Pastor Shawn:

All right, open your Bibles to Proverbs chapter 27, Proverbs 27. If you don't have a traditional Bible, but you'd like one and you're comfortable, just raise your hand. One of my friends will bring you one. You can either borrow that or you can keep it. It's our gift to you. You can also take your smart device and open up the YouVersion app. It's also called the Bible app and all the notes and scriptures, those have already been uploaded. If you're watching us online or at one of our other gatherings, love you guys and so glad that you're a part of our family, and super glad that you guys are a part of our family. I missed you guys. It's been a couple of weeks and so give yourselves a hand for being here. We'll get you out of here, I promise. I'm going to get you out of here in time for kickoff.

It was awesome. I loved what Pastor Dallas had to say last week, and then Pastor Kendall the week before him. Pastor Barry and I got to go to London last week and it was so amazing, except for one little part. And then after that one little part, we're walking down the street and all these people and then they were bumping into us and then I was mad and I was frustrated, and then I was waiting for somebody to ... You ever been waiting for somebody to shoulder you? And I was like, I wish somebody would. It was kind of griping and grumbling and complaining and then Pastor Barry looked at me and said, "Bro, we're in London. Stop." So when had fish and chips and life was ... It's amazing that fish and chips will fix almost anything. And so anyway, super glad that you're here and we're going to get our revenge on New York today.

And so anyway, Channel View, Texas. It's a quiet Houston suburb filled with nice homes, nice cars, and nice families. A few years ago though, the entire community was turned upside down by something that's still hard for the people who live there to believe. It all started with a cheerleading competition. Amber Heath and Shanna Holloway, they lived just around the corner from each other and they'd been friends all of their lives. Amber was president of the student council. Shanna, she was the vice president. Their moms, they were great friends. The girls went to the same private Christian school and their moms took turns driving them there. Everything was fine between their families until the sixth grade, and that's when Amber beat Shanna out for a spot on the cheerleading team. The girls had competed against each other in pageants for years with Amber, typically just slightly coming out on top.

Shanna's mother, who attended a local evangelical church several times a week and even served on the worship teams, started resenting the fact that her daughter always lost to Amber, to the point that she unsuccessfully tried to get Amber disqualified from the cheerleading tryouts. After years of watching her daughter lose out, she'd reached her boiling point. Having Amber make the cheerleading team instead of Shanna was the straw that broke the camel's back. She couldn't take it any longer, so she tried to hire a hitman to kill Amber and her mother. While she was trying to find someone to do it, for whatever reason, she mentioned her intentions to her brother-in-law. He notified the police who launched a sting.

They had an undercover officer pose as the potential hitman. Recordings of their interactions revealed how the hitman told her that he'd killed the mother for $5,000 and the daughter for 2,500. Not able to come up with that much cash, she gave him a pair of diamond earrings as a down payment for killing just the mother. She was arrested for solicitation of capital murder and sentenced to 15 years in the Texas State Penitentiary. What is it that turned this mother into a monster? One word, jealousy. I want to talk about that today in a message we're calling the Green-Eyed Monster.

Let's pray. God, we love you. We're grateful to you. Thank you for who you are, for what you do. God, thank you for the times that it's so evident that you're there. Like this morning while we're in a worship time and we're singing and we've got our hands up, and God, the presence of God is so evident. We thank you in those times and we thank you in the times when your presence isn't so palpable. God, in the times where we feel lost, in the times where we feel lonely, in times where we feel alone. God, I pray today that whatever it is that we've got that needs to be left here will be left here. That you would adjust, amend our hearts and our minds that they would be made to be less like ours and more like yours. In Jesus' name, amen.

In Renaissance England, emotions were matched with colors. Red was associated with anger. Black was associated with sadness. Yellow with fear, and envy or jealousy was associated with the color green. In The Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare almost humanized the emotion when he used the term green-eyed jealousy. It gave it a face. Later in Othello, he would take it a step further when he came up with the term the green-eyed monster. Jealousy. It means to boil within. You can look cool on the outside, but a fire is building. A fire is burning inside of you, and it's such a destructive emotion.

