Do you lack contentment and peace in your life?
In this episode you will discover the silent saboteur of our personal growth and faith as the host Helen Todd and Pastor Mike Fabarez talk about envy and how it affect our lives. They discuss Mike Fabarez's latest book "Envy: The Big Problem You Didn't Know You Had," which reveals the fine line between healthy desire and corrosive bitterness and how this hidden sin disrupts our spiritual journey. Together, they tackle the complex emotions of envy versus jealousy, explore the unique concept of virtuous jealousy and the internal chaos unaddressed envy can breed. If you've ever felt uneasy celebrating the success of others or found yourself bitter over someone else's achievements, this candid discussion promises a pathway to peace and a life aligned with our higher calling in Christ.
Learn more about Mike Faberez and pick up his books at pastormike.com
Thanks for listening! Visit our website rfwma.org and follow us on Facebook and Instagram!
Help us make more inspiring episodes: https://rfwma.org/give-support-the-podcast/
Do you lack contentment and peace in your life?
In this episode you will discover the silent saboteur of our personal growth and faith as the host Helen Todd and Pastor Mike Fabarez talk about envy and how it affect our lives. They discuss Mike Fabarez's latest book "Envy: The Big Problem You Didn't Know You Had," which reveals the fine line between healthy desire and corrosive bitterness and how this hidden sin disrupts our spiritual journey. Together, they tackle the complex emotions of envy versus jealousy, explore the unique concept of virtuous jealousy and the internal chaos unaddressed envy can breed. If you've ever felt uneasy celebrating the success of others or found yourself bitter over someone else's achievements, this candid discussion promises a pathway to peace and a life aligned with our higher calling in Christ.
Learn more about Mike Faberez and pick up his books at pastormike.com
Thanks for listening! Visit our website rfwma.org and follow us on Facebook and Instagram!
Help us make more inspiring episodes: https://rfwma.org/give-support-the-podcast/
What if you had a guide who could tell you how to bridge a gap between who you are today and who you are destined to be? What if, each week, you could hear a story of someone who has tried and succeeded, or perhaps tried and failed but learned something in the process? Limitless Spirit is a weekly podcast where host Helen Todd interviews guests about topics and personal stories on defining life's purpose, pursuing personal growth and developing a deeper faith in Christ.
Speaker 2:Welcome to this episode of the Limitless Spirit podcast. I'm your host, helen Todd, and my hope is this podcast inspires you to pursue and live out your greater purpose in Christ. This episode is about self-reflection and the sin of envy that sometimes hides behind ambition and other positive qualities but can affect our lives in a dramatic and painful way. Yesterday is Mike Faberis author, radio host and the pastor of Compass Bible Church in Southern California. His new book, Envy the Big Problem you Didn't Know you had just came out and it is one of the very few books written on the subject. Take time to tune in and find out what are the warning signs that you may struggle with envy and what are the benefits of living the envy-free life. Hello, pastor Mike, thank you for joining me on the Limitless Spirit podcast.
Speaker 3:Well, it's great to be here today.
Speaker 2:I am excited to talk to you about your latest book. I know you have authored several books, but your latest book is called Envy the Problem you Never Knew you had.
Speaker 3:Yes, well, it doesn't sound like a very exciting title, but I hope that it's helpful.
Speaker 2:That's for sure, what drew me to it is that, honestly, I haven't seen a whole lot of books written about envy, and so, with that in mind, I have to ask you what prompted you to focus on this subject.
Speaker 3:Well, the good thing about my life and thinking about the issues of Christians is that I am a pastor and actively involved in all things in our church, and there was just a particular week when it felt like every other problem I was dealing with, the more I gave thought to it. I traced it back to the sin of envy, which I don't normally do, but I started to see that as a recurring pattern and I thought, wow, I can't think of a single book, at least not a recently written book about the topic. And I pulled out a little sticky pad and I wrote down on a little note a book idea, envy, which I write from time to time, but I only write when publishers ask me. And so, sure enough, a couple months later, I was at a conference and a publisher I had published with before came up to me and asked me any ideas, what you're working on? And I said, ah, nothing. And then, after he walked away, I thought, oh, I did write down an idea. So I called him back over and I said, hey, you know what? I don't know what you think of this, but I was thinking about writing a book on envy and the guy just lit up. He said that that's such a unique topic and he got on his phone and he said there's really not much written on that. That needs to be done. It was great and he asked me to write it.
