For the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God. (Deuteronomy 4:24)

I recently had a revelation about God’s jealousy and love for us; it showed me something that I have yet to experience. This is a burning, passionate and righteous love for someone.

When we were children, it was engraved into our minds that jealousy is a bad thing. The word itself sets off a siren in your head; all you hear is “bad, avoid, sin, turn around, bad” so naturally when I heard that our own God is a jealous god, I got puzzled. How was this possible? Is this a contradiction? What I eventually learned was that the word jealousy is credited too highly with being a terrible thing, when in fact; it has a beautiful side to it. Being jealous of, and being jealous for. Big difference.

Now, imagine that you are a guy who fell in love with a girl. Not the flimsy kind of love, but the oh! So powerful kind. Everything about this girl is just the way you want it to be; she is perfect in every way, even with all her imperfections, warts and all. You would wait a billion years if you knew she would eventually be yours, and with every breath you would rejoice because you were a second closer to being with the one you love. But there is one problem. She doesn’t have the same kind of love. Of course she gives you attention, but the second you are out of the room, she continues to flirt with anything around her. Imagine how you would feel. Now here comes the jealousy part, and no. You are not jealous of the thing that has her undivided attention, it could be brad Pitt or it could be a rock for all you care, because you are secure enough in yourself not to wish to be the rock. You know what you have to offer is a whole lot better than a piece of stone. You are jealous for her. You want her to give you every part of her. Not just her attention or cute smiles. You want to be the one and only. Yet you are the farthest from that position, and it crushes your heart to know it.

Brothers and sisters. That is how God feels. We are constantly proclaiming his love and then we go out and flirt with every sin imaginable. We show him attention by going to church or choir, and then we come home and forget He exists. We live in sin, while pretending that we love him. Our hearts aren’t 100% with him. How many times we go to bed thinking of pointless things, how many times we wake up, ungrateful that we didn’t die in the middle of the night. He wants us so much. It’s not enough for us to give him 5 minutes at the end of the day. Going to church in Sunday is not enough. He wants every cell in our body to shout his name, to buzz and vibrate under his awesome, glorious power, for every thought in our mind to be bathed in his love. How selfish and prideful we are. We can’t seem to even try to run towards him, distracted with our important lives. Our love for god is smaller than a grain of sand, while His love for us is larger than galaxies of beaches, and for every step we take towards god; he runs a mile toward us. How great of a God He is, that he can love such a minuscule thing like the human population. It’s astonishing.

If we put our minds to it, and woke up every morning with the Lord on our mind, dedicated our entire lives to Him, then glorious and wonderful miracles would fall upon us. We would have such blessings, and most of all, our hearts would finally be content. As humans we constantly chase after things that don’t really matter, and when we don’t get what we want, we whine like children. God has a way of soothing your soul and allowing it to mature, opening our eyes to His will, and what he has planned for you. It won’t be possible for you to stomp your feet and hold your breath until you get what you want, because you will know the unimportance of the object you desire. This is all acquired when we realize the potential we have when we allow god to pour his love into us, and when we return it with every single fiber of our being. It will never surpass the amount of love God has for us, but like the woman in the temple, who gave her last coins, it would be enough.
Margaret Fursova