Listen to what Solomon, the wisest man outside of Jesus to ever walk the earth had to say about it. He said, Anger is cruel and fury, it is overwhelming. But who can stand before jealousy? It's so hard to stand up straight against the blast of jealousy. It comes like a rush. It comes like a wind, and it's so hard for us to keep our footing. When Jesus walked the earth, he upset the established religious system and caused the leaders to launch a campaign to kill him. We've heard the story, we've told this story. We've celebrated it on Resurrection Sunday that they murdered him, but he is alive. We feel like we know this story, but look at what the gospel of Matthew has to say about the cause of that campaign. It says, Pilate knew the leaders had brought Jesus to him, watch this, because they were jealous.

Jealousy was the hammer that drove the nails. It was the hands that caused the spirit to pierce his side. It was the hands that forced the crown of thorns upon his head. Jealousy, it is a killer. It kills marriages, friendships, families. It's said that jealousy is the ace up Satan's sleeve, that you can beat all the other emotions that we've talked about. You can overcome anger, you can overcome depression. You can overcome all of the different things that we've navigated through in this series. And if you are successful in navigating through those things, the enemy, he holds one more card that, if he can just make you jealous, if he can make you envious, it can start this whole process all over again. So the question is, how can we kill the green-eyed monster of jealousy in our lives? Today, I want to give you three ways, three ways to kill jealousy in your life.

Number one is we need to recognize how the problem starts. Look at Proverbs chapter 27:4. In The Message Paraphrase, it says, "We're blasted by anger. We are swamped by rage. But who can survive jealousy? You can survive the blast of anger. You can survive that deluge of rage. But who is it who has the ability to survive jealousy?" Jealousy's a problem that every one of us have. We've either all faced it or we will face it. We have all fought it or we will fight it at some point. For most of us, it starts when we're kids. Kids are jealous. If you don't know that, just meet a kid. Kids always want to fight over some stuff, don't they? Mine. Kids learn words you wish they wouldn't learn from the drop, don't they? They learn no. They don't know how to say nothing, but they say no. They say no like their job is this, like they're on payroll. Like, "No!" You're like, "Dang, I didn't know. You can't say mama. You can't say daddy. You can't say thanks." They can say no and they could say mine. Those are the two words.

They learn how to push each other. Let one kid get a dinosaur toy and all hell, it's going to break loose. We learn it from the beginning and it's like it's intrinsic. It's like it's in us. He got a new bike, but you didn't. Man, when I was a kid, I remember one Christmas my brother, he got a bicycle. Man, he got a BMX. I wanted to kill him where he stood. I'm just saying. I had old raggedy, rusty, busted bike. I put my bike together with parts I stole from other kids and it was like a Frankenstein piecemeal bicycle. Of all the kids at my house that needed a bike, I needed a bike. I had a black tire and a blue tire. It was the most ghetto cruiser bike ever. My brother already had a bike, had two red tires on it. Man, his bike was so dope. It was chrome with red accents. It had a little jelly hand grips, man, that would just massage your hands when you would ride it. And I didn't get that bike. I got the Frankenstein bike.

He had two bikes. He got a new bike. He got a bike that had spoke wheels. The BMX. I don't know what that stands for, but it had spoke wheels on it. Everybody else had mag wheels, the plastic. He had spoke wheels on it. And the handlebars, they came down in a look like V kind of pattern, had hand breaks. I said, "What?" He had a pad on the crossbar that had the logo of the bike on the pad. I looked at him, I said, "Who is this?" He had a bike. I didn't get a bike. I got some walnuts and an orange in my stocking. That's what I got. He got a bike, a BMX. So every time he would ride by me with this little spoke tires, I used to take a broom, put it right in the spoke wheels. One time he was at school because he's a nerd. And I cut school so I could go home and borrow my dad's socket. And I went to the front tire of his bike and I loosened one nut on the axle of the front tire.

And when he got home from school, I said, "Bro, you know what we should do? We should go build us a ramp in the back alley and we should jump bikes off the ramp." And I didn't want him, I mean, I kind of wanted him to get hurt, but what I really wanted was for that little thing to fall off the axle and for the bike tire to fall off and for the forks to bend up because he got a bike and I didn't.

She got a doll, you didn't. He made the team, you didn't. She was voted homecoming queen while you didn't even make the homecoming court. Jealousy. And the older you get, the worse it gets. There's this common spark that lights the fire of jealousy and it is comparison. Jealousy happens when we begin comparing ourselves with others. We compare our house to their house, our car to their car, our paycheck to their paycheck, our spouse to their spouse, our kids to their kids. And when that happens, you start thinking of yourself as less than you really are. But do you know that someone else can have more without you having less? The thing that you had, you was perfectly fine with that thing that you had until you saw something that somebody else had, and then suddenly you were good for nothing.

