Perceptions from the Peninsula ~ 1 The ‘Qanna’ of God 
For the Lord your God, who is among you, is a jealous God (Deut. 6:15).
Do not worship any other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God. (Exod. 34:14)

When John Madan came to visit me shortly after I had moved to a top-floor flat in Chester in 1981, he was puzzled as to why the Lord appeared to have withdrawn me from a highly active ministry in order to lead the life of a semi hermit, writing books and interceding for the nations. As we prayed together, the Lord spoke clearly to John that He was jealous for us to be spending more time together. 

This idea of the Lord being jealous is worth unpacking in today’s laid-back anything-goes attitudes, but which is so heavily affected by all manner of wrong jealousies. Let’s start with the wrong sort before going on to examine the right kind. Scripture warns most urgently that jealousy can be the greatest negative force of all. (Pvbs. 27:4) 

C Davis defines jealousy aptly in Marshall Pickering’s ‘Evangelical Dictionary of Theology’, as being something that 

‘distracts a person from his own genius and productivity, and that ultimately destroys him. Jealousy distorts one’s entire perspective oft her world, producing an enormous amount of tension and conflict. The jealous person is always an angry person who is filled with self-pity. For the jealous person both his past and his future seem empty, and the desire to cut other people down to his own size becomes intense. The jealous person responds defensively and is easily irritates. He develops hypersensitivity towards everyone and easily interprets both the deeds and conversations of others in the most negative light possible. Jealousy sets a person at cross-purposes to everyone, robbing him of any feeling of belonging to the world. It has been found that jealousy is basic to all character disorders. Nothing can liberate the envious person until he sees that he is the source of his own painful situation.’ (p. 577)

Exodus 24: 5, 34:14, Deuteronomy 4:24, 6:15 and 32:16 and Joshua 24:19 make good starting points for considering how it is that the Lord is a jealous God. Ponder too the implications of Hezekiah’s bold statement in 2 Kings 19:4. God is jealous for His own name and will intervene on behalf of people whose hearts are right toward Him and hungry for Him. (Joel 2:12-17 offers a similar encouragement). 

This type of godly jealousy in no way implies that God is in the least bit suspicious, mistrustful or envious of the success of others. It simply means that He demands exclusive devotion from those who love and serve Him, just as He passionately hates and opposes everything that competes with the affections of His people God wants us to be passionate for Him: to love the things He loves, and that He is working to bring about. 
He even uses the things we get wrong to develop a more focused godly zeal in us. (2 Cor. 7:11) 

The Hebrew word ‘qanna’ means ‘to become dark red’ – a heightened colour that comes as the result of intense emotions that lead to extreme zeal when handled positively, and to intense envy when handled wrongly. May we experience more and more of the Lord’s qanna – and less and less of those destructive emotions we normally associate with jealousy. 

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