The 11th Commandment: Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. Matthew 28:19-20 Thank you for listening! Learn more about our ministry at https://godsrecipe.org/

The 11th Commandment: Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. Matthew 28:19-20 Thank you for listening! Learn more about our ministry at https://godsrecipe.org/

You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife. You shall not covet your neighbor’s goods.

When we covet, we develop an inordinate emotional attachment to something, and our attachment becomes so great that we push God out of the center of our lives and replaced Him with the object of our desire. The object of the desire can be a person, something material or it can be something intangible such as prestige, pleasure, entertainment or success.

Having become obsessed, we become blind to the authentic goodness and purpose for which the object was intended by God. Then, in our blindness and striving to possess it, we jeopardize other intrinsically good things, such as relationships, physical and spiritual health, dignity, and the future.

Having a covetous heart entice a person to violate the Commandments that pertain to lying, stealing, adultery and killing. And most sadly, coveting is a form of idolatry that violates the first Commandment of not having strange gods.

But knowing that coveting is what entices us to break the first eight Commandments, we can use this to our advantage. Becoming aware of what we covet helps identify specific virtues to cultivate, giving us the prudence and fortitude to live according to the Commandments and reap their rewards. How cool is that?

Coveting is a condition of the heart. When we become aware of what we covet, we begin to foresee when we are approaching a danger zone (near occasion of sin) and can then avoid the temptation. For example, Jesus warns us about any lust or anger we have in our heart as being precursors to adultery and murder.

There are several conditions of coveting that are helpful for understanding how coveting operates.

Discontentment causes us to diminish what we have, grumble, complain and wallow in self-pity, and, instead of celebrating the achievements of others, we celebrate their misfortunes.

Greed makes us feel that enough is never enough. Greed continually makes us want more money, more time, more knowledge, more food, more sex, more entertainment, more prestige. Greed makes us bitter, self-centered and blind to important responsibilities and precious relationships. Greed causes us to become a slave to our “strange” gods as they demand an inordinate amount of our time, attention and love.

Envy is the most dangerous symptoms of a covetous heart. The Catholic Catechism defines envy as, “The sadness at the sight of another’s goods and the immoderate desire to acquire them for oneself, even unjustly.” The intense emotion of envy drives people to distort reality, leading to poor judgement and malicious actions such as slander, vandalism and even murder.

Misplaced Trust is another characteristic of coveting that places trust in things of the world instead of in God. By sowing doubt and a lie, Satan was quick to transfer Eve’s trust from God to himself. With the trust misplaced, Eve was an easy target of the false promise of becoming “like God.”

When we drift from observing the First and Third Commandments, we begin to covet worldly gods. These other gods begin to consume us and further push God and His authentic love to the margins of our hearts and, in time, leave us feeling empty.

Visit: https://godsrecipe.org/9th-%26-10tcommand-overview

You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife. You shall not covet your neighbor’s goods.

When we covet, we develop an inordinate emotional attachment to something, and our attachment becomes so great that we push God out of the center of our lives and replaced Him with the object of our desire. The object of the desire can be a person, something material or it can be something intangible such as prestige, pleasure, entertainment or success.

Having become obsessed, we become blind to the authentic goodness and purpose for which the object was intended by God. Then, in our blindness and striving to possess it, we jeopardize other intrinsically good things, such as relationships, physical and spiritual health, dignity, and the future.

Having a covetous heart entice a person to violate the Commandments that pertain to lying, stealing, adultery and killing. And most sadly, coveting is a form of idolatry that violates the first Commandment of not having strange gods.

But knowing that coveting is what entices us to break the first eight Commandments, we can use this to our advantage. Becoming aware of what we covet helps identify specific virtues to cultivate, giving us the prudence and fortitude to live according to the Commandments and reap their rewards. How cool is that?

Coveting is a condition of the heart. When we become aware of what we covet, we begin to foresee when we are approaching a danger zone (near occasion of sin) and can then avoid the temptation. For example, Jesus warns us about any lust or anger we have in our heart as being precursors to adultery and murder.

There are several conditions of coveting that are helpful for understanding how coveting operates.

