Coveting and Judging -- "Stepped all over my toes"

Yesterday Rob and I went to early church because we wanted to get back in time to watch Mississippi State play for the SEC Basketball championship (which we lost in overtime by one point -- =-(. Brother Mike has been doing a series of sermon's on on the Ten Commandments, this week was the 10th Commandment -- Thou shall not covet. Was I convicted!!!??? I have been wanting/planning to redo our kitchen for several months now and Rob hasn't been to excited about it. He asked me the other night why I couldn't just be satisfied with it the way it was -- he (and the good Lord) knows I LOVE a project, and that is what I told him. Well, during the sermon, Brother Mike said the same thing and my new and improved kitchen came to mind. My motives have not been to glorify God, they have been for my own self-preservation. It made me realize that we need to be satisfied with what we have and it will all come in God's time. My big prayer for this week is going to be contentment -- Lord help me to glorify YOU in all my works...

James4:1 What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don't they come from your desires that battle within you? 2You want something but don't get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God. 3When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.

Then in Sunday School we are studying the book of James through a Max Lucado study. Yesterday's lesson was about judging -- yet again, "Stepped all over my toes," as our Claire (our Sunday School teacher) put it. Here are the verses:

11Brothers, do not slander one another. Anyone who speaks against his brother or judges him speaks against the law and judges it. When you judge the law, you are not keeping it, but sitting in judgment on it. 12There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the one who is able to save and destroy. But you—who are you to judge your neighbor? 13Now listen, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money." 14Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. 15Instead, you ought to say, "If it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that." 16As it is, you boast and brag. All such boasting is evil. 17Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn't do it, sins.

When we judge people, we are only trying to ignore our own shortcomings and point theirs out to make ourselves feel better. I am SO SO guilty of this -- UGH -- and I hate myself for it. I must remember that God is the only judge and we are all sinners!

And speaking of the Book of James -- Laura and I are teaching the 1st through 3rd graders on Sunday nights at church and this was our memory verse a few weeks ago:

James 4:8 Come near to God and he will come near to you.

One of the boys (we have 9) said the verse and then said "Jim 4:8" -- ha! I have also been trying to live this verse too! God's wisdom is bountiful!

Yet another wonderful verse from James that I wish I had remembered as Reed was throwing a major TEMPER TANTRUM this morning:

James 1:19: "My dear brothers, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry."



Tonight Rob is out of town, so I am going to try to upload some pics of the boys from our weekend, recent projects, and my wish list for projects around the house!!!