To covet or not to covet

When I was a teenager, I found the Bible and Christianity a little oppressive. So many rules and laws. And fun things? They were prohibited, of course. I had this idea that becoming a serious Christian would limit my 'freedom' and so I kept postponing the choice to live for Jesus.

Although I did not grow up in a very "conservative" church, the Ten Commandments were an invisible guide in our family. I always thought the tenth commandment to be difficult: 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. Well, can't we do anything at all then?

After I had given my life to Jesus, I slowly began to see that those words were not meant as a restriction, but rather as a challenge. A challenge to find out what we should desire. No, not our neighbor's stuff ... but the very things that God has reserved for us.

Have you ever read it that way? It became the approach in my English book My Neighbor's House. Go, and find out what healthy desires are. In Mark 11:24 it says: Therefore I say unto you, What things soever you desire, when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you shall have them. Obviously, this is not about our neighbor's stuff.  But then, what is it?