Discontentment causes us to diminish what we have, grumble, complain and wallow in self-pity, and, instead of celebrating the achievements of others, we celebrate their misfortunes.

Greed makes us feel that enough is never enough. Greed continually makes us want more money, more time, more knowledge, more food, more sex, more entertainment, more prestige. Greed makes us bitter, self-centered and blind to important responsibilities and precious relationships. Greed causes us to become a slave to our “strange” gods as they demand an inordinate amount of our time, attention and love.

Envy is the most dangerous symptoms of a covetous heart. The Catholic Catechism defines envy as, “The sadness at the sight of another’s goods and the immoderate desire to acquire them for oneself, even unjustly.” The intense emotion of envy drives people to distort reality, leading to poor judgement and malicious actions such as slander, vandalism and even murder.

Misplaced Trust is another characteristic of coveting that places trust in things of the world instead of in God. By sowing doubt and a lie, Satan was quick to transfer Eve’s trust from God to himself. With the trust misplaced, Eve was an easy target of the false promise of becoming “like God.”

When we drift from observing the First and Third Commandments, we begin to covet worldly gods. These other gods begin to consume us and further push God and His authentic love to the margins of our hearts and, in time, leave us feeling empty.

Visit: https://godsrecipe.org/9th-%26-10tcommand-overview

You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor

With each Commandment, God reveals what He has made sacred and is to be protected. The Eighth Commandment follows suit. God’s warning to not lie reveals that truth is sacred and is to be protected.

God, who is the Creator of all things, established truth in the very things He created. When He created the solar system, He created the truth of gravity. When He created a sparrow, He created the truth that sparrows fly and produce offspring. Therefore, Jesus is justified when He says, “I am the way, the truth and the life.” And so, logic follows that anything that falls short of what is true, leads us away from God.

Truth is the foundation of relationships making it possible to live in harmony with one another and to live a peaceful and joy-filled life. Truth establishes honor and respect for one another, and truth is a pillar of trust necessary for healthy marriages and strong communities.

However, because of our selfishness and pride, we struggle with accepting the truth and go to great lengths to deny the truth, creating a mess. In time, the lies produce confusion, fear, disagreements, anger and division, and we spin more lies to cover the first lie with each lie growing bigger than the last. With each lie, our humanity and dignity diminish, making it more difficult to recognize the truth as we are led further from God.

Satan devised the lie and first used it in the garden of Eden when he sprinkled a little doubt by asking Eve, “Did God really say you would die…?” He then lied to make God out to be the bad guy saying, “You certainly will not die!” and then followed up with the false promise of “your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods.”

Satan, the father of lies, causes nothing but confusion, division, destruction and slavery to sin. Because of their disobedience, Adam and Eve hid themselves from God and from one another. Satan’s strategy worked so well with Adam and Eve that he uses the same strategy on us today, and it still works!

Through the Natural Law, lies always have negative consequences, such as shame, confusion and division. Lying can have devastating lifelong impacts that span generations. Alternatively, truth leads us to Jesus, who is Truth, and living in truth sets us free. Free from the slavery of lies, free to enjoy good relationships and experience authentic joy.

To help navigate difficult decisions and to recognize lies, the Catholic Catechism offers this definition of a lie.

To lie is to speak or act against the truth in order to lead into error someone who has the right to know the truth. (Catholic Catechism 2483)

This definition exonerates the Polish family of lying to the soldiers when asked if they were hiding Jews because Nazi soldiers did not have the moral right to know the truth,

This clarification is helpful to solve such difficult, but rare, situations, but it allows for erroneous rationalization and emotions. Therefore, St. Augustine warned against all lying. His fear was that exceptions could open the door to erroneous rationalization and emotions. He also warned that exceptions for lying introduce the risks of becoming a habitual liar.

There are many ways the Eighth Commandment can be broken. All of them turn ourselves, and others, away from Jesus and His truth which offers clarity of thought and freedom of living free and joy-filled lives.

Visit: https://godsrecipe.org/8th-command-overview To become better aware of the lies that we have grown blind to, including a breakdown of the types of lies along with some examples.