Speaker 3:And I thought, you know, the more I studied to write this book, the more I thought this is everywhere and we don't see it. And if you look back, really in church history they used to talk about envy all the time, especially in the first five, six centuries of the church. All these sermons were preached on the problem of envy and it was categorized by the church as one of the seven deadly sins, and it was. It was discussed and preached on all the time. And so here I was trying to look at a topic that had kind of lied dormant for a long time and I said I'm going to try to tackle this.
Speaker 3:So Moody was wise, my publisher, to say let's just keep it short. 125 pages. And the more I studied, of course, the longer I could have written on this topic. But I thought, well, that's a digestible size. That's just been half of the book dealing with diagnosing the problem and the other half will try to see how we can solve it biblically. And so that's what I set out to do, and the response just here in the initial release has been really good. I think a lot of people have Said this is this is right under the surface if you start looking for it. So I'm really glad that there's a book out that's recent, it's new, it's current and it's about an ancient problem that we all really seem to struggle with it so well.
Speaker 2:You know, the title of the book made me think. What made me look deep into myself like, do I have this problem? I didn't think about it. I didn't think I do have it. I mean, I don't Stay up thinking of all. You know, this person has this and I want that. I'm not really very materialistic but made me think more about it, and we'll get to that a little later. But let's first talk about why is envy bad. Like, is it all negative emotion, or can there be a positive envy? I mean, what is envy essentially? It's wanting something that another person has and you don't have right? Is that what we're talking about? Well, that's the core of it.
Speaker 3:And I think if you were just going to talk about that in isolation, you could call it what exodus twenty calls it in the ten command, which you call that coveting, and I think it's easy for us to identify that kind of nagging desire for something we don't have. But envy takes it one step further and identifies people in my environment, my surroundings, not someone on tv or distant, but like who is it in my world that has those things that I have this hankering for? And then I start to get bitter about them, and sometimes that happens even without even noticing. We start being critical of them. And if we were to stop and say, why am I so critical that person it may be, because they have the objects, the status, the income, the affections of the people that I want and I don't have those things. And so, yeah, the core of it. You really can be envious without covetousness. But covetousness in itself, god says, is bad enough, because it doesn't allow you to enjoy the things that you have. It always makes you want the things you don't have.
Speaker 2:Well, why is it?
Speaker 3:bad and to say things you don't have.
Speaker 2:Let's say, you found a cool item on amazon, something super practical and helpful that I don't have, and I saw you using it and I think, well, this is helpful, so I want it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, and there is a sphere in which that's okay. Just picture a plate full of food and it's like, well, I got mashed potatoes, I've got some you know whatever roast beef and I want some mashed potatoes. So I just I can, I want that and I have desire for it and it's right there and I'm gonna grab it. It's like an amazon if it's you know twenty five bucks, I can afford it. So I'm gonna go and I'm gonna get it. Nothing wrong with that. You can want things and, if they're in your sphere, to have them, as long as you're not just craving, just selfish, like I want as much as I can have.
Speaker 3:There's that greed, which is another kind of vice, but the greed of like I gotta have more, I'm never satisfied with what I have. I think there are people that have that. Think about it. There are addicts on amazon, shoppers, shoppers that just can't get it, and they have these boxes piled up in the hallway and it's like, okay, that's a problem, you're greedy, right, but covetousness is really something I can't attain. Like in the ten commandments in exodus twenty, it says it don't cover your neighbor's wife, that's you know. Think about that like, okay, I can't have her. That's my neighbor's wife, so it's something beyond my attainable sphere of this is I have the. I have the wherewithal to get it. If I don't have the wherewithal to get it, could be a maserati or ferrari or my neighbor's wife or my neighbor's job or my neighbor's income. Those are things I may not be able to get and it's not like something that's there on my plate, it's on somebody else's plate, right. So I need to see that the covetousness is having this really hankering desire for something else.
