“God is jealous” (Nahum 1:2)

If you’re saved, your Lord is very jealous of your love. Didn’t He choose you? He can’t bear that you would choose another. Didn’t He buy you with His own blood? He can’t endure that you would think that you don’t belong to Him, or that you belong to this world. He loved you so much he wouldn’t go to Heaven without you; He would sooner die than to let you perish, and He can’t endure that anything stand between you and His love. He’s very jealous of your trust. He won’t permit you to trust in your own strength. He can’t bear to see you dig broken cisterns, when His overflowing fountain is always there for you.

When we lean upon Him, He’s glad, but when we transfer our dependence to another, when we rely upon our own wisdom, or the wisdom of a friend - worst of all, when we trust in any works of our own, He’s displeased, and will chasten us to bring us to Himself.

He’s also very jealous of our company. There shouldn’t be anyone we talk to as much as with Jesus. To abide in Him only, this is true love; but to commune with the world, to find solace in carnal comforts, to prefer even the company of our fellow Christians to secret communion with Him, this is grievous to our jealous Lord.

He wants us to abide in Him, and enjoy constant fellowship with Himself; and many of the trials which he sends us, are for the purpose of weaning our hearts from creature comforts, and fixing them more closely on Himself.

Let this jealousy which keeps us intimate with Christ be a comfort to us, for if He loves us so much to care this much about our love, we can be sure He won’t allow anything to harm us, and will protect us from all our enemies. Oh, pray for grace this day to keep your heart in sacred chastity for our Beloved alone, with sacred jealousy shutting our eyes to all the fascinations of the world!