You loved your house until somebody else got a new house. You loved your car until somebody else got a new car. I had a car in college. You couldn't tell me nothing. First of all, I had a car. You know what I'm saying? Remember when you used to not have a car? We live in Green Bay. I used to have a bus pass. I used to have to ride the 2C bus Downtown Connect and I take the express out to the mall so I can walk around and do nothing. Just walk around and eat pizza. This is when you'd ride the bus for an hour so you get out and eat a bad piece of pizza. I got a car? Man, that wiped 30 minutes off the trip. I get two pieces of pizza. It was ridiculous. I got to college, I thought my car was the jam. It was a 1973 Nova. I remember, I met Pastor Sonny, I rolled up, had a Kenwood tape deck in it too. What? With six by nines in the back, in the back window in a box. Man, I rolled up. She got in the car. She said, "This is your car?"

Suddenly I was like, "Well, I'm getting another. I'm looking at another car. But for now, this ..." You kidding me, a 73 Nova. It had a bench seat in the front. I was like, "This is the ... Stop! This is my ..." You could tell. So I got rid of that car. I wish I hadn't of. Every guy's got a car that wished I hadn't got rid of, by the way. So I got rid of my 73 Nova, the year that I was born. And I got a 1978 Oldsmobile Delta 88. What! Brown with a brown landau roof. That's a fake convertible. A brown landau roof and brown velour interior. I rolled up in that car. She was like ... Like I went from bad to worse. It was the worst. See, she had a fly car. She had a brand new, this was in 1995. She had a 1995 Eagle Talon TSI all-wheel drive turbo five speed. What! The stereo had the equalizer on the stereo. Golly, I had never seen. It was like you could go to the moon in that car.

I liked that car so much. She has asked me in the past, did I marry her for love or for the Eagle. I had a tattoo of the Eagle logo in the color of the car on my arm. Her car would look at my car like ... Her car bullied my car. I thought my car was fine until I met somebody else who had a car. A little jealousy can kick in. Your house was fine until somebody else you knew got a big house. You were excited about your house. You got the keys, man, you thought you were going to live and die in that house forever. You had plans for that house. And then suddenly, "Baby, we need new carpet. We need new countertops. Sally got granite at her house." And suddenly, these things, they begin to sink in. As you start to think of yourself as less than you really are, and you start to think that because of comparison.

There's really three types of comparison. First kind is downward comparison, and that's where we compare ourselves to those who are worse off than us. And downward comparison leads to arrogance. "Do you see her? Do you see him? Whatever. At least I'm not ..." Downward comparison. The second type of comparison is lateral comparison. And that's when we compare ourselves to people who are on the same level as us. And lateral comparison leads to competition. The third type is upward comparison. And that's when we compare ourselves to people who are better off than we are, and that type of comparison leads to jealousy. And when jealousy sets in, we develop what's called a crab mentality. Crabbers understand that when you go crabbing, it's important that you have you a bucket with a good lid. And the reason for that is because crabs have this uncanny supernatural ability to scale the sides of the smoothest of the buckets.

And so while you are catching the next crab, the first crab is crawling out the bucket. But the interesting thing about having a good bucket with a good lid is, when you're a crabber, you realize that you only need the lid for the first crab because the minute you put another crab in the bucket, when one crab gets near the top, the other crab will pull him back down. That's what jealousy does. It'll drive you to push other people down with your attitude, put other people down with your words and tear other people down with your actions. That's how the poison of jealousy enters your emotional bloodstream by trying to put yourself over other people or trying to put other people under you. So we need to recognize how the problem starts, and it starts with comparison.

Second, we need to recognize what its presence steals. Proverbs 14:30 says, "A heart at peace gives life to the body, but jealousy, it causes your bones to rot." Jealousy is a corrosive that'll rot you from the inside out and it is nothing more than a common thief. It'll steal the satisfaction of enjoying what you already have because someone else has more of it or they have a better version of it. I read a story about a man who was walking along the beach and he found a bottle and he picked up the bottle and on the side of it, it said, "Rub me."

