"GET A LIFE"

This issue will be very brief. I just want to take a second to encourage you. God challenged me with a statement recently and it was this, “People in America generally hate other’s success”. That is so true. Have you ever noticed that when you are struggling and you are living in a box apartment just trying to survive, nobody criticizes you, but when you buy that dream house everybody is criticizing you, saying “How did you afford that house”? As long as you are driving that little beat up car, nobody could care less what you do, but as soon as you drive up in that brand new Lexus, everybody hates you. Why? People in America and in the Church are eaten up with envy. Paul list 16 attributes of God’s love found in 1 Corinthians 13. One of the attributes is, true love does not envy.

Jealousy and envy are not the same thing, jealousy says, that is my husband don’t you dare look at him that way. In other words you are jealous over something that belongs to you. Envy says, I can’t believe you got that promotion, I deserved it more. Envy is when you have negative feelings over what belongs to someone else. Covet is when that feeling becomes a reality, a force that drives you. True love does not envy.

The dangerous thing about envy is that it hides in pockets. You can be in Church raising one hand and manipulating with the other hand. Envy is dangerous because to the visible eye it is invisible. But it is dangerous; it causes strife, division and death in the Church. How do you know if you have a hidden pocket of envy? If you see someone else get a blessing and outwardly you are rejoicing with them, but inwardly you are slicing and dicing them. If you can’t rejoice inwardly as well as outwardly, you have envy. Here is what I have learned through experience, hurt people will hurt people, critical people will be critical, and negative people will be negative. Your destiny is never in the hands of lowly people. If they hate you because of your blessing so be it. Don’t fall into their trap.

What amazes me the most is that people who are critical spend all their time criticizing you, when in reality they envy what you got. They will criticize you over your new blessing until you leave it, and then they will come right behind you and scoop it up. Don’t allow their negative spirit to distract you from what is yours. Your blessing is your blessing, it doesn’t belong to anyone else, but when you focus on the critics you forfeit what is yours. Let them talk; it just reveals that they are so consumed with your life, that they don’t have a life. I want to close with one statement to all those critics, doubters, naysayers, and hateful people who are so focused on our failure, GET A LIFE!

Blessings,

Craig Sloan