BEWARE OF ENVY

Rev Fr Ejike Camillus Mbaka, the Spiritual Director of Adoration Ministry Enugu Nigeria during his recent programme at Adoration Ministry delivered a life-saving message to the worshippers. The message was centered on the phenomenon of envy among the children of God, in the church and in the society. He identified envy as killer disease. Here are excerpts of the message

INTRODUCTION

“Let us consider this message from the point of view of employees. Among employees who may be doing different works for one master. During the time the master may decide to reward them some of the employees would be more interested in knowing what gift the master is rewarding other employees with instead of concentrating on their gift of rewards for the master.  And they will become infuriated, disgusted, enchanted over what was given to another, why? Because of what the people call envy.

“Envy is a killer disease. Envy is like a cancer. If you have that in your body pray against it. Envy kills. It is barbaric as it is satanic. Beware of envy, be contented with yourself and be happy with the blessing you have. God is free to bless anybody with any kind of gift and nobody is left ungifted. The difference is on how you developed your own and no gift is bigger than the other? So please war against envy. Envy can cause high blood pressure. Envy can cause indigestion. Envy can induce sleepless night and cause insomnia.   When you are envious, you detest and hate what you have while you are busy trying to know what another person has or what another person is doing. You would disregard your own gift and what will be breaking your heart at all time is why they did this or that to so person. If somebody is highly gifted in singing and you are highly gifted in dancing, why do you envy the singer? If the spirit of God is in you, when the singer begins to sing very well, you will begin to dance very well and there will be a synchrony and a harmony in the relationship. and all these will lead all of us to heaven.

ENVY, NOT AMONG THE HOLY TRINITY

Among the trinity, the father, son and the Holy Ghost, there is nothing like envy. The three of them are one. The father is not envying the son because the son came down to die on the cross. It is sufficient for the father to be the creator. It is sufficient for the son to come down to save the world by dying. After dying, He rose from the dead. God the father did not jealous the son or become envious of Him because we are all clapping for the son that death could not hold Him captive. Jesus didn’t envy the Holy Spirit either, because the Holy Spirit had the power to come on the Pentecost day and we are all clapping for him. Neither did the Holy spirit envy the Son because His blood brought salvation .

So please, if you worship God and you want to add more days to your life, remove envy. If you want to reduce days and weeks and months from your lives, continue to be envious.

BE CONTENTED WITH WHAT YOU ARE AND HAVE

I have come to know that all envious people are wicked. Onyenoroebe o no, ebeonoghianagu ya and you forget that people have different destinies. All are not gifted alike and will never be gifted alike. If God made you to be the eye, see very well. Don’t envy the nose that is inhaling the air. Do you know that if you being the eye are made the nose, you will not rest but would ask that you be made the mouth? When you are made the mouth you would prefer to be made the teeth that will be chewing meat. When you are made the teeth you would say know you are meant to be the tongue that would know the taste of everything. When you are made the tongue you would say no, you are meant to be the hand, and so on.

Envy kills. Envious people will hardly love. They are haters. There is nothing you would do to please them. When somebody is envious as a mass servant, he will think that if he becomes a seminarian the envy will go. Make him a Seminarian; he will say in fact until I become a lector, the envy will go. Make him a lector he will say until I become a Deacon the envy will go.  Make him deacon, he say until I become a priest. Make him a priest he will keep on envying the one that sings very well. If he hears about one priest doing very well in the rural area he would be complaining; why did the bishop keep him in the urban area to die of hunger? Put him inside that village, he will envy another priest that is doing well in the township. He will always strive to be at the top position of becoming the Bishop. When he because the Bishop, that is where his envy will even start and he may even be envying the mass servants.

What emits odor from a shrewd rat comes from its bone marrow. No amount of detergents can wash it off. From being a Bishop he will begin to envy the Cardinal, make him a Cardinal tomorrow, he will begin to envy the pope. Envious people are insatiable.  Most of them are thieves. When you become envious, you become antagonist, cantankerous and pugnacious. You will be busy pursing the sun leaving the lantern and candle that is kept for you. When you are passing by and see a beautiful house, you would hate your own. When you see someone wearing very beautiful attire, your own attire becomes repulsive to you. Why can’t you be contented with what you have? Go to the mirror and see yourself and notice that there is no other person on earth like that person you are seeing. Why are you envious? Beware of envy.