Now, like us, he had seen the movie Aladdin, and so he rubbed the bottle and a genie popped out and he said, "Congratulations, I'll grant you three wishes. You can have anything your heart desires. There's just one condition. The last man who owned this lamp, he was a lawyer. And so as his third wish, he negotiated with me that for every person who ever found this bottle for all of time, whatever it is that they wished for, he negotiated that every lawyer in the world is going to get that very same thing that you wish for, except they are going to get double."

The guy thought about it for a minute. He said, "All right, for my first wish, I want a billion dollars." "Great", the genie said. "You get a billion dollars and every lawyer on earth gets 2 billion. What else you want?" The man thought about it for a minute. He said, "All right. I want to be so handsome that the most beautiful women in the world will want to be with me." The genie said, "All right, but just understand that every lawyer in the world is going to be twice as handsome as you so all the beautiful women in the world are going to want to be with them instead. What's your last wish?"

The man kind of felt a little bit of pressure. Man, when you ain't got but one left, he started to think about it. He started to contemplate and he said, "I got it." He said, "I want to donate a kidney." Jealousy. It never gives you anything worth having and it takes away everything that is. There's a tree in Indonesia called the upas tree. It secretes a deadly poison and it grows so full and so thick that it kills any vegetation that tries to grow beneath it. It provides shade and necessary shelter, but it ends up destroying everything that comes into its proximity. Jealousy is the upas tree of life. It'll rob you of your blessing while it's trying to rob everyone around you of theirs.

The Apostle Paul, he said, "We should rejoice with those who rejoice and we should weep with those who weep." But jealousy makes you do the opposite. It makes you rejoice when others weep and weep when others rejoice. Teddy Roosevelt said, "Comparison is the thief of joy." Or as Pastor Sonny says, "Comparison is the great crippler." In Southeast Asia, there's a plant called kudzu. Did he just make a second horticultural reference in one? Yes, he did. I didn't even know he was an arborist. The kudzu plant, not the kazoo. The kudzu plant, it climbs, it coils over every other plant and tree, and it grows so rapidly that it smothers and kills them by blocking their access to the sun. Jealousy does that. It grows over every part of you. Consuming you, controlling you, contaminating you, killing you as it blocks your access to the sun.

Two sisters were talking about having a photo done for their parents with all their siblings and all their siblings families. One of the sisters, she volunteered to find the photographer. The day of the pictures came and everyone showed up in their best matching outfits. The sister who'd set up the shoot was insecure because she had never gotten rid of the extra weight that she'd gained when she was pregnant with her kids. But her sister, her sister was a personal trainer who had somehow figured out how to look even better than she had looked before she had kids.

And so when the first sister met with the photographer to look at the proofs, he just kind of offhandedly asked her if there were any blemishes that she wanted him to touch up. She said, "You can do that?" He said, "Oh yeah, Photoshop's a miracle worker." She said, "Can you take 30 pounds off me?" He didn't really think anything of it. This is an innocent enough request until she said, "And can you put it on my sister?" Oh man, that's funny until you realize that that's what jealousy is causing in you and the people who are around you. You need to recognize what its presence is stealing from you.

Finally, we need to recognize how its power is stopped. There's really only one thing that has the power to kill the green-eyed monster in our lives. The Apostle Paul wrote about it in the Book of Philippians. He said, "I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances." If you believe you're where God wants you to be, who God wants you to be, and that you have what God wants you to have, you have no reason to ever be jealous of what someone else has, who someone else is, or where someone else is in their life. You know what jealousy really is it? It's accusing God of being unfair. It's accusing God of playing favorites.

It's accusing God of not giving you what you think you deserve it. It's saying that God has no right to bless anyone more than he's blessed you, to prosper or promote anyone other than you. One of the greatest men in the Old Testament is a guy named Moses. And Moses had a supernatural blessing on his life. God multiplied Moses's ministry through the lives of 70 elders who were given the gift of prophecy. Two of the 70 elders, two cats named Eldad and Medad, they were particularly gifted and they began to prophesy in the camp. They began to gather people around them and they began to preach these powerful messages under the power of the Holy Spirit.

And so Joshua, who'd been Moses' right hand man since he was a teenager, came running over to him and he said, "Moses, my Lord, stop them." Kind of reminds me of Bones on Star Trek. "My God, Jim." He's like, "Moses, my God, stop them." But Moses replied, "Are you jealous for my sake?" I wish that all of God's people were prophets. I wish that that God would put His spirit on every person. He was saying, I'm not jealous. Why should I be? And a matter of fact, why are you? We should both be excited that God's word is being preached in such a powerful way. Moses had figured out how to not let someone else's success affect his peace. Whose success is affecting your peace? Robert Lewis Stevenson who wrote masterpieces such as Treasure Island and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, he said, "It's a good test to the rise and fall of egotism to notice how you listen to the praises of other men of your own standing."

