Nikki Fox looks at how envy impacts us and envy and children.
Excerpt from Envy
Well, isn’t it good to be in the house of the Lord today? Amen? Yes, it’s good to be with our brothers and sisters. If you’ve never been here before, we just wanna say welcome, welcome to 4th Avenue. You’ll hear us say we are a family a lot, and that’s what we’re called to be as the church, right? The family of God, brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers, cousins, you know, all that. We are here today as family to celebrate and worship our God. And part of that is looking into his word and what is he saying for us? And so we’re so thankful that you’re here this morning. I’m really grateful to be up here this morning. I was about to go and grab that other mic because I feel like I’ve been doing announcements and communing a lot and I was like, where’d the mic go?
Oh yeah, I get to be like here in the middle. So if you don’t know, I’m one of our student ministers here and I’m just really thankful to get to serve this body and to get to love this city of Franklin and beyond and so grateful you guys are here. If you haven’t been with us, we are in this series, The Enemy, talking about our inner darkness and our vices that come against what kind of life we’re supposed to live in Christ. And this morning, I just wanna pray before we get started talking about what we’re gonna be talking about today.
Open Ears, Open Eyes, Open Hearts
So Father, thank you so much for another day to live in your presence for another day to be convicted by your word for another day to worship as a family. God, I pray that we would have open ears, open eyes, open hearts to what you have to say to us today. Thank you again so much that we get the opportunity to gather to be your children and to worship you. Open our hearts in Jesus’ name, amen. So this morning, I get the fun opportunity about talking about our inner darkness.
Thank you again so much that we get the opportunity to gather to be your children and to worship you. Open our hearts in Jesus’ name, amen. So this morning, I get the fun opportunity about talking about our inner darkness. Thinking about envy, right? Gonna look at envy together. And when Kyle gave me some options of some dates and stuff like that, I didn’t really know what I was getting myself into, where we’d be in October.
And of course, as it happens, you know, the Lord does this all the time. It’s like, he gives you an opportunity to look at something that he wants you to look at, right? Looking in the mirror. So we’re gonna talk about envy today. So if you’re like, what is envy? When does it start? It starts pretty young for all of us. It starts when we’re kids, okay? I want you to imagine this scenario. I don’t have kids. I have nieces and nephews, and I get to be around a lot of children.
Envy In Children
But just think about this scenario. You’ve seen a parent or a guardian give a child a toy or a snack, right? And they are loving it. They’re like, this is mine. This is amazing. This is awesome. And then they look over. And they see another kid or another child and they’ve got a different toy or snack and all of a sudden they’re like, what is this? You know, they throw it down and they look over and they’re like grabbing for what the other person has and of course the other person’s like, well this is mine, you know, like this is my toy, this is my snack.
And then all of a sudden like it hits the fan, right? They’re like, oh, I want that, I want that one over there, I don’t want what you gave me and they just throw it away and they’re screaming and they’re having a fit and you’re like, hey, remember I had a toy, I had a snack for you, like you were loving it. But in that moment, that kid cannot be consoled and all they can think of, they’re not looking at what you have given them, they’re looking at what that other kid has and they’re like, I want that one.
Children and Envy
I don’t really care what you’ve given me over here, I want that one, right? Has anybody ever seen that, experienced that, your kids have done that? And you’re like, hey, I love you, I’ve taken care of you, I’ve given you what you need and they are just not having it in that moment. Some of us may not remember that of like us doing that as kids, but that’s kind of where this all starts, right? For us, we are like, when we’re first growing up, that’s what we do and we don’t even recognize that it’s something that just keeps growing in us.
Now hopefully as adults, we’re not still over here like pitching fits and screaming, saying I want what that person has, right? If you are like, come see somebody after the service or something, like we’ll talk through that, we’ll maybe get you some counseling or something, but it comes up in different ways for us, right?
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