Jalousie, envie… Jealousy, Envy…

Don’t Be Condemned

We’ve all been there and experienced jealousy and/or envy whether on the receiving end, or the giving end. I suppose being human beings, there’s a level of understanding that these can be normal human emotions, and particularly as we are all trying to perfect our walk of faith and live according to the Spirit of God as we wrestle our fleshly human desires. To some degree, I am not sure that experiencing those emotions are the actual bad thing… However, the actual bad thing is when you recognise those emotions within yourself and then you choose not to submit yourself to God to rid those emotions from your life. It’s the difference between being aware of it and trying to rid yourself of it, and being aware of it and expanding space to accommodate it in your life because you think you have a justified reason for it.

This blog post is all about exploring and unpacking jealousy and envy, and what happens when you make room for it in your life, and the devastating and sometimes long-lasting, even fatal consequences it can have if left unchecked. This post is to raise awareness of jealousy whether in you or in your close relationships so that you can make intentional decisions on how you move forward. It’s not about condemnation because the Word of God is given to us as a tool for construction, building up – for correction and instruction in righteousness, not to cut us down when we miss the mark.

What’s Your Relationship Like?

One thing for us to be aware of at the outset is that it is pretty difficult for jealousy and/or envy to gain a strong hold over your emotions, if you are in an actual intimate and consistent relationship with God. Why? Because when you’re in an intimate and committed consistent relationship, you have regular communication. With God, you’re constantly communing with Him in your heart in your everyday life moments. Now i’m definitely not trying to hold myself out as holier than art… because i’m not. Like you, I’m human! I have those moments when ungodly thoughts present themselves in my mind and I recognise that I have to do that casting down and submitting every thought to the knowledge of God. It’s a habit that we have to consistently teach ourselves and exercise, and then eventually the brain does it as second nature. We do have to remember that any thought does not align with God’s Word is not from God.

Who Rules?

Whether we think we have just cause to believe it, even if we think that we can submit good and cogent arguments why that thought/emotion is actually justified, if that thought isn’t godly it needs to be cast down before it takes root in our lives. All we have to do is cast our minds back to the Garden of Eden… First trick of Satan, plant a seed of doubt by way of thought about what God really said. Adam and Even knew good and well what God said, but now the serpent came along and planted an ungodly thought, they tried to justify it because it fitted with the narrative in their own mind.

Lean Not To Your Own Understanding – This is at the absolute core of it all. If you’re in an intimate relationship with God, and truly trust His Word by FAITH not by sight, or even according to your own understanding, then you’ll have less difficulty in trusting HIM despite whatever you see in the natural world around you. Now I am not saying it is easy… Oh no! But God is not a man that He should lie, so if we trust Him at His Word, we have the blessed assurance that whatever happens, however it works out, it will surely SURELY all work together for our good – Why? Because we are called and living according to His purposes (Word), and not our motives or desires.

So now i’ve laid the foundation of identifying how this thing can take root (and if not checked form a very strong hold over your life), we can unpack what it looks like in everyday life.

WHISTLE-STOP TOUR OF SCRIPTURE:

1 Samuel 2 – One of the first things we can see from this part of scripture (echoed throughout the Bible I might add) is that God is divine and providential. He has His principles, but He is not confined to how we pattern Him or try and box Him in within our own minds. God will bless whomsoever He chooses to bless, He will promote whomsoever He chooses, and He will show favour to whom He desires. If we accept this, we will not be caught up in a legalistic approach to God like the Pharisees. No matter how well-versed we think we are, we cannot outsmart God or prove Him to lack integrity, or hold God to ransom because we think He owes us for religiously following His Word. If you find you’re struggling with this, it’s a good time to ask God to help you examine your heart and repent. We cannot be about the Lord’s business if we are trying to establish our own little lives and our own little kingdoms in our lives according to our own thoughts and will by manipulating the Word of God to fit our little constructs. Satan tried that. Satan knew the Word inside out and upside down. Ultimately his desire was not to serve God but to rival God and take the Angels that sang God’s praises down with him. So examine why you’re serving God. Is it because He is God, or is it a transactional relationship? Are you serving Him because He IS God, and out of an abundance of gratitude for Him calling you to salvation? Or are you serving Him because you think by obedience you’re storing up brownie points to get the blessings you want? God does not operate like that. He wants a relationship with us. He is not a genie. We cannot manipulate God. Remember, God weighs the heart in judgment. When we experience God’s goodness and blessings, it is by His grace, not by our works so that any man can boast.

