I like to look back at “past versions” of myself to count the ways God has changed me over years of walking with Him.

One of the ways God has changed me most drastically over the last few years is in the way I view other people’s successes. I used to see someone succeed and respond by:

1. ignoring their achievements,
2. becoming envious of what they had, &
3. returning to my own work with dissatisfaction and despair.

 

Let’s Make a Deal

Here’s the thing about envy: it’s very specific to you. There are things you are envious of that I don’t want, and there are things that stir up envy in me that you would never in a million years be tempted by.

I will tell you what used to make me incredibly envious of other people, but it’s very personal so you have to promise not to tell anyone else. Okay, internet world? Do we have a deal?

 

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If you are reading this, I assume you have signed on the dotted line and promised your firstborn child if you fail to comply.
Thank you in advance for your cooperation.

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What Envy Looked Like for Me

Here’s the dark, ugly truth:
I used to be envious of people who wrote spiritual articles (like I do) and got more attention than me. I told you it was ugly.

To give you a picture of how bad it had gotten, here are some real scenarios that happened repeatedly:

• I was unable to receive encouragement from something someone else had written because I was so busy feeling envious.
• When I encountered something similar to something I had previously written, but which received much more attention than mine did, I would respond with envy to the max and increased despair at my inability to create anything worthwhile.
• If any of my real-life friends gave attention on social media to another spiritual writer, I not only felt envious of the attention, but I also felt betrayed by my friends.
• I very rarely shared anything written by anyone remotely similar to me because, duh, obviously, they were competition and I was not going to promote them and thus diminish myself.

I share these scenarios because I think it’s helpful to see the practical outworkings of my envious heart. It also might be clarifying to you. If you experience any of the above responses, perhaps the sin of envy is taking root in your life as well.

 

What God Did Then

The first thing God did was to reveal my responses as sinful. For a while, I thought my responses were normal—even expected—certainly not sinful. But as envy kept rooting itself deeper and deeper into my heart, my response to others’ successes kept becoming more and more destructive. I could feel it constricting the life out of me. I vividly remember a moment when I became very upset with a real-life friend for pressing “like” on a fellow Christian writer’s Facebook post. This was the event that made me realize my sin of envy was on track to destroy all my relationships. I saw the truth of Proverbs 14:30, “A tranquil heart gives life to the flesh, but envy makes the bones rot.” I needed drastic help.

The Spirit led me to pray for people with whom I was envious. “Bless those who persecute you” (Romans 12:14). These people weren’t my persecutors, but I was persecuting myself with their successes. Whenever I saw something and had a kneejerk reaction of thinking envious thoughts, I started making myself ask God to bless that person and expand their ministry for his glory. Do you know how hard it was to pray this prayer? It was excruciating! I didn’t want to pray this for others; I wanted it for myself! But as I prayed this for others, God revealed a deeper ugliness in my heart…

What I wanted was to be the greatest…the greatest spiritual writer pointing people to God. Oh, the irony. This, my friends, is what is known as the sin of pride, which goes hand-in-hand with envy. Pride wants to be the best and envy gets upset at anyone in the way. The Spirit revealed my pride to me and I repented, again and again and again. Over and over and over.

Until one day, months after beginning this practice, I found myself reading someone else’s spiritual writing, being encouraged by it, and sharing it with others because I wanted them to be encouraged by it as well. All of a sudden, I thought, “Hold on, who even am I?” And I realized I am not who I used to be. God’s grace has changed me by the power of His Spirit, and all I can do is throw my hands up in a hallelujah.

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I am not who I used to be.
God’s grace has changed me by the power of His Spirit,
and all I can do is throw my hands up in a hallelujah.

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What God is Doing Now

Instead of responding to others’ work with envy, now I’m able to:

• receive encouragement from the good work they are doing for God.
  Envy shuts the door on encouragement from others. You can’t receive kindness from someone you’re envying.
• ask God to bless them and expand their ministry for His kingdom.
  I did this before, but now I can do it genuinely.
• promote others’ work freely and generously.
  Why wouldn’t I share the good work God is doing in someone else’s life?
• cheer others on in the good work God has called them to do.
  I don’t even need pompoms! (But I can use them if it helps.)
• work without despair.

God has so changed my heart that instead of looking at other people’s successes and returning to my own work with a sense of despair, I am now able to live in true freedom in the work God has called me to do, working hard not in an effort to be noticed, but because God has given me a good work to do.

I absolutely love the words of Romans 12 where Paul says that we each have different gifts that have been given to us by the grace of God. And what are we supposed to do with these gifts? Use them! Use them for the building up of God’s kingdom! The gifts are a work of grace, we get to use them only because of His work of grace in our hearts, and God will use them to stir up His gracious work in other people all for His good pleasure.

Listen, I for sure still need the grace of God to work in my heart because I am capable of returning to my envious state. But I am thankful for the work God has done to make me able to receive and willing to give. My heart of envy would have put to death my relationships and any ability to use God’s gifts. But God, through the resurrection power of Jesus Christ, gave me life instead. Glory to God.

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“Love is patient and kind;
love does not envy.”
1 Corinthians 13:4

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