Speaker 3:But the book that I wrote is about now. How do I feel about that guy that has it? How do I feel if I feel like his marriage is better? How do I feel if I feel like his teeth are straighter and he's got more appeal and he makes twice as much as me? I start to get bitter toward him, which goes back to the first time we see it in scripture when cane rises up to kill his brother able, because Abel had this favor with god that he didn't have. And what god does in intervening there and genesis four is like hey, don't worry about your brother, right, just do what's right and you'll be accepted. And instead of focusing on himself Right, he keeps focusing on his bitterness toward his brother and that's that's that resentment that grows from him having what I don't have.
Speaker 3:And if I said to you how long, you got a great podcast here. But you know there's a gal down the hall and she's got a lot of things that you don't want. Her podcast is twice as many listeners, she makes twice as much money, she drives a nicer car. Right, you could say, well, wait a minute. That's hard for me to rejoice with her At. All of her success is why don't I have that's the stuff I'm working toward, right, and that's the thing.
Speaker 3:I could write a book on envy, and someone else can write a book on covetousness. And that guy, his book takes off and he's on, you know, new York Times best sellers. How do I feel about that guy? Like, is it my book? I worked hard on my book.
Speaker 3:It's all the sudden a relational problem and that's why I think I spend time in the book talking about how this damages our friendships and our relationships.
Speaker 3:And it's not so much looking at brad pit and thinking look at that guy, he's got everything I want. It's looking at the guy down the hall. It's looking at the friend that I have in my small group. It's looking at my neighbor literally my neighbor and thinking he's got what I want and now I don't like him, I resent him for these weird, inexplicable reasons and that's envy. But it's not inexplicable, you can explain it. And you can explain it by saying you really are craving the things he has and you can't have them. So yeah, wanting something on Amazon, a little gadget that's different, I can have that, right, I can't have the most expensive thing on Amazon and I should say I'm content with what capacities I have to buy things on Amazon. But when you get every gadget on Amazon that I can't afford and I start feeling bitter toward you, start strangely criticizing you. Well, now envy has taken root in my heart.
Speaker 2:Well, I think, since we touched on Cain and Abel, we can jump one story ahead of that, and let's look at the story of Eve. I think it all started there, when she desired something she can't have, and the core relationship that it affected was her relationship with God immediately. But then, if you think about it, when Adam ate it and they both suddenly recognized that they're naked, what it meant? They recognized that they don't trust each other, they're vulnerable against each other, and I think that was the root of all of it, and so that was a great example.
Speaker 2:I think how envy affects our relationship. Once she envied and wanted something she can't have, it not only ruined her relationship with God, it ruined her relationship with her husband as well.
Speaker 3:And you can go back one step further If you go back and look at the early sermons of the church. They went back to Satan wanting what God had and he didn't get it and therefore he disliked and was resentful toward God. So when the early church talked about the problem that you and I have with envy, they traced it past Cain and Abel, passed Adam and Eve and they go to Satan wanting what God had and said look at how this destroyed the universe, don't let this destroy your life. And so they preached about it all the time. I went through my sermon database and I have thousands of sermons I've preached over the decades I couldn't find a single sermon where I just exclusively focused on the topic of envy.
Speaker 3:So I do think this book is an important read, because I think most Christians can say I've never read a book on envy, I've never really even thought about envy too much. So let's at least give it a fair shake. Let's pray that Psalm 139 verse that says search me and try me, know my heart, see if there's any wicked way. Maybe you read the book, say I don't have that problem. Well, great Praise God for that. But a lot of us do, and so we need to identify it, and that's really what this book helps you do. It helps you pray that prayer to God, see if there's something in me that's displeasing to you, that's damaging, and I want to see you deal with it in my heart, extract it from me, lead me in the way everlasting. That's what we want.
Speaker 2:So we can talk about envy and not touch on jealousy, and so a lot of people use those two terms kind of interchangeably. But what would you say is the difference between envy and jealousy?
