You must worship no other gods, for the Lord, whose very name is Jealous, is a God who is jealous about his relationship with you. Exodus 34:14
Today when we read of God describing Himself as jealous, we can get confused by the modern understating of Jealous; for us Jealous is a negative unpleasant thing, and so we marvel at how God who is love can also be jealous.
As in all illustrations man may use to describe God, the one I’m about to share will fall short, but I hope it will help a little in grasping what it means that our perfect God of love and justice is also Jealous.
Let’s say you come home one day to find a stranger in your kitchen chatting to your 14 year old daughter. He says they’ve been talking online and they’re madly in love. He looks the wrong end of his 50’s. He goes on to say that they have decided to go to a country where girls her age can marry without annoying things like consent of parents getting in the way.
Now assuming that before you throw him either out, or against the nearest wall, assuming you could control yourself long enough to weigh up what you’re feeling… what you’d find is that you have become jealous for your daughter – jealous for her safety and happiness which rightfully belong to her and jealous for the affection that rightfully belongs to you. And you’d act quickly, and with God’s grace, within the law, to get that pervert out of your daughter’s life, and you would do all you could to reteach her, and care for her, to nurture her and help her understand what good and proper loving relationships are.
When God is jealous, He is jealous like that – He is jealous for his people, for their affection which is rightly His and for their safety, welfare and growth, which is rightly theirs.
Isn’t that just the most humbling thing – God, the only true God, the creator of all things is so in love with you that He will jealously watch over you to keep you from getting hooked up with anything at all that will harm you.
As you pray your way through the day keep that picture of pure jealous love in your mind and let it lead you in your worship of God, as you seek to walk in His way, with the knowledge of His jealous love guarding you.
Children’s Prayer Activity
Day 2
Let’s thank God for all He has made –which is your favourite day of creation?
