Trusting God When Life Doesn’t Look Like You Hoped
*This was originally given as a message to the young adult group I help lead at my local church.
When Desire Poisons the Present
What happens when the desire for what we do not have poisons the life we do have?
Many of us are in seasons where something still feels just out of reach. Maybe you still live with your parents while your friends have moved out. Maybe you’re single and long for marriage. Maybe you feel stuck in a job you hate, unsure of your calling, while others seem to be thriving. Maybe the life you’re living looks nothing like the one you envisioned.
Most of us, maybe all of us, have something in the future we want. And that’s not wrong. Dreams and desires can be good. But we have to ask: How do we keep these longings from overshadowing our trust in God, our gratitude for the present, and our contentment with what we do have?
The truth is, no one has a perfect life. Even Jesus—the only perfect man to walk this earth—faced frustration, loss, and unmet desires. Consider his time in the garden when he longed for his disciples to stay up with Him to pray, and when he goes back to them they are sleeping. If Christ faced difficulty with how parts of life played out, why should we expect anything different?
And sometimes, even when we do get what we once longed for, it is only a matter of time until our hearts feel restless again. So we move the goalpost. We chase the next thing. The heart is never content.
Temptation to Covet In All Seasons
Waiting seasons bring unique temptations to covet. But so do the mundane ones, where the dream you longed for becomes your new normal and you realize: “This actually didn’t fulfill the deep longings of my heart.”
The same is true with marriage, or money, or power, or physical appearance. Whether you lack what you long for or have gotten it and it has become normal, the heart is ripe to covet because our hearts are always longing to be deeply satisfied. And when they are not, we either turn all of that to God and wrestle with it, or we begin to covet. Because living in the dreams of what could be is easier than living in the present difficulties. When we do this, it is called coveting, and it sabotages our joy in the life we actually have.
History of Coveting
To covet is to deeply yearn for something that is not ours, something God has not given us. It’s more than wanting your neighbor’s car, job, or spouse; it’s a posture of the heart that says, “If I don’t have that, I can’t be okay, because God isn’t enough in the lack, and what He has given me isn’t sufficient.”
In the Old Testament, as the Bible begins telling the story of God’s relationship with the nation of Israel and his making them a new people, he gives them what becomes known as the 10 commandments.
These commandments are to help Israel be distinct from the nations around them which are deeply flawed. These surrounding nations murder, steal, abuse, and treat others unfairly.
God wants for his people to be different than that, He wants them to embody and display his heart. And so He gives them these commandments to live by. To list a few:
Have no god before me
Don’t have idols
Do not murder
Do not steal
Observe the sabbath
Don’t bear false witness against someone in court (protects from the imbalance of power)
Almost all of these are exterior to our inner persons; now they flow from the inner person, but they are about the outward actions.
And then at the bottom of the list of commandments God gives us this little phrase that sounds a little old school or archaic.
“You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.” - Exodus 20:17
Here we find a command about the inner life. Something that goes beyond action and gets into the very way you think and believe, what you trust, what stories you believe and allow to shape you… This last command gets to the very core of us all. Do not covet what has not been given to you.
This command goes deeper than we often assume. It’s not just about behavior. It’s about what stories we let shape us, what we think we deserve, and whether or not we trust that God has been good to us.
What do you not have in this life that is consuming you? Sabotaging your trust in God and your joy in the life you do have?
Is All Discontentment Coveting?
Here is where the complexity comes. Is wanting change in my life coveting? Is being discontent about my job, my marital status, my financial situation the same as coveting?
I don’t believe so. There is a difference between faithful discontent and coveting.
Faithful discontentment is a longing for something different in my life, even having grief and sadness over how my life is going. But within that is a core of acceptance and trust that God is good and His presence with me is enough, even if I never get the change I desire.
The difference lies in the heart’s posture. Faithful discontentment invites God into the struggle. Coveting excludes Him, demanding fulfillment on our terms.
Coveting does not have that core. Coveting is not fighting to have trust and acceptance in God’s plan; it is a state of the heart that says if I do not get what is not presently mine, God is not enough in the lack. It is saying I do not trust God’s wisdom in giving me what I have and withholding, even for a season, that which I do not have. I know best, I want what I want, and like Veruca Salt in Willy Wonka, I want it now.
Do you see the difference? Faithful discontentment acknowledges our longings and even grieves unmet desires, but it rests in trust that God is good and His presence is enough, even if we never get what we long for. Coveting, on the other hand, rejects that trust. It says, “God’s plan isn’t enough. I need more.”
Faithful discontentment invites God in. Coveting pushes Him out.