God may have established certain systems, but if the system is no longer serving His purpose, He will change a thing up! He did this very thing in 1 Samuel. God had a system of ensuring that the Priesthood ran according to the son of the priest upon his death. However, Eli the Priest was observant and respectful of God. He trained up Samuel well. But of his own sons, Hophni and Phineas, they had no regard or relationship with God. They were so focussed on how life can serve them, not how they can serve God. They showed disregard to well-established godly forms of reverence and did life their way in rebellion to God, to the point that Eli actually told his sons that he’d heard about their badness throughout the people of Israel and was spreading abroad. One thing that God will not have you do is make a open show mockery of Him and think you’re going to get away with it. Nope God will humble you. Eli’s sons didn’t listen to their father, and long story short, God told Eli that He is raising up for Himself a faithful priest who would do according to the Lord’s heart and mind. You may be thinking okay but what does this have to do with jealousy? I’m trying to illustrate the point that if you’re heart and mind are not submitted to God and you’re not serving God from a wholesome place of gratitude, but have in mind your own little way, that’s the door through which jealousy, envy and sin generally can enter.

JEALOUS CHARACTERS WE’RE FAMILIAR WITH

So okay, this was the scenic route to labour the point, but I’m trying to drive it home how important it is to examine your heart and motives.

Saul – God chose Saul for the position of King. I really don’t want to digress but I’ll just say this. Be careful about being the ‘answer’ in the midst of rebellion. God’s providential will was for Israel to be ruled by a holy priesthood, but because Israel wanted to be like everyone else and fit in, they decided that they wanted a King, not a priesthood. So God acceded to their request in His permissive will. In appointing Saul, God via Samuel gave Saul specific instructions to follow. On more than one occasion, Saul disobeyed God and did what he thought was good in his own understanding, and thought he could buy God’s grace by making a sacrifice. His little plan didn’t work. God decided that He would find a man after His own heart, cue David. Here’s another little side-point, God will pluck up the most unexpected, seemingly unqualified by conventional standards person and divinely align them in position because it is His will to do so and that person’s heart is toward serving Him. David was a shepherd boy out in the fields and seemingly insignificant. You know the story, so insignificant that when Samuel went to David’s dad’s house, Jesse’s house to identify the one the Lord had chosen, Jesse called for all his sons except David! It got to the point when Samuel had to expressly ask Jesse “Haven’t you got any more sons?” and that was the point that he called for David, the last choice, yet God’s choice. We can’t think we know how God will do a thing. God will do His thing, we just have to be concerned about we are about doing His Kingdom purposes and our hearts are pure.

So, you’ll have to read the book of Samuel to get the gist of the ins and outs of this story as i’ll be here forever, but essentially, God in His providence made certain circumstances align so that David entered Saul’s life, and Saul needed David. David was the answer to Saul’s problem. David loved God and served Saul with excellence. In fact, David was conscientious about how he did things in his life, and God blessed David’s endeavours and caused him to have favour and rise in popularity. Actually it got to the point (and now I’m going to land this plane about jealousy) where David was doing so well in serving that Saul became jealous of him. Now, Saul could have stopped there and recognised this unhealthy emotion. But instead, he began to justify in his own mind why he was right to have that jealous emotion. Saul made room for jealousy and it took hold fast. Before you know it, the person that God sent to bless Saul and help him, Saul began to hate and resent. No sooner that, Saul began a relentless campaign of activity to try to kill David. But God protected David. Long-story short, unchecked envy and jealousy can be so destructive it can be murderous, both figurately and literally. They are dangerous emotions to accommodate in your life.

Cain & Abel – This comes from the book of Genesis. The children of Adam and Eve. They were brothers. (Side-point: Jealousy can raise its ugly head in any relationship no matter how close you are, this happened amongst blood brothers!). Cain was a farmer and Abel was a shepherd. Each of them gave an offering to God.

Genesis 4:4-5

The Lord looked with favour on Abel and his offering, ⁵ but on Cain and his offering he did not look with favour. So Cain was very angry, and his face was downcast.

Here’s that emotion again: So Cain was unhappy with how God showed favour. He had an idea in his head that he should have been favoured. He became angry and downcast/despondent/ low in spirit with loss of hope and courage. Seeing Cain’s heart, God checked him to make him aware of what was in his heart – He said to Cain:

“If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.”

