HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, September 16, 2024 – I’ve spent the past 25 years worshiping God. That is, I’ve been born-again for 25 years. But of those 25 years, can I honestly claim that all of them were spent in worship of God?

What about you? Since your rebirth, how many years have you spent worshiping God and God only?

This can be a thorny issue for us born-again believers. We serve a self-proclaimed “jealous” God who wants us to know he’s jealous. He doesn’t hide his jealousy, and he doesn’t consider it to be a bad thing. If he did, he wouldn’t have made loving him with everything we have and everything we are – no compromises, no excuses, and no holding back – his first and foremost Commandment.

But do any of us actually do that?

(Is it even possible to do that?)

Jesus, particularly during his ministry years, likely came the closest to worshiping God the way God invites us to worship him. Because it’s an invitation as much as it’s a Command, to worship God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. It’s not an imposition. It’s not an obligation. It’s not something you have to drag yourself out of bed at 4 a.m. to do, certainly not if you’re genuinely born-again. It’s an invitation to enter into a far better way of being that will benefit you now and into eternity.

I was reminded about God’s jealousy today by none other than God himself. I’m glad he reminded me, because I have a tendency to get, well… diverted. I’m being too kind to myself here, but I think you get my drift.  Sometimes the “cares of this world” can become very alluring and very distracting, and in fact they were made to be so, only not for us. We need to be reminded (read: warned) every now and then that the issues constantly absorbing unbelievers, such as family, relationships, career, finances, health, education, politics, etc., are not our issues, not our concerns. We should be aware of what’s going on around us and what’s generally going on in the world, but we shouldn’t be involved in any of it. Aware, but not involved.

The world is not our concern. It’s the devil’s concern. And God has the devil in an iron grip – so, not our concern.

Jesus is our best example of how to keep God from getting jealous. When he started his ministry, Jesus walked away from everything that had previously defined him. He even (and Catholics don’t like to hear this) shunned his birth family – including his mother – in favour of those who do God’s will. He wouldn’t let anyone or anything come between him and his worship of God. This made him a lot of enemies, especially among the people of Nazareth, but that didn’t matter to Jesus. He didn’t compromise his worship of God so that he wouldn’t offend people he knew, and neither should we.

What this means is that if you haven’t by this point accumulated a sizeable number of enemies, bans, blacklistings, etc., among unbelievers, then you’re focusing too much on the cares of this world and not enough on God. If unbelievers don’t cross the street when they see you coming, you’re not doing your job. If unbelievers genuinely want to spend time with you, you’re not doing your job. And no, your job isn’t to bang them over the head with God but to put God first in everything you do, which by definition is going to mean you’ll be at cross-purposes with everyone who doesn’t put God first. I sure as heck didn’t want to be around believers when I was an atheist, and neither should unbelievers want to be around us.

You can’t worship God while at the same time appease those who hate God. These things can’t be. You also can’t care about the cares of this world. Appeasing unbelievers and getting lured into debates over finances or politics is going to get God jealous, and you don’t want him jealous. We have precious little time here as it is, so we need to spend every second of it razor-focused on God and on doing his will.

Considering the above, can any of us honestly say that we’ve spent all the years since our rebirth fully worshiping God?

Probably not. But for whatever time we have left, we can do better.