You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor

With each Commandment, God reveals what He has made sacred and is to be protected. The Eighth Commandment follows suit. God’s warning to not lie reveals that truth is sacred and is to be protected.

God, who is the Creator of all things, established truth in the very things He created. When He created the solar system, He created the truth of gravity. When He created a sparrow, He created the truth that sparrows fly and produce offspring. Therefore, Jesus is justified when He says, “I am the way, the truth and the life.” And so, logic follows that anything that falls short of what is true, leads us away from God.

Truth is the foundation of relationships making it possible to live in harmony with one another and to live a peaceful and joy-filled life. Truth establishes honor and respect for one another, and truth is a pillar of trust necessary for healthy marriages and strong communities.

However, because of our selfishness and pride, we struggle with accepting the truth and go to great lengths to deny the truth, creating a mess. In time, the lies produce confusion, fear, disagreements, anger and division, and we spin more lies to cover the first lie with each lie growing bigger than the last. With each lie, our humanity and dignity diminish, making it more difficult to recognize the truth as we are led further from God.

Satan devised the lie and first used it in the garden of Eden when he sprinkled a little doubt by asking Eve, “Did God really say you would die…?” He then lied to make God out to be the bad guy saying, “You certainly will not die!” and then followed up with the false promise of “your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods.”

Satan, the father of lies, causes nothing but confusion, division, destruction and slavery to sin. Because of their disobedience, Adam and Eve hid themselves from God and from one another. Satan’s strategy worked so well with Adam and Eve that he uses the same strategy on us today, and it still works!

Through the Natural Law, lies always have negative consequences, such as shame, confusion and division. Lying can have devastating lifelong impacts that span generations. Alternatively, truth leads us to Jesus, who is Truth, and living in truth sets us free. Free from the slavery of lies, free to enjoy good relationships and experience authentic joy.

To help navigate difficult decisions and to recognize lies, the Catholic Catechism offers this definition of a lie.

To lie is to speak or act against the truth in order to lead into error someone who has the right to know the truth. (Catholic Catechism 2483)

This definition exonerates the Polish family of lying to the soldiers when asked if they were hiding Jews because Nazi soldiers did not have the moral right to know the truth,

This clarification is helpful to solve such difficult, but rare, situations, but it allows for erroneous rationalization and emotions. Therefore, St. Augustine warned against all lying. His fear was that exceptions could open the door to erroneous rationalization and emotions. He also warned that exceptions for lying introduce the risks of becoming a habitual liar.

There are many ways the Eighth Commandment can be broken. All of them turn ourselves, and others, away from Jesus and His truth which offers clarity of thought and freedom of living free and joy-filled lives.

Visit: https://godsrecipe.org/8th-command-overview To become better aware of the lies that we have grown blind to, including a breakdown of the types of lies along with some examples.

You shall not steal.

If you were having a conversation with Jesus about not stealing, do you think He would have anything to add such as, “You have heard it said, ‘You shall not steal. But I say….’?” Of course He would, because Jesus wants us to look beyond the simple words of a Commandment so we can discover ourselves. By looking beyond the words, “Do not steal,” and looking at the motivations of our heart, we discover what and who we love most. We discover whether we sincerely love others or if that love is overshadowed by selfishness and fear.

Jesus would likely continue the conversation by encouraging you to cultivate generosity in your heart so you can not just share, but share joyfully. And not just share your possessions, but share your time, your appreciation for others and various intangibles that are even more valuable than money or possessions. Being generous demonstrates that God is real and is living through you.

The Seventh Commandment calls us to detach from the things of this world, so our possessions don’t impede us from setting our hearts on pursing treasures in Heaven. The Seventh Commandment teaches us to be grateful for the big and small blessings each day offers, and it teaches us to trust that God will always provide what we need.

Conversely, stealing is evidence that we love ourselves more than we love others and that we love the creation more than we love the Creator. Stealing shows a lack of trust that God will provide what we need, it shows we lack generosity and it turns us inward on ourselves, setting us up to be discontent, never having enough.

