merely wants are things he truly needs.

- 1 Timothy 6:7, The Message

·      It is easy for all of us to get our wants confused with our true needs.

-Illustration: Most of us will get things for Christmas that we don’t truly need. A little boy illustrates that by saying he doesn’t need anything from Santa because it’s already in his parents’ closet.

·      When we think about what we truly need, we already have all we actually need.

The third step toward contentment is to not take yourself too seriously.

·      Illustration: A pastor shouldn’t believe all the nice things said by little old ladies on the way out of church and think no one can preach as well.

·      It is easy to get obsessed with our indispensability.

·      A messiah complex is the belief that we are someone’s savior, and thus indispensable.

·      Jesus, the genuine Messiah, showed very little of this messiah complex in his life.

-Matthew 19:16ff

·      When we realize that we are neither the center of the universe nor its foundation, then others are not forced to conform to our standards.

·      To be content, we must realize we are not as important as we might like to believe.

Covet the right things.

·      To covet something, biblically speaking, means to have a great desire for that thing. 

·      We ought to desire to be more like God—“Having the mind of Christ.”

·      We are also to covet what is best for others.

-Illustration: We tend to gloat when bad things happen to famous or careless people, thinking they’re getting what they deserve, and that’s just plain evil, wrong, sinful.

·      We’ve been shown grace by God, and we’re to spread that grace around.

·      Illustration: “There are ten rules for getting rid of the blues: Go out and do something for someone else—and repeat it nine times.”

·      The greatest thing we can “covet” is for everyone to know Jesus Christ as Savior.

·      We should earnestly desire, for others and for ourselves, having Jesus heal our souls.