My wife and I have a phrase we use when one of us sees something they really want: “If only I had THAT, my life would be utterly complete.”
But there is a bit of a difficulty with being utterly satisfied with everything you have. There are only two things that motivate human beings: Desire for a good outcome; fear of a bad outcome.
Christians need to do everything out of desire, not fear. Fear is the absence of faith, and faith is the absence of fear. I still want things, but I see every single thing I own as a “tool”. It can be a tool to make life better or a tool to do harm, but the item is not a thing to be desired. Rather, the results I achieve from using the tool should be the thing to be desired. It is also what causes me to desire the tool.
I like the tool that you and your wife use.
**“If only I had THAT, my life would be utterly complete.”**
We have a similar phrase in our house, that goes something like this: "what will you do with that, thirty minutes after you've bought it?" If it's going to sit on a shelf unseen, or go into a box, we usually don't buy it as a matter of principle. Sometimes to practice self-discipline, we'll ask each other "did you want that before you saw it in the store?" If the answer is "no", we challenge ourselves to hold off on the purchase until a later date. We find that oftentimes the "wanting" goes away as soon as we leave the store. We might even say "no" to something we could otherwise afford, just to prove that we're the masters of our wallets, and not the other way around.