Speaker 3:Well, jealousy can be something that I have. Let's go back to the Exodus 20. Don't covet my neighbor's wife. Let's just say my neighbor is coveting my wife, he wants her, okay. Well, his overture is over the mailbox or his discussions over the fence. I can be rightly jealous about that. So that's not a problem for me to say I'm jealous towards something that is rightfully mine. I don't want you to mess up something that I have that is mine. So there's a good kind of jealousy. Actually, in Exodus 34,.
Speaker 2:God says I'm a jealous God.
Speaker 3:Exactly Right, that's my name. My name is jealous. I'm so jealous and what's the point? He's a virtuous God and says basically hey, adam and Eve, you should trust me, you should love me, I love you, we're in this relationship. And if you don't do that, if you start loving an apple or a piece of fruit more than me, I'm jealous for you. You are mine. So jealousy can be a virtue. Envy never is a virtue.
Speaker 3:Envy's always sinful when I'm bitter towards someone for having an advantage or a privilege I don't have. But when you look at jealousy it can also be wrong. I can have a friend here in my church. It's real buddies and we go golfing together, biking together, whatever, go fishing together. Well, if I find he's got another buddy he's doing that with. Well, I have no claim on that guy's life. I shouldn't be jealous that he's going to a ballgame with that guy and I could get possessive about things that aren't mine. And when I'm possessive about things that aren't mine, that would be jealousy and that's the sin of jealousy.
Speaker 3:So jealousy can be a virtue. God has it. We can have it in covenant relationships and relationships that we should. That should be mine. And then I can have a sinful kind of jealousy, which is I'm possessive towards something that's not mine. But envy is always this bitter, it's this root of bitterness in my life towards someone who has what I want. So then it becomes could I wrongly be envious towards someone because I'm wrongly jealous toward them? Absolutely.
Speaker 3:So when my friend is spending time with that other friend and I feel like, ah, he's my friend, I could be jealous in a wrong way and I'm also now bitter toward him. He's the interloper, he's coming into my relationship. Now I don't like him. And now, all of a sudden, when I talk to my friend, I always focus on the negative things about him. You know, I always say that guy's no good, his marriage is no good and he doesn't make much money. And you know, he got an education, never used it, whatever. I start saying all these things and I tear him down because I'm jealous toward my friend. Well, that's a sinful kind of jealousy. I don't own my friend, right? And it's also a sinful kind of envy, because now I'm resentful toward that person.
Speaker 2:So in your book you write about the internal costs of the sin of envy. And let's face it, all sins come with internal costs. So why is it so important to keep this in check? What is it going to cost us if we don't?
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I do think there are plenty of books and people talking about wanting peace. We'd like peace, we'd like to be content. There's a good word, right? It's a gift of the spirit to have this peace in our hearts, that I'm okay, everything's okay right Now. Here's the deal. If you look at it on a spectrum, right, peace and contentment are on one side and on the other side, if you move the slider the other way, you're moving toward envy. In other words, the more envy you have, I guarantee you, the less contentment you have. And when you're spending your time tearing someone down or you're feeling even those feelings of belligerence towards someone that has stuff you don't have, then you are not content. Not only are you jealous and covetous, you're envious, it's just. It takes your emotional energy. It reminds you of all this focus on things that you don't have, that you want. You're never content.
Speaker 3:I have a little tiny section in the book on you know, the goal is to want what you have. I mean, god has no problem with us enjoying the good gifts we have. I buy something on Amazon for 25 bucks and I enjoy it and I put on my desk. I say this is the greatest gadget I've ever had Fantastic Praise God. God would like you to enjoy those good gifts. But that's different when I'm always wanting something. I don't have a bigger income and John's got it and I don't have it. So I want that and I'm bitter toward him. It just takes all of our peace away. It takes our contentment away. We don't enjoy life the way God would like us to enjoy life, with contentment and peace, because we're too busy feeling resentful toward people that have things I don't have.
Speaker 2:So I know that you have written a book on parenting and in that book you touched on some of the ways that parents can fuel that sin of envy without even knowing it. So, as a parent myself, I'm curious about that. So what are the ways that parents could unknowingly fuel that sin of envy?
