The Jealousy of God and Intimacy

God loves us so much.  He sent His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ to be our atonement…to pay the price for our sins. (John 3:16-18) God loves us so much that He is jealous over us.  Some would say that jealousy is a bad thing, but everything that God is is right and good…God is holy and He is love.  So even His jealousy is holy and rooted in love.  He is jealous over us with a passionate love. God longs for intimacy with His people…and by embracing…by yielding…by abandoning ourselves to His loving and passionate jealousy, we release God to move in our situation…we invite God to encounter us.

“Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.  Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God”,… (Exodus 20:4-5a).  Not only do we make materialism, hobbies, people, graven images our idols…problems, trials, threats, attacks, persecution, sin…we make these things our idols…our god…our identity when in actuality, they are hindrances and distractions sent to capture our attention from God and His Word and keep us from entering into intimacy with Him. (Mark 4:17)

When we act in fear and trembling over our problems or over our enemies, we make those things our idols…we bow our knees to them and serve them…We make those things bigger than God.  But God is greater than our problems, the attacks of the enemy, even the sin that we battle with.  God tells us to have no other Gods before Him because He is the only true and living God and He loves us.  For us to have true intimacy with God, we can’t have idols.

Let us pursue after God (James 4:6-8a;  Hebrews 12:1-3), carelessly forsaking our sin, shame, guilt, condemnation, worry, anxiety, fear, unforgiveness, resentment, offenses, idolatry, insecurity… everything that distracts us from God’s jealous love.

May the greatness of our sin, problems and storms melt away in the gaze of our Lover.   May we cast aside the weights that have easily beset us and carelessly abandon ourselves to God’s desire…to His love.  Let us focus our gaze on the lovingly jealous and passionate gaze of our lover Jesus Christ.  For nothing else…no one else is worthy of our gaze but Him. 

Grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God, and of Jesus our Lord. (2 Peter 1:2 KJV).