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Don’t think it’s NOT in you, too!

Posted on 10.31.2012

Note: The following is a guest post by my longtime friend, Terrye Moore-Harper, MSN RN. She is an Associate Professor of Nursing at San Joaquin Delta College. Terrye has been married for 23 years to her husband, Corwin, and they have two daughters. I am blessed to have her share with you today. – Janice

One of the most wonderful gifts the Lord has given me is friendship.  I have one group of friends that I call “The Trio”.  For the sake of anonymity, I’ll call these friends Sarah and Lisa.

My devotion this morning was dead, dead, dead!  I kept reading thinking to myself, Lord, where are you?  Had God moved?  Where was He?  By now, He would have shown up—I would have been in His presence—and His peace would carried me through the rest of the day.

It was then, in my search for the Lord to speak, that His still small voice said – jealousy!  Who? Me?  Never!  No, I’m not!  Yes, I am.  And the Lord said, “there is no way you will see my face this morning with that spirit occupying the room of your heart that belongs to me.  It has to be dealt with and confessed. NOW!” So I did.  I cried and I confessed and I confessed and I cried.  That ugly spirit was not about to interfere with my fellowship with my Lord.

After my time with the Lord that morning, I got up healed!  I called Sarah and she told me that Lisa (who had just lost her mom to cancer) had FaceTimed her and shared an outfit that she had selected for her mother’s final farewell.  “WHAT!  What about me?  Why didn’t she call me, too.  I don’t want to hear anything else.”  Sarah was shocked!  I was angered!  The Lord was right!  It’s in me. The Lord was serious about me dealing with JEALOUSY.  And He knew that I didn’t believe (really) that it was in me.  But, it had to go – and NOW.  In case you didn’t know, jealousy is a spirit rooted in pride and it will poison and destroy you and every good work that the Lord gives your hands to do.  Many times, you are not able to see it until the Lord puts it right in front of you.

You see, anything that gets in the way of God’s fellowship with His people has to go!  I can’t imagine those dark days in scripture where “there was no word from the Lord!” I used to say, “silence from God means, He’s thinking or He’s dealing”.  I just can’t stand being in that place where I’m in His Word but it’s not in me.  It feels like the valley of dry bones.  No connection.  No stirring.  No life.  Just dead!

The Word declares in Proverbs 27:19 that “as in water face reflects face, so a man’s heart reveals the man.”  Ouch! That was the living Word, cutting me to the core!  Jesus said in Luke 11:35, “take heed that the light which is in you is not darkness.”  Ouch, again!  I had to think on that.  I would not want the good in me to be counted as darkness.  Paul says, in 1 Corinthians 10:12, “let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall.”  I’ve always been turned off from jealous-hearted people.  Where do I turn now?  Ephesians 5:11 commands that we must, “have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them!”  That’s what I’ve done today.  I’ve exposed my own fellowship with jealousy.  Ugh! It’s an old sin… the same one that resulted in Lucifer’s fall from heaven.

Don’t think it’s NOT in you, too!

Terrye A. Harper