Speaker 3:Well, when we try to create in our children a kind of competitiveness where they always have to be the best at everything, right, we want them to be the you know the most valuable player on their little league team, we want them to get the honor role, we want them to do all these things. And I would frankly say that part of the problem of giving everyone a participation trophy has arisen because parents are so envious of other people's children that you know coaches and leaders and principals are just like, well, let's just pass out as many of these things as we can. So everyone's okay. And the reality is, parents need to be okay that their kids are not the best, they're not the smartest, they're not the prettiest, they're not the cutest, they're not the most advanced, and they're just not. I mean we need to be okay that God has a place for our children on the spectrum of performance or talent or beauty or whatever, and say that's all right. Not that I'm not trying to take out ambition. There's a kind of ambition that is not a selfish ambition. As it says in James, the worldly wisdom always gets this competitiveness. We put our elbows up when we're trying to get past the other guy and I want to make sure I get the votes for the. You know the student council president, and it's always when parents make this the ambition of selfish grandisement in our children that children start seeing their other classmates or their other teammates as the enemy and I'm thinking, no, no, that's not how this works. Right, we should rejoice that we are on a team and that we play a role in the team and just like in the church, right? A mom and dad should just like their children. They want to develop in their children. They should be okay.
Speaker 3:As 1 Corinthians 12 says, whatever role I play in the church, right, one person is an eye, one person's an elbow, one person's a toenail. It's okay. Fulfill your role. And God talks about being a good steward of the very grace of God there in 1 Peter 4. And the same thing in 1 Corinthians 12. You should absolutely be okay and content with the role that God gives you. Not that you don't want to be the best at it. Of course you do. I want to be a good steward of all that God has given me, but the reality is I'm okay with that and I'm okay with my kids. Right, not being straight A students, and I'm okay with my kids not being the best hitter on the little league team or scoring the most goals on the soccer team and I want my kids to know that their performance in those arenas really are not the things that create and define their worth. And I think parents do that in inadvertently and they end up creating this kind of competitive spirit in their children that ends up making them resent their classmates and I'm saying we just need to stop with all that.
Speaker 3:I have a disabled daughter. My third born is paralyzed from the knees down. There's lots of issues medically, you know. I hope I've raised my daughter. I had dinner with her last night. She's now in college. Of course she has days when she says I can't do what everyone else does and she's worrying about how to get her wheelchair through the airports and I get that. But she has her challenges, just like the guy or the gal at college who is the, you know, the most sought after and admired girl on campus. She's got her problems and my daughter's got her problems and it's okay. That's her cross to bear and she's got other crosses to bear and we just have to be okay with the way God dishes out not only talent and beauty and brains and brawn, but the way he puts the challenges into it, or the thorns in our flesh right, it's okay. It's okay, right? We just want to be the best people that we can in the lot that God has given us, and I don't see many parents instilling that virtue in their children.
Speaker 2:Well, but let's talk about how to balance that with. You know people who are naturally ambitious athletes, for example. You know the ambition or the sense of competition is at the very core of being an athlete. So how do they balance that drive you know to achieve with also not allowing this to turn into envy, and have that in a healthy way?
Speaker 3:Well, even as the apostle Paul enlists the example of you know, all the runners run, but only one wins. Run, so I can win, okay. He enlists a competitive analogy to the Corinthians who are used to the Isthmus games. They were much like the Olympic games in the first century and they knew what it was to have someone on the platform receiving the award. Well, only one wins the prize in the Isthmian games. But you know, in the Christian life there are many people that are going to receive the trophy, the crown of life. Right, they're going to receive this crown of glory. So we're not as though I need to be on that platform and get this so that you don't right. That's the kind of selfish ambition that rots away people's interior lives. It's like we can all win here and we want us all to win. Paul's saying that to the Corinthians because he wants them to win. And how do you win if you're not an apostle writing the New Testament? How do you win if you're not a preacher? How do you win if you're not a Bible translator? Didn't go to seminary? Paul says, listen, it doesn't matter. He gets to 1 Corinthians 12 and he says listen, we all have a role to play. Play your role and play it well. That's what the word stewardship is all about. Maybe that's a book I should write next, because I don't think we understand the concept of what it means to be a good steward. To be a good steward is to look at your life and say I'm going to maximize this for the Lord. I want to bear fruit some 30, some 60, some 100 fold in areas of my life where God gives me the capacity to do it. But it's much different than this kind of elbows up. I need to knock you off the platform because it's king of the hill. There is no need for a singular winner in the Christian life.