What Coveting Does to Us
At the root of coveting is a lie: If I had what I want, then I’d finally be complete.
But a covetous heart doesn’t just stay personal. It affects your relationships. It can make you less generous, more bitter, self-focused, and even manipulative. It puts your energy into comparing instead of loving.
Now contrast that with Jesus.
“Though He was in the form of God, [He] did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself... He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” – Philippians 2:6–8
Jesus had it all, and gave it all up. He didn’t grasp for more. He gave, served, and trusted. The opposite of coveting.
This is why coveting matters to God, not just because it breaks a rule, but because it poisons our hearts and blinds us to His goodness. It’s a sin that leads to many others. Lust, greed, bitterness, they all grow from a heart that says, “I need what I don’t have, or I can’t be whole.”
As if God is not in the business of making you whole on His terms, rather than your own.
My Story
This got real for me a few years ago.
I was working as a hospital chaplain during COVID, burnt out, isolated, sitting in a dark office at 4am where no one really knows or appreciates my unseen work (I should have known God saw).
So, considering what the best option was to medicate my pitiful heart, I opened Instagram. What met my eyes was a college friend preaching to thousands, releasing a book, and going viral online.
But me? I was in a dark room at 4am doing invisible work. I felt unseen. I coveted his life.
At the same time, I was nearly 30 and still living with my parents. I was insecure about my thinning hair. I didn’t love parts about my personality. All these little insecurities stacked on top of each other and left my heart bitter. I wasn’t in a good place.
But in that season, God met me, as He often does when we are in a dark place.
I came across a verse that stopped me in my tracks:
“Let each one live his life in the situation the Lord assigned when God called him.” – 1 Corinthians 7:17
That verse began to anchor me. Over the following weeks, I meditated on it and began telling myself a different story than my covetous heart was telling me.
I don’t know why my life is the way it is. But God made me. He fashioned me just as I am. And so maybe I don’t love my personality always, but he gave it to me. And I can smooth out the rough edges, but God gave me this personality for a reason. So let me use it well.
And for some reason, this is the body I have and the hair, or lack of, that I have. This is the body God gave me. Can I grow to accept, appreciate, and be thankful for it? Am I more than what my hair looks like? Yes, I have more to offer the world.
God’s Ways
In God’s wisdom and love, which encapsulate his guiding and decision-making in our lives, he has your best interests at heart in all things. I believe God does not wish any of his sons or daughters to experience pain or suffering, but we live in a world that holds those, and we will all face them at some point. So while God in his heart might not want pain or suffering for you, if it is inevitable in this life that we face those, in his love and in his wisdom, he uses them. He redeems them. They are not wasted in your life, your pain and your sufferings and your trials.
You might not have chosen where you are right now, but this text teaches us that it is where God has you today. He can use it all and redeem it all. They are not wasted years. As I look back on my late 20’s I see more clearly that God was molding and fashioning me into a more loving, more sensitive, more thoughtful, more aware person. Surely I have a long way to go in those traits, but those times for me were not wasted. And neither are yours.
Rest in that. Yes, work towards the life you may want, but don’t live so much in that future that you are not present with the life you actually have.
Because God is in this life, not that future one.
The Remedy for a Coveting Heart
The lie Satan feeds our covetous hearts is this: If you just had that one thing—your dream job, the perfect body, the ideal family or home—then you’d finally be satisfied.
But the truth is, you wouldn’t.
Not fully. Not deeply. Not forever.
There will always be something else to want.
How do we break the curse of coveting? When I feel that coveting rise up, I have to turn to God and be honest: “Lord, this is where my heart is. I want what I don’t have. But I’m trying to trust You. You’ve assigned me this life—this body, this personality, this season, this family, this job.
Yes, there are things I can pursue for health and growth. But you’re not asking me to chase a perfect life—You’re asking me to be faithful here. To learn contentment here. Because real joy doesn’t come from the addition of something new. It comes from fellowship with You in the life I already have.”
And you have to preach that to your heart. You have to enter into deep times of prayer where you wrestle with God over the life you wished you had versus the life you do have.
Breaking the covetous curse does not come in pill form.
It takes work.
But the work is where we find God meeting us. He is truly enough in whatever our lack is.
There’s something steadying about meditating on that truth: This is where God has me today. I’m not outside of His care. I’m not overlooked. And that truth can anchor joy even in a life I might not have chosen.
Because deep, soul-level joy doesn’t come from the life we wish we had, it comes from walking closely with God in the life we do have and thanking Him for it.
Fighting my covetous heart,
Josh.