Back to the point I made earlier: The emotion of itself is not bad. It becomes bad when you allow it to take a hold and space in your life and begin to dictate your actions. Before he took any action God let Cain know that He could see his heart, and what would happen if he decided not to do the right thing, and open the door to sin. God told Cain that he had to rule over it. What does that mean? Be honest. Admit you have this emotion in your heart and ask God to help you deal with it according to His will. That means submitting yourself to God and being honest about what’s in your heart. If you don’t there’s no telling what that unchecked emotion may manifest and how it may cause you to sin.

Joseph’s Brothers – This well-known account of Joseph’s early life experience. God gave Joseph a gift to interpret dreams. It so happened that in his innocence, Joseph shared the interpretation of his dreams with his father and brothers. To Joseph it wasn’t a haughty and prideful expression and emotion. It was a more likely a wonder that he wanted to share. His brothers hated him. Not only did they hate him because God favoured him, they hated him because his father favoured him evidenced by giving Joseph the well-known coat of many colours. We won’t always understand why some people are favoured more than others. That’s not our job to work out. Our job is that if we notice it, we keep a pure heart and keep our focus on God and our heart pure. We should not be trying to compete for anyone’s position, attention or anything. What is ours is ours, and if we trust God, we are to live our lives in reverent obedience to Him, and keep our hearts pure, fully confident that He has already gone before us to prepare our way in life and at the right time we will experience the blessings that He has divinely prepared to bless us with. But Joseph’s brothers were not about the introspective self-reflective heart-checking lifestyle. They hated Joseph, hated his favour and sought to kill him.

THE THEME OF JEALOUSY AND ENVY

In the biblical accounts we’ve had a quick overview of, we can see certain themes that have emerged:

1. Heavy is the head that wears the Crown – God may choose to bless someone with a gift that’s quite simply outstanding. That gift is given because God knows that the person will use it to honour God. But the weight of that responsibility means that people may hate you, despise you, be jealous of you and may even try to kill you. You never ever know what sacrifices someone has had to make to carry that gift, or blessing. You never know everyone’s full story or even anyone’s full story. That gift may be the only thing keeping them going in life feeling that they have purpose and reason for being. It could be the most precious thing to them. You may see a gift, but to them it’s literally the oil in their proverbial alabaster box of life. Be very careful about messing around with the oil (anointing) in someone’s alabaster box submitted to the Lord’s purposes.

2. Unchecked Jealousy and Envy is a doorway to sin – We see in each of the three examples above, instead of the person feeling jealous submitting to God to begin work to resolve the condition of their hearts, they instead justified their emotions by accommodating space for it and not actively trying to rid it from their hearts and lives. That justification became the open door to sin. And just like James 1:15 says, sin when it is fully grown gives birth to death, whether it be murder, or the jealous person’s death.

3. Jealousy cannot abort God’s plan – Jealousy is a disease of the mind that really convinces a person that they can do something to stop God’s plan. Foolish. Saul couldn’t stop David becoming King. Joseph’s brother’s couldn’t stop God’s destiny for Joseph manifesting. God will ensure His plan and purposes prevail, but what He will also do is make an open show of jealousy and bring it to a low and humble place.

KEY TAKE-AWAYS

1. Prioritise above all else cultivating a committed and consistent relationship with God through reading and meditating (thinking in stillness and prayer) on His Word.
2. Be sensitive to the Holy Spirit when the Holy Spirit is checking you. If you continuously ignore the Holy Spirit you quench its fire, and your conscience will become seared and God will give you over to the power of your evil desires to rule you and your wicked actions. 1 Timothy 4:2
3. Be vulnerable before God. God knows your heart, for He made you. He sees right through you and there is no part of you that is hidden from Him. When you sin, don’t do what Adam and Eve done by running away and hiding – Your heart cannot be hidden from God. Practice humility. Standing before God sins and all and admitting you have these emotions, and asking God to help you to rid yourself of them. If you truly and sincerely mean it He will help you.
4. Don’t feel condemned, God is bountiful in grace. If you feel convicted of these emotions, approach God honestly and don’t feel condemned. Jesus didn’t come to condemn the world, therefore the Word is not to condemn, but to build each of us up in the most holy faith.
5. Be careful how you conduct yourself. If you know you’re struggling in this area, be very careful how you conduct yourself and try and spend more time with God to get your heart right. As we’ve seen jealousy and envy are very destructive emotions if left unchecked.
6. Be careful with whom you share yourself with. Not everyone will be happy that you have a crown. Each example shows it is the people closest to you that are more prone to have destructive emotions in response to the glory of God on your life.

Be very blessed.

If this blog post resonated with you, please do share the link with someone else! We all win when we are all whole and strive toward holiness.