Speaker 3:I'm a pastor here in Southern California. A lot of pastors in churches around right. This is a tough place to do ministry, but there are people doing a good job. I should rejoice that they're doing a good job. I don't want to be the best pastor. I don't need to be the best pastor. I need to be the best pastor I can be in my congregation in this little corner of the world and if a church moves in down the street right and he's doing a great job, praise God, right, we could use as many great pastors as possible. I don't need to be envious of him because his parking lot is full on a Sunday morning and mine is half empty. It's okay, right. And maybe there are times I should say, well, am I even doing the right thing? And sometimes failure at being effective and bearing fruit helps redirect us into something more fruitful. So it's not about us losing ambition. If ambition is, I would like to be a good steward of all that God has given me.
Speaker 3:Things like radio. I'm on like 900 radio stations right now and I can go to the National Religious Broadcasters Convention and compare you know how many stations are you on and I can get envious towards someone who's got 2,000 stations or whatever. Well, here's the deal. I remember getting into radio thinking, why am I doing this, right? A guy challenged me I'm like, what am I doing this for? And I thought, well, he said we could bless people with your sermons outside the walls of the church. And I thought, well, I'm not this, I'm not into that, right. But I wrestled with the idea of stewardship and I said as long as it doesn't detract from our church, I'm willing to throw this over the wall and see what happens. So that wasn't selfish ambition.
Speaker 3:Well, I want to be on the stage at the National Religious Broadcasters and have the most broad, you know, stations and I'm on five times a day on all these stations. It doesn't matter. All I'm saying is, when I die and stand before God and he looks at me as a steward and says I gave you this preaching gift, how far can it go? I don't know. I'm not going to be one of the best, I'm not, I'm a B player at best. But there's a role for B players on the radio across the country and so I'm going to do it and I'm going to do the best I can to maximize my gifts without comparing all the time to what's that guy got.
Speaker 3:And then, as soon as I compare that, that lateral comparison starts to breed discontent. I got to have more and that's not what I should. I want to have as much as I should have. I want to be able to say I'll go as far as I can go. Now I got a staff across the street in a building there that runs our radio ministry and it's small and it's lean, it's mostly volunteers but a few paid guys. I remember I've had two directors over the last 20 years or whatever it's been, and I remember hiring them both and saying Listen, you can be ambitious about this, but I'm not competitively ambitious about this. Your goal is not to be on you know as many stations as Chuck Swindall or whoever you know. I just want to do as much as we can do. I don't know how far the product can go, I don't know how good I am compared to everyone else, but just do what you can do so that the end of our lives we can say we gave it a shot, we did the best we could, we reached as many people as we could and we didn't really care in comparing right how effective we are. We just want to be as effective as we can be. So that's what we did.
Speaker 3:And what's great about this? I'm totally content about the radio because I don't have any personal selfish ambition. I don't make any money off of it. I didn't want to make any money off of it. I just wanted to say let's see what happens with all of this. And at the end of my life I don't want God to say, hey, you had an opportunity here. Radio station said hey, why don't you be on? And you go. Nah, it's not worth the hassle. Well, it's worth the hassle if it can be useful. So I just want to get down to my stewardship, which gives me a sense of ambition only in so far as I say how helpful can I be, and I'm not going to compare it with someone else's helpfulness. And that's where I think we can, as parents, constantly get our kids looking at lateral comparisons when they should be looking up and down, which is what is God invested in me and how can I make this productive? How can I be helpful? And if I can't be as helpful as, you know, david Jeremiah or John MacArthur, whatever, what a great fine, it's fine. I'm going to be as helpful as I can be, and I think that's the kind of non selfish ambition that will keep us working. And here's the other book I should write.
