Heb. 13:5 ... 5 Let your conversation be without covetousness;
and be content with such things as ye have:for he hath said, I will
never leave thee, nor forsake thee. 6 So that we may boldly say, The
Lord is my helper, and I will not fear what man shall do unto me.
One definition of "covetousness" is strong desire.
When
we have that very strong desire and pray, it might be our own flesh
answering our prayer to get us the object of our strong desire.
So
we have to work through the strong desire. Sometimes it drives us to
getting or to doing wrong thing and even calling answer "God" when it
was really our own flesh working to accomplish what flesh wanted.
Strong desire can even override prayer.
Therefore we are warned in Heb. 13:5 to keep those desires under control.
I believe this is what Paul meant when he said he kept his body under, not allowing it to rule.
I Cor. 9 ... 24 Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize? So run, that ye may obtain. 25 And every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible. 26 I therefore so run, not as uncertainly; so fight I, not as one that beateth the air:27 But I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection:lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway.
How
to keep that desire under control ... one way is to make no provision
for that desire ... another is to pray for wisdom in the temptation so
you can know how you are stirring up the desire.
If you have a desire to travel, obviously you would feed that desire by looking at travel shows on TV, so you turn from watching these to control your desire. (let everything cool down)
Letting your mind think on that desire would be feeding the desire. Turning to God in prayer certainly helps.
If
there is a scripture showing opposite way to the desire, then you would
keep that scripture before you day and night, especially a scripture
that is brought to you by Holy Spirit.
Pam Padgett, in our little church group, has very strong desire to help people and to encourage people.
How can this be a problem?
If
the people are fleshly in what they want, or if someone on our mailing
list writes something fleshly, she must not encourage them. There have been times when Pam has read something reported by an individual and has felt uncomfortable. Then thought it was just her feeling this, and has gone on to encourage the person, later to find out the report was of that person's own flesh, and the negative feeling was actually from the Holy Spirit in her trying to show us the truth about the writing.
Here is a scripture that can help her in controlling this.
1 Timothy 5:22 Lay hands suddenly on no man, neither be partaker of other men's sins: keep thyself pure.
If
their desire is not of God ... or if their writing is of their own
flesh, and their own emotion, we should not be jumping on their
bandwagon. To approve such is to partake of their sin.
Pam is working on this problem.
I
Cor. 10 ... 13 There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common
to man:but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above
that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to
escape, that ye may be able to bear it.
Here are some examples of strong desire leading us and even causing us to think it is God working out what we desire.
I have an example of getting my own desire ... or did I really want what I thought I wanted.
This concerns the repair of my CD player. Of course I prayed but I knew what I wanted as I prayed. It never occurred to me as I prayed that I really didn't want what I was arranging until I got what I thought I wanted.
I
wanted to send CD player to NY repair people. It had already been
worked on in Austin, Texas, repair. So I contacted Richard who represented the
manufacturer and presented my case to Richard. He agreed to let me send
it to NY under warranty.
I
then found I didn't want to do this. I didn't want to send it
anywhere. I had gotten cleaning woman to get the huge box down from
upstairs storage so I could pack CD player. But I didn't want to pack
it. I found I didn't want to do what I had arranged to do.
I
called and spoke with Frank at repair in NY. He said something like,
"You don't seem to be the type of person to mishandle a CD so I wouldn't
think the CD itself could be the problem." I'm certainly not the type
to mishandle a CD.
But I
couldn't get this out of my mind. I took the CD and looked at it under a
very bright light and saw it had multiple scratches and even nicks on
the CD playing surface.
I sent the questionable CD to Frank in NY. He found that CD would skip tracks on various players they had.
In mean time, I played about 15 other CD's with no problem.
Frank and I both decided the problem was not with the CD player but with the CD itself.
Gratefully I didn't have to ship my CD player to NY. And the repair people in Austin probably really repaired the CD after all so I could stop thinking negative things about these repair people.
This is how our desire can get us what we think we want ... or what we really don't want. (And often because we prayed we even think God worked it out when it was our own mind figuring out how to get what we wanted.)