I Will Be Happy When . . .

The following post contains excerpts from a chapter in my new book, The Private Side of Leadership.

All of us have experienced discontentment.

Often the successes, failures,

or struggles of life bring these

challenges.  The if-only

longings drag us into states

of envy and dissatisfaction

while a heart of content- ment eludes us. We covet what others have: an

elegant home, financial security, better health,

well-behaved children, or more considerate friends and family. As Megan

Hill says, “we’re prone to look over our shoulders at other women and demand

from the Lord, ‘I’ll have what she’s having.’ ”[1] We grasp for an elusive happiness that lies just beyond our reach.

Frequently, once one of our desires is realized, we immediately yearn for more. I witnessed this as a parent. My young children made lists of their Christmas wishes, yet shortly after the holiday, they quickly discarded those once-longed-for items, leaving them to languish under their beds or in their closets. Soon, a friend’s Christmas present or something on a television commercial would whet their appetites for some new diversion, that appealing toy or video game. Sadly, they were often mirrors of my own discontented, covetous heart.

Like an Untreated Cancer

Friends, family, or churches can also leave us dissatisfied as we long for deeper understanding or for more considerate treatment. While observing someone else’s seemingly perfect relationships, we envy what seems to be missing in our lives. However, envy often leads to a destructive path of greed and resentment: “Nothing is benign about envy (covetousness). Like a cancer left untreated, it will consume us. Envy is deadly. It can kill anything from contentment to relationships to people.”[2] It’s difficult to imagine a covetousness that can kill, but Scripture affirms this truth: “Each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death” (James 1:14–15 ESV). Envy, a serious cancer, can cause significant damage. We must confront it if we are to be examples to others.

Contributors to our Discontent

We cannot underestimate the roles that television, magazines, and social media play in contributing to chronic discontent, as Bible study teacher Susanne Sheppman writes: “Day after day we hear how inadequate our lives are without all these things. Advertisers coax us with the promise that if we purchase their product then we will be happy and, best of all, others will covet what we have.”[3] What a disturbing thought! Not only do we desire what others have, but also, we want to be the envied rather than the enviers. How desperately wicked a discontented heart becomes. Our Creator understood this danger when he warned, “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor’s” (Exodus 20:17). Every possible object or relationship we might covet is covered in this admonition.

Besides stealing our happiness, covetous impulses inhibit the positive traits that we should nurture and exercise. For example, in The Envy of Eve, Melissa Krueger observes, “If you set your desires or affections on what belongs to your neighbor, you will never be able to love that person well.”[4] So the commandment “love your neighbor as yourself” will also be impossible to keep (Mark 12:31). Pastor David Anderson cautions that our “passion for Christ fades as the world’s message takes hold.”[5] Therefore, we must recognize our tendencies toward desire and greed, and make changes before those forces lead to other sins.

Desire For Good Things

What does it mean to covet, to envy? It is not simply to desire something. In fact, Scripture directs us to desire good things. For example, we are instructed to “hunger and thirst [indicating a strong desire] for righteousness” (Matthew 5:6); to eagerly search for the judgments of the Lord more than gold (Psalm 19:9–10); and to “seek the Lord while He may be found” (Isaiah 55:6). In fact, God desires good for his children.

The story of New Testament Elizabeth depicts one woman’s experience of prayer, desire, and waiting. She was well into old age before the Lord answered her prayer for a child, and she gave birth to a son (Luke 1:5–25, 57). Waiting for something good can be painful. Rejoicing with others who have something we desire can be difficult. Did Elizabeth happily attend baby showers for her friends or neighbors while she remained childless? Had she endured the looks of pity from mothers cuddling their newborns? Or did she feel scorn from those who suspected that her barrenness derived from God’s judgment for secret sin?

Scripture doesn’t reveal those details, but we do know she waited in thankfulness and trust, for she is described as righteous and blameless (v. 6). Biblical scholar Alfred Edersheim aptly describes the waiting that Elizabeth and her husband, Zacharias, endured: “They had waited together these many years, till in the evening of life the flower of hope had closed its fragrant cup and still the two sat together in the twilight, content to wait in loneliness, till night would close around them.”[6]

Zacharias and Elizabeth discovered that the life of a follower of God is like a tapestry: God embroiders his will on the canvas of our years as we patiently wait for him. We often spend decades viewing only the tangled underside of his work while waiting for the finished beautiful product to be revealed on the other side. According to Jesus, the baby born to Zacharias and Elizabeth, John the Baptist, would become one of the greatest men ever (Matthew 11:11).

We may be waiting for something entirely different: a better job, a newer home, renewed health, or healed relationships. As we seek God’s will in each circumstance, incredible answers to prayer may result from waiting patiently and contentedly on the Lord. However, we must also learn that “there is joy in His presence even before the happy ending comes, even if it never comes.”[7]

Taking Matters Into Our Own Hands

Just as there are godly desires, however, there are also undesirable longings, like covetousness, which can be described as an idolatrous, selfish desire to possess. God knew the negative power of “the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life” (1 John 2:16)—forces that would be ever present in our sinful hearts.

Just as Elizabeth exemplifies waiting on the Lord for the desire of her heart, one of her Hebrew predecessors, Sarah, proved less exemplary. Sarah, Abraham’s wife, grew impatient with the Lord’s unfilled promise of a son and took matters into her own hands. She gave her handmaiden Hagar to Abraham so they could produce that promised son. Sadly, Ishmael, born from this union, caused much heartache for Sarah because Hagar resented and mocked Sarah. However, despite Abraham and Sarah’s disobedience, God eventually fulfilled his promise to the couple. In their old age, Sarah gave birth to Isaac (Genesis 15:1–16:15; 18:9–15; 21:1–8). Between Isaac and Ishmael, two nations were born: one from Hagar (the Arabs) and one from Sarah (Israel). The Arab-Israeli conflicts of the last three thousand years resulted from Sarah and Abraham’s impatience and disobedience.

Melissa Kruger makes an astute observation concerning the danger of ungodly desires:

We long for different things at different points in our lives. We covet

experiences, possessions, emotional resources, educational levels, obedient

children, marriages, life stages, giftedness, intellectual abilities, and a myriad of

things much more than just our neighbor’s cute new coat. To limit it to physical

possessions greatly minimizes the tenth commandment and fails to get to the

heart of our situation.[8]

Truly, our own envy can reach far beyond physical desires, as was the case with Sarah. Like her, we never know what our impatient, coveting hearts might unleash. May we learn to bring every longing before the throne of grace to “obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Hebrews 4:16).

[1]Hill, Megan. How to Be Content in a Covetous World. The Gospel Coalition Blog. April 15, 2016,   https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/reviews/the-envy-of-eve.

[2] Moore, Beth. Jesus the One and Only. (Nashville, TN: B&H Publishing Group, 2013), 219.

[3] Scheppmann, Susanne. Perplexing Proverbs for Women. (Chattanooga, TN: AMG Publishers, 2007), 35.

[4] Kruger, Melissa B. The Envy of Eve: Finding Contentment in a Covetous World. (Ross-Shire, Scotland: Christian Focus, 2012), 31.

[5] Anderson, David, Pastor.  Sermon, May 22, 2011, Littleton Bible Chapel, Littleton, CO.

[6] Edersheim, Alfred. The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah. (London: Andesite Press, 2015) 137.

[7] Majors, Katie Davis.  Just Between Us, Spring 2023, 12.

[8] Kruger, Melissa B. The Envy of Eve, Finding Contentment in a Covetous World. (Ross-Shire, Scotland: Christian Focus, 2012), 212.