Until you can listen to the praises of someone else without any desire to indulge in distraction or any attempt to belittle his work, you can be sure there is an unmortified prairie of egotistic impulse in your nature yet to be brought under the grace of God." Guys, why do you think I've been having other people speak here? To kill my ego. For the first seven years that I was here, I preached every week and I preached every week because I felt like this church would never grow if I let someone else stand behind here. So it was like part egotism and part insecurity. I was insecure because I didn't want you to hear other voices and think that anybody could preach better than me. Then I went back through Journey to Wholeness and I realized that all of those feelings were being filtered through inferiority and insecurity.

And when I began to flesh those things out and work those things out, now I've come to a place where I want people who are better than me speaking to you. I wanted Pastor Dallas to talk about anger last week. Why, because none of you would think that Pastor Dallas had anger issues. You'd be like, "What? He's the pastor of fun." In fact, when he picked anger, I go, "Bro, that's shocking to me. I would never think of you as somebody whose angry." He goes, "Oh bro, you should have known me before, man. I was known for my anger."

See, when you hear somebody like Pastor Dallas talk about something that you would never envision in your life that he struggles with, he's way more qualified to talk about anger than I am. Do you know why, because I generally wake up mad. I'm walking through London looking for problems. Why? We're in London, they're so polite. Oh sorry, chap. All right, mate." You like what? "Hey bro, I dare you to be polite to me one more time. Be smug again like you're better than me. That's why we left." So Pastor Barry said the whole time that we were there, that landed on about three people. I'm just saying, 1719. So anyway, I'm the guy that shouldn't be talking about anger because I'm still dealing with anger.

I want you to hear from people who are more qualified, who have fleshed things out to a deeper level than I have. Why, because you deserve that. And because I've become comfortable in my own skin. I am convinced that the only antidote to the poison of jealousy is contentment, to just be satisfied with what you have, who you are, and where you are by the grace and the providence of God, that God has given you exceedingly and abundantly above all that you even have asked for.

Think about the challenges that you used to have in your life that now you take the solutions for granted. The prayers that have been answered that now you just take for granted. The things that you fought for, that you wrestled with, that you cried over, that you handed over to somebody else, that you texted online 17 months ago on a little text line that you went to the back and had somebody lay hands on you. Now, that solution has happened and you just, what else you got, God? Do you ever feel like you treat God like he's a blackjack dealer? You want to double down and what else do you got from me? There's this idea that I just want to live my life content with the things that I have.

Let me wrap up one last ... Incidentally, did you know I could say this from experience, the more I am content with the things that I have, the more things God gives me to be content with. The more I piss and moan about the ... I was just in England, so that's not cuss word. The more I piss and moan about the things I don't have, the more God doesn't give me that, because God knows that my attitude is contrite. And so if we would just develop a attitude of gratitude and thank God for the things that we had, God would give us more things that we would give him gratitude for when we got them. And so I want to live my life's content with the things that I have and not because I'm going to tell you that I don't want more stuff. I want more stuff. I want all the shoes, every Jordan that ever comes out. I want that Jordan. And I get mad when I get on the Nike app and I can't get it.

And I say, "God, why?" And he is like, "Because you've got too many now. Be happy with what you have." And then I get happy with the ones that I have. A couple weeks ago I told my daughter, I said, "I ain't buying no more Jordans." Guess what? She bought me. Jordans from my birthday. I said, "The devil is a lie." Look at God. Got me some free shoes. Well, they weren't free because I paid for them, but she gave them to me is what I'm saying. If we would just be happy with what we had, God would give us more to be happy with.

So anyway, let me close with one last story. There's a wealthy businessman. And every day he would drive by a fisherman who was always just kind of sitting by the side of his boat, seemingly doing nothing. The businessman, he'd wave to the fisherman, but the fisherman would barely acknowledge him as he rode by in his fancy car. Finally, one day, the businessman pulled over, got out of his car, walked over to the fisherman, and he said, "Don't you know who I am?" "Yes, sir. I know who you are," the fisherman said. The businessman said, "All right. You know how rich I am?" The fisherman said, "Yes, sir. You are one of the richest men in the state." The businessman said, "Well, you hardly ever acknowledge me when I drive by. Why are you so jealous of me?" The fisherman said, "Sir, I'm not jealous of you or anyone else for that matter. I think the reason I don't pay attention to you is because I'm just thinking about how happy I am and how satisfied I am with my life."