ENVY IS A HOME BREAKER

What tears families apart is envy. A new bride is not contented with the love of his husband. She is worried because her mother-in-law is greeting her husband very well. Do you want your husband and his mother to be at war because you came into the family? If you continue to be envious, they may send you back to where you came from. Are you complaining that your husband is accommodating his relations in the house? Do you want his relations to be pursed out of the house because he married you? Know that there are some ladies that are waiting for you to leave so they will come and take your place. Nowadays, husbands do not go after their wives when they have gone home. Before you come back, the whole keys in the house would have been changed by another woman. So stop being envious.

As Christians during the baptism, there was water that was poured upon all of us. It is water of cleansing, water of liberation, water of sanctification. Through that water, we were reborn, we were washed of envy.

Envy can induce madness. There is no need for any child of God to be envious. You have enough to be happy with yourself. That is why Jesus says “love your neighbour as you love yourself”. Many of us have not started loving ourselves.  You must love yourself, love your shape, love your complexion, love the way you move. Many of you don’t love yourself. You want to be like another person. I don’t want to be like any person, I want to be the best of Fr Mbaka.

Love one another and stop being haters. Any person you hate is enough to shorten your life. Any time you remember the person, joy will fly away from your life. So don’t be envious. If you praise God for blessing somebody else, your blessings will be doubled. But if you become envious, complaining and criticizing every time, would the world be abandoned for you?

ENVIOUS PEOPLE ARE WICKED AND ARE DEAD WHILE ALIVE.

If you have envy in your DNA molecules, it will pull you down. When you are envious, automatically you are wicked. You will become insatiable, nothing can make you happy. The envious person is dead while alive.

Make that envious person a Bishop; he will want to become a cardinal. Make him a cardinal tomorrow; he will begin to envy the Pope, papacy position. He will be pursing the sun and even when he catches the sun, he will like to have the moon. Are you envious? You are dead while alive.

Beware of envy. If you go to the villages, the ones who are envy are the people that kill people with charms. Whenever they see the children of their neighbours that are prospering and doing very well, they will begin to bite their fingers and gnash their teeth. Envy kills. It is satanic and demonic. How many years do you think you will stay in this life before you die? If your neighbour has a Mercedes Benz, give Glory to God because you have alegedesBenz. . After all Legedes is easier to maintain than Mercedes. Every morning, the man with Mercedes will have to go the filling station to buy fuel, top oil, maintain its break and so on, but you have a God given Legedes that you have never appreciated. War against envy. You can park your Legedes Benz anywhere unlike the man with Mecedes Benz.

God has blessed you enough. You have your eyes, you can see. You have your ears and can see. You have your nose and can breathe. You can talk. You can wave your hands. You can sleep and wake up. You can go to the toilet and defecate. You can take your birth. Why not keep glorifying God and being happy with what he has done for you.  Why do you want to be like another person? Why are you angry because another person is blessed?  When that Mass servant eventually become a Cardinal, he will still not be happy. If he hears that one priest is doing well in Uganda, he will become envious because he would think the priest want to become greater than him.

Some of us inherited envy from our mothers and grandmother. I once told you a story of a mother-in-law and a bride. The mother-in-law was dark complexion and married a fair man. They had a son who was as fair as the husband. The son eventually married the bride who was as fair as himself. The genetic code of the mother –in-law was very strong. So when the son and the bride met they gave birth to a girl as black as the mother-in-law. The mother-in-law became angry and told the bride that the child is not his son’s. She said that the bride gave birth to a monkey. She insisted that the bride should be sent packing. The elders gathered and after deliberating on it, they resolved that the bride will not go since the baby resembled someone in that family ie the grandmother, the mother in law.  Some of us resemble our grandmothers or our grandfathers. Are you behaving like who? Whose trait of envy are you carrying in your bloodline?

In the church we have envious people. In the scriptures the Master paid all his labours equal and those who worked longer hours became envious of those that worked shorter hours. Are you the one to determine how somebody else is to be blessed?  Blessing comes from destiny. Why do you pass negative conclusive judgment on people? Why do you indulge in unhealthy criticism and character assassination?

One of the reasons for this envious attitude is inferiority complex. Many of us are so inferior that we feel we are nobodies. We think we don’t mean anything. Why? Who told you that you don’t mean anything? In the gun, there is a place called the trigger. It is the smallest part of the gun but yet the power point of its explosion. Let the trigger understand that even as small as it is, it should not begin to envy the long nuzzle.  When the gun is loaded, touch the trigger. You may be the smallest but you are very important, significant and powerful. Touch yourself and say that you are meaningful and valuable.