Do you need more?

When you take a look at the 10 Commandments, there are two important things to notice:

1. 0 out of 10 forbid us from doing anything that we are not naturally inclined to want to do, like "You shall not eat mouthfuls of sand." 

2. 10 out of 10 are very good gauges as to whether we really believe God is who he says he is. 

Let's focus on #10: “You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor's.”

A modernized version might read like this: "You shall not obsess over someone else's wife, their job, their house, their toys, or anything else that's theirs and not yours."  

Q: Why does God care so mightily about this? 

A: Because he cares mightily about his people having a right relationship with him. 

In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul unmasks "coveting" for what it is on a deeper level: "For you may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, or who is covetous (that is, an idolater), has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God."

When we covet, we worship something other than God. We agree with Adam and Eve that we understand better what it is that we need for a good life. We refuse to take God at his word and trust him to meet our needs. We become our own gods. We become our own arbiters of truth, deciding that we need "God plus [whatever or whoever it is that you think you need but don't have]." In our lusty ignorance, we believe that we are becoming like God, but we are becoming like animals. 

When we ask "why is God choosing to hold out on me," James' answer changes our entire perspective:

"What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.

Like heroin addicts we run around looking for our next fix, coming to God saying things like, "Please, if you just give me this, I will serve you," and "I really need this to be happy," and "if you really loved me, you would make this happen for me." But God loves us too much to feed our addiction to power, money, sex, and prestige. Instead he bottoms us out. Like an addict who curses their family for refusing to lend them anymore money, we curse God for the way he is treating us. But we are too dumb to see that he is really saving our lives. 

We were created for right relationship with God. Jesus makes that possible for us by believing him when he tells us that he has given us all we need. When we find ourselves craving our neighbor's toys, wife, position, or prestige, that would be a great time to thank God for bringing this desire to our attention, asking him to reveal to us what it is that we are not believing he can give us, and asking him for help to repent for our sin of unbelief, for the ability to see what we can't see, and for the ability to believe what we cannot believe. He is faithful.