The businessman, he said, "I drive by at the same time every day and you're just sitting beside your boat doing nothing. Why aren't you out there fishing?" The fisherman said, "Because by the time you drive by, I've already caught all the fish I need." The businessman said, "Well, why don't you go catch more fish than you need?" The fisherman said, "What would I do with them?" And the businessman said, "You could sell the fish, earn more money, buy a bigger, better boat, go deeper, catch more fish. You could buy nylon nets, catch even more fish and make even more money. Soon you could buy more boats and hire other people who could catch more fish for you. Then you'd be rich like me and you'd never have to worry about being jealous again." And the fisherman said, "But I'm not jealous now. Besides if I did everything that you just said and I wound up just as rich as you, what would that do for me?" And the rich man said, "You could sit back and just enjoy your life."

And the fisherman chuckled and he asked the rich businessman, "What do you think I'm doing every day when you pass by?" He's content. Are you content? Are you the businessman passing by being moody? Or are you the fisherman sitting by your boat enjoying the blessings that God has given you? Contentment, it's the cure. So you have a choice today. Let jealousy kill your contentment or let your contentment kill your jealousy. I wonder which of those do you want to die in you today? For me, I want to kill the green-eyed monster of jealousy in my life because only then, like Paul, will I learn to be content in all things.

Would you close your eyes? Contentment. It is elusive. It's like a mist. You chase it, you pursue it, and until you have Jesus, you'll never find it. You think that you'll find it in relationships. You think that you'll find it in money. You think you'll find it in positions. But even when you get those things, it's not there. It's like grabbing the wind. The only true contentment comes in our lives when we fill the spiritual void that is in our hearts that can only be filled by Jesus. So maybe you came here today and you don't have a relationship with Jesus. You haven't surrendered your life to him. We're going to give you the opportunity to do that today. It really requires that you do two things. It requires that you confess and that you profess, that you confess that you are a sinner and that you profess that you believe that Jesus can change that. So we're going to give you the opportunity to do both of those things today. And here's how. In just a moment, I'm going to ask for people to do two things.

First in just a moment, with nobody looking around, I'm going to ask for people who do not have a relationship with Jesus, but would like one to raise their hand and make eye contact with me. Once you've made eye contact with me, you can put your hand down. That's your form of confession. Secondly, I'm going to say a few lines of a prayer then I'm going to pause, and if you repeat what I just prayed and you mean it in your heart, the Bible says that you will be saved. So if you're here today and you say, Shawn, I don't have a relationship with Jesus, but I'd like one before I leave, with nobody looking around, would you raise your hand and make eye contact with me right now?

Thanks. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks, Thanks. Thank you. Anybody else? Did I miss anybody? Thanks. Okay. I'm going to ask everybody in here, everybody in here to say these words after say, Jesus.

Congregation:

Jesus.

Pastor Shawn:

I've got sin in my life.

Congregation:

I've got sin in my life.

Pastor Shawn:

But I don't want it.

Congregation:

But I don't want it.

Pastor Shawn:

Please take it.

Congregation:

Please take it.

Pastor Shawn:

Please forgive me.

Congregation:

Please forgive me.

Pastor Shawn:

Come into my life.

Congregation:

Come into my life.

Pastor Shawn:

Change me. Make me different. Make me new. Be my Lord, be my savior. In Jesus' name, Amen. With every head bowed and every eye closed, maybe you're here and you'd say, Shawn, I'm saved. I'm a Jesus guy, or I'm a Jesus girl. If I were to die today, I know that I would go to heaven. But if you're honest with yourself, you would say, Shawn, I am struggling with jealousy in my life. It may be physical jealousy of what people have. It could be relational jealousy. It could be spiritual jealousy, emotional jealousy, whatever it is, you would say, Shawn, I am struggling with jealousy in my life. If that's you, with nobody looking around, I want you to raise your hand so that I can pray for you. Yes. Geez. So God, today, I pray that the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard our hearts and our minds. God, I pray that you would bring peace, love, contentment to my friends in this place. In Jesus' name, Amen.