The Secret Longings of the Heart

Stories from Isolation...

Lessons from My Grandson - Installment #23

A Consumer in Training…Training Our Desires

You Shall not Covet...

Last but..

Certainly not Least

You Shall not Covet...

Qualifications are Important

Micah 2:1-2

Micah 2:1–2 ESV

Woe to those who devise wickedness and work evil on their beds! When the morning dawns, they perform it, because it is in the power of their hand. They covet fields and seize them, and houses, and take them away; they oppress a man and his house, a man and his inheritance.

A Command Directed to the Heart

Luke 12:15

Luke 12:15 ESV

And he said to them, “Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.”

You Shall Not Covet...

More Than A Negation

The Opposite of Greedy Desire is Holy Desire

Luke 12:19-21

Luke 12:19–21 ESV

And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.” ’ But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.”

Well Directed Love

The Ten Commandments: A Guide to the Perfect Law of Liberty Commandment X: “Thou Shalt Not Covet”

We’re in Augustinian territory, where the key is to order desires rightly, to direct our loves at lovable things that deserve our fixed love. From this Augustinian perspective, we are genuinely free only if our desires are trained, only if we have been brought out of the Egypt of self-love to embrace proper objects of love.

You Shall Not Covet...

No Wiggle Room

Neighbors Near and Far…Anything and Everything!

You Shall Not Covet & the Garden

Unholy Desire: an Opening for Idolatry

And all that follows!

Training Our Desires the Jesus Way

John 6:37–39 ESV

All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day.

Matthew 20:25–28 ESV

But Jesus called them to him and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave, even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

Holy Desire Expressed in Selfless Love

We Receive…We Give