A backhanded comment, being belittled in front of others or simply not being happy about your success. Envy can rear its ugly head in many ways. It can affect your family, career and even relationships – and it’s not just a matter of somebody wanting what you’ve got, they actually take steps to rob your happiness from you!

• You do your best at work to get promoted but all of a sudden you lose your position to the very ‘friend’ who congratulated you when you got it.

• You’ve got family members questioning why you’ve managed to achieve certain things and they haven’t.

• And that sweet relationship which suddenly turned sour for no apparent reason?

Many laugh off envy, but it’s effects are very real. The Bible warns us that:

“…Envy is rottenness to the bones.” (Proverbs 14:30)

If it is compared to rottenness to the bones, imagine what envy can do to your family, health and success. That is, if you are not protected by God!

You do know that you can fight back, right? You do know that the green-eyed monster can be defeated. Envy is a gap used by evil spirits to enter into your life and destroy it, and so to defeat this spirit, you need to fight in spirit.

Get out of the victim mindset, don’t allow envy to reach the ‘rotten bones’ stage, and start fighting against this evil. You cannot control the ill feelings that others have towards you, but you can stop this negativity from having effect over you.

Don’t give in to envy or feel afraid by the threat of it; instead, use the power of your faith to overcome it.

May the God of the Bible bless you

Bishop Joshua Fonseca