Skip to main content

Jealous for Me

    What in your life do you have a hard time letting go of? How do you prefer to spend your downtime? What comes first in your life?  Is there something that makes or breaks your mood? These are all questions I ask myself. There should be nothing more important in my life than Jesus. There should be nothing else that I am depending on for my happiness and nothing else that fulfills me like living for Jesus.

    Is anything blocking my way to a better relationship with Jesus? If I hold anything above Him, it is an idol in His eyes. It is easy to overlook the things in our lives that may serve as an idol. We get used to living a certain way and fail to see the harm we inflict upon ourselves when we worship something other than Jesus. 

    What can serve as an idol? Celebrities, our boyfriend or girlfriend, our parents, our children, entertainment, our work… you name it! There are is an infinite number of things that we can hold above Jesus. The trick is to recognize it, then to shift our gaze back on the King. 

    We cannot put our faith in another person to be our Jesus. They will always disappoint us, no matter how much they love us.  And Jesus will always love us more anyway. As for other idols, how can our entertainment, or our work, or anything ever mean more to us than the One who knows us intimately and never fails to meet our every need?? Jesus knows exactly what's right for us at exactly the right time. Jesus not only knows my heart, but everyone else's! Jesus never will lead us astray. So why would I ever try to follow the lead of something else? 

    The Lord despises idols. In the old testament, there are countless times when He is driven by a jealous rage for His people when they turn to idolatry. But when Jesus came to the earth, he made clear that the first and most important commandment was to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind (Luke 10:27). The second is to love others as yourself. It's not the opposite! Our God wants all our love and affections. He is a jealous God. 

Exodus 20:1-5 
And God spoke all these words:
"I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. "You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God" (NIV)


    There is no one like Our God. There is no one and nothing that could ever even compare to Him. He has greatness beyond measure and yet he calls us His sons and daughters. We do not deserve His love or His goodness or His favor yet He lavishes it upon us! Why then, would we ever want to put anything before Him? I assure you that nothing else will ever fulfill you like Jesus does. Nothing compares. So set aside your idols and worship the One True King!!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

He Time

     We have now gone over me time and we time, so today I want to address He time. It's a pretty simple concept-- that we have to spend time with Jesus to grow our faith. Just like anything else we want to get better at, you have to spend time doing it. In the case of Christianity, we are changed into the image of Jesus as we spend time with Him. 2 Corinthians 3:18 And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. (ESV)     My message is as simple as this-- make sure that you are setting time aside for Christ. You will never change if you don't continually immerse yourself into His presence. We need to be spending time in His word so we know His promises and guidelines for our life, in prayer to speak to Him for individual direction in our circumstances, and worshipping Him for His goodness.     Do not le...

Think Twice

    When the Holy Spirit was sent to us on earth, it made Jesus readily available to all. Now He lives in us, not among us. When you are a born again Christian, you now have Jesus dwelling inside you. How does that affect your daily life? Do you realize that you are a reflection of the one you carry with you everywhere you go?    Sadly, that doesn't mean much to a lot of Christians. Instead of using Jesus as an instrument of love, hope, and salvation, they use His name as a weapon. They spend their time boycotting instead of praying for Jesus to change hearts. Telling others that the God who IS love, hates them. Letting others know that they will go to hell for their decisions, instead of lighting the way to heaven. Let me be clear: this is wrong! No one wants to believe in a hateful, unforgiving God. I certainly don't. That's why I follow Jesus.     Even if you aren't the one openly boycotting on street corners, be careful of the image of God you are g...

Dancing Through the Fire

     For a couple weeks now the Lord has been pressing this message on my heart. He revealed a flaw in my thinking I hadn't noticed. You see, when hard times come it's in my nature to duck and cover. I go into "survival mode" and I get tunnel vision. I only focus on getting through what's in front of me alive. But in doing so, not only do I miss a lot of opportunities, but I give in to the voice of fear in my life.     I know I don't speak only for myself when I say that God wants to us in our "every day lives." Not only at church or on a special mission trip, but in the trenches of the grocery store, the gym, work, etc. It is His will that every soul is saved and He wants us to go out into the world and win those hearts for Him. But when I put myself in survival mode, I block out all the opportunities God lays before me. When I numb myself with the routine of each passing day, week, and month, I miss out on sharing the one thing of eternal importa...