The Jealousy of God

Hey, beautiful people. It's Taleigh here, and welcome to another post on Coffee Dates with Jesus. Today's post has been something that I have been tossing back and forth in my mind for a few years now, and Holy Spirit has given me the correct words to say. You know the drill: grab your coffee, tea, or whatever drink suits your fancy. Thanks for tuning in to this quick read. Enjoy.

A beautiful song by David Crowder is titled: "How He Loves Us." The song's first line says, "He is jealous for me," and I did not understand for a long time. One word changed the entire meaning: "for." I did not know what being jealous for something meant, so I thought it meant the same as being jealous of someone or something. So, I would constantly ask the Father, "Why are you jealous of us? You hold everything in your hands and can do anything. You have omnipotence and omniscience, so why would you be jealous of us?" Holy Spirit (being the teacher that He is) helped me to understand this misconception. It is not that God is jealous of us; He is jealous for us, and here is why:

To be jealous of someone or something, you envy it. You have a longing for something that is not yours. To be jealous for someone or something, you do not envy it; instead, it is something you protect at all costs because it is valuable to you. You are longing for something that belongs to you. That is the jealousy of God. He does not envy us. He longs to be in a relationship with us. He wants to talk to us. He wants to spend time with us, and it has been like this since the beginning.

I want to take you back to Genesis and the old faithful creation story. We all know that God created light, day, night, water, the sky, the ground, the vegetation, the plants, the animals, etc. One thing that Holy Spirit revealed to me about this passage of scripture is a pattern. God's pattern was: "He spoke, saw, and said that it was good." He repeated that cycle over and over again.

Another thing that I noticed was that for certain things to come about, He had to speak to the sources of that particular thing. When He created plants and vegetation, He had to speak to the ground. When He made the fish, He had to speak to the waters. When He created the birds, He had to speak to the sky, and the list continues.

With man, everything was a little different.….. The pattern was: He spoke, He formed, He saw, and then, He said it was very good.

When God created man, He did not speak to the sky, the ground, the waters, etc. Instead, He spoke to our source: Himself.

Genesis 1:26-27 says, “Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.”

On that day, God decided to make creatures that look just like Him (and this also includes you and me).

As kingdom citizens, we sometimes forget how much God loves us and how much He values us. God is a jealous God because we belong to Him. His love for us is so deep that He chose to put His undivided attention on His people. His love for us is so deep that He is never concerned for His well-being. We could never possess the love for Him or others that He has for us because I believe that its beauty is so grand that a fraction of it would make us physically sick. From the beginning, we have always had a special relationship with God, so it is natural for Him to be jealous for us. He longs to have a relationship with us. God is jealous for us because we have always belonged to Him. Besides, we are the only thing in creation that God touched, and for me, that says enough.

_Taleigh E. Reed, Coffee Dates with Jesus