Speaker 3:A lot of books work, right. We don't have a work ethic in our generation is not like we used to. Some people do, but they're the exception, it seems, not the rule. What we need are people that work and they're not fueled by selfish ambition, but they're always working. I love what Jesus said. You know, he said I'm always working because my father's always working. Right, I just love that picture and I love the other place where he says and John, he says you know we need to work while it's still day, because night is coming when no one can work.
Speaker 3:And I love that idea that my opportunities for preaching sermons, writing books, helping people, doing podcasts with you they're going to come to an end. I won't be able to do it, but I can do it today. So let's do it. Let's do as much as we can do, and my secretaries and my assistants are always like you never say no, and sometimes I get it. I got to say no. I got a family, I got a wife. I can't do this 24 hours a day.
Speaker 3:First Corinthians seven addresses that I have divided interests, but I always want to do as much as I can do. But as long as this is not competitive, right, then I'm okay. So what does Paul mean? Let's run so as to win the prize. To win the prize for him, as he says even in that same book, is to be a good steward.
Speaker 3:And my stewardship it ends at a particular place because I don't have the gifts that other people have.
Speaker 3:I don't have the opportunities other people have, but when the opportunities arise, if I can work and create something that's useful, great, and at the end of the day, I'm not concerned at how it stacks up against someone else. At least I shouldn't be. When I find the sin of envy in my own life, well then I am, and then I start to resent people that have more and I have to check my heart all the time on that. And this is why I think this book is helpful helps us check our heart with our ambitions and our work and what we do and where we stack up. We just need to think differently about all this and I think we'll find contentment and peace, the kind of peace that I can say, at least in this area of my life. I'm content. I don't sit there and worry about, you know, our metrics on the radio, for instance, the way some people do, and I think that's a healthy way to look at our stewardship and our work ethic.
Speaker 2:Well, I really appreciate it, appreciate the interview and the fact that you wrote such an important book. And the most important thing I got out of it for myself and I think that's what our listeners will benefit the most if they pick up your book is that if you're not content in your life, if you don't have peace in your life, then possibly you do have a problem with envy. And then purchasing a short book, as you mentioned, that addresses that is a great solution, great way to start the year. So you can find Pastor Mike's book at his website, pastromikecom. I'm sure you can also find it on Amazon and we're going to post the links in the show notes so that you can just easily click and get access to the book. Thank you again, pastor Mike. I mean right here on the podcast you had ideas for two more books, so I will secretly take a credit for that when you publish them. I will say he was inspired on my podcast.
Speaker 3:I was, that's true.
Speaker 2:So God bless you and thanks again for joining.
Speaker 3:Of course, Alan. Thank you.
Speaker 2:If you're not content with your life, if you struggle with negative thoughts towards people around you, if you need peace, I think Pastor Mike's book will be a good read for you. Seeking God's purpose for your life without comparing yourself to others inevitably brings you to the path of leading others to Christ. Here at World Missions Alliance, we are excited to give you the opportunities to fulfill the Great Commission through short term missions. If you are ready to say yes to a new adventure, make new friends, help more people and share the gospel in the nations across the globe, I encourage you to visit our website, rfwmaorg. There are opportunities available to you each month in a different nation to serve the Lord. Year 2024 marks the 25th anniversary for World Missions Alliance of taking the gospel to the nations and inspiring Christians to fulfill the Great Commission. If God is calling you, we are here to help you to fulfill this calling. Again, check out our website, rfwmaorg, and if you are interested in picking up Pastor Mike's book, his website is pastormikecom. Very simple, Until next time. I'm Helen Todd.
Speaker 1:Limitless Spirit Podcast is produced by World Missions Alliance. We believe that changed lives change lives. If you want to see your life transformed by Christ's love, or if you want to help those who are hurting and hopeless and discover your greater purpose in serving Christ through short-term missionary work, check out our website, rfwmaorg, and find out how to get involved.