There are many forms of stealing. Some are very obvious, and others are not so easy to recognize because they don’t involve the act of taking. When we keep something that belongs to another, it is the same as stealing. Some examples are when we find something, like a wallet or when the cashier gives us too much change. Other forms of stealing that are often not easily recognized include gossiping, which steals someone’s privacy and reputation, and being mean to people, which steals their dignity and robs them of having a good day. There are many ways to steal that don’t involve taking.

The Seventh Commandment teaches that all of God’s creation is intended for everyone’s benefit, not just the “chosen few.” For a variety of reasons, some have too little and others have too much. Those with too little are likely to struggle in their experience of God’s goodness because they are focusing on surviving.

Those with too much are likely to struggle in seeing the goodness of God because they are focusing on accumulating more and safeguarding it all. The Seventh Commandment calls us to moderation. To have what we need and share the rest with others who struggle with less than they need. Through moderation and generosity, we participate with God in His plan of salvation for ourselves and our neighbors.

We are called to prioritize the allocation of our tangible and intangible possessions according to the Greatest Commandment. That is, to first love God with all our heart, soul and mind. Regarding our possessions we do this through a tithe to His church. Next, the Greatest Commandment calls us to love others as we love ourselves. Therefore, we are not just to share from our leftovers. We are to be intentional in planning to include what others need, the same as we plan for our own needs.

The Seventh Commandment is a call to greatness and an invitation to participate in God’s plan of joy, freedom and salvation through our work and our generosity.

Visit: https://godsrecipe.org/7th-command-overview

You shall not steal.

If you were having a conversation with Jesus about not stealing, do you think He would have anything to add such as, “You have heard it said, ‘You shall not steal. But I say….’?” Of course He would, because Jesus wants us to look beyond the simple words of a Commandment so we can discover ourselves. By looking beyond the words, “Do not steal,” and looking at the motivations of our heart, we discover what and who we love most. We discover whether we sincerely love others or if that love is overshadowed by selfishness and fear.

Jesus would likely continue the conversation by encouraging you to cultivate generosity in your heart so you can not just share, but share joyfully. And not just share your possessions, but share your time, your appreciation for others and various intangibles that are even more valuable than money or possessions. Being generous demonstrates that God is real and is living through you.

The Seventh Commandment calls us to detach from the things of this world, so our possessions don’t impede us from setting our hearts on pursing treasures in Heaven. The Seventh Commandment teaches us to be grateful for the big and small blessings each day offers, and it teaches us to trust that God will always provide what we need.

Conversely, stealing is evidence that we love ourselves more than we love others and that we love the creation more than we love the Creator. Stealing shows a lack of trust that God will provide what we need, it shows we lack generosity and it turns us inward on ourselves, setting us up to be discontent, never having enough.

There are many forms of stealing. Some are very obvious, and others are not so easy to recognize because they don’t involve the act of taking. When we keep something that belongs to another, it is the same as stealing. Some examples are when we find something, like a wallet or when the cashier gives us too much change. Other forms of stealing that are often not easily recognized include gossiping, which steals someone’s privacy and reputation, and being mean to people, which steals their dignity and robs them of having a good day. There are many ways to steal that don’t involve taking.

The Seventh Commandment teaches that all of God’s creation is intended for everyone’s benefit, not just the “chosen few.” For a variety of reasons, some have too little and others have too much. Those with too little are likely to struggle in their experience of God’s goodness because they are focusing on surviving.

Those with too much are likely to struggle in seeing the goodness of God because they are focusing on accumulating more and safeguarding it all. The Seventh Commandment calls us to moderation. To have what we need and share the rest with others who struggle with less than they need. Through moderation and generosity, we participate with God in His plan of salvation for ourselves and our neighbors.

We are called to prioritize the allocation of our tangible and intangible possessions according to the Greatest Commandment. That is, to first love God with all our heart, soul and mind. Regarding our possessions we do this through a tithe to His church. Next, the Greatest Commandment calls us to love others as we love ourselves. Therefore, we are not just to share from our leftovers. We are to be intentional in planning to include what others need, the same as we plan for our own needs.

The Seventh Commandment is a call to greatness and an invitation to participate in God’s plan of joy, freedom and salvation through our work and our generosity.

Visit: https://godsrecipe.org/7th-command-overview