With Valentine’s Day only a few days away, we couldn’t post today’s edition without dealing with some aspect of love. After all, I wouldn’t want to be written off as some kind of Love Scrooge or Valentine’s Day Grinch. But beyond that, spending some time focusing on love – as God designed it – never leaves our efforts to understand it better unrewarded. And the subject seems even more appropriate when we consider both the moral degradation permeating the popular culture these days and the perversions of love that underlie it. But in spite of the counterfeits and unrecognizable perversions of love that abound, it remains the most compelling, the most mysterious, and easily, the most popular basic theme for creative expression ever undertaken in the world.
An Unexpected Invitation ~
The decision to join the ranks of those commenting on the “subject of the day” was expected, but I kept running into another aspect of God’s love that I didn’t expect to engage – and one we don’t often think
about. That particular quality reminded me of a love-related invitation I got when I was a teenager. It’s one that I hadn’t seen as related to love before, and it’s one of those experiences we might not initially think of as actually having a love connection.
I had had some unusual invitations in my life at the time, but nothing quite like the one I received one evening when working at the local Texaco service station. It was a slow night, and I was sweeping up around the grease pit when two guys I’d never met came in. They just stood there for a minute silently frowning and glaring at me. With nothing to indicate what they wanted or why they were looking at me like that I said, “Can I help you?”
Introductions and Accusations ~
As they shuffled a little closer, one of them said, “You’re Ronnie, aren’t you?” In an attempt to lighten the mood a bit, I quipped, “Last time I checked, that’s what it still says on my driver’s license. Who wants to know?” One of them said, “I do.” Then he raised an eyebrow, and said, “My name is Matt,” as 
though that was supposed to be meaningful to me. Then, in a tone reflective of one of those belligerent TV wrestlers, the mysterious “Matt” growled out the aforementioned invitation. “I hear you been messin’ around with my girl while I was gone. Now me and my lug wrench are invitin’ you to step outside where we’re gonna show you what happens to guys who mess with my girl.”
While Matt was mentally drooling over the anticipation of rearranging my anatomy, and I was busy regretting the fact that my last meal on earth was going to be those two Twinkies I had just eaten, several guys who knew me drove up. They came over to where we were and apparently, their arrival diminished the urgency of the mission Matt and his lug wrench had undertaken. Anyway, he and his associate walked away promising to see me later. I never saw him or his lug wrench again and I’m glad for at least two reasons. The first is that all my body parts have continued to hang around in the places God originally designed them to be. The second is that an incident I never construed to be love related has now become an illustration of one of love’s facets that we often overlook – jealousy.
Things We Don’t Sing About ~
We delight to sing songs, read stories, and hear testimonies of how heartwarming, comforting, healing, and spiritually refreshing the love of God can be. Tears of joy often fill our eyes as we rejoice in the evidence of love’s incredible power to bless, restore, and preserve. But for the life of me I can’t recall a single ballad, worship chorus, or uplifting story about what a treasure it is to contemplate the fiery wrath
of God’s jealousy. That’s one of His attributes that none of us wants to see or experience on a personal level. But we do need to see how and why His love and His jealousy are related and what it means to us as we seek to represent Him and manifest His love to the world.
Keys to that understanding begin with a review of what God revealed about Himself and what He expects regarding His relationship with us. As God’s direct spokesman, Moses declared the following revelations and mandates beginning with this:
Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. (Deuteronomy 6:4–5 NKJV)
Later he elaborated further and added this:
“You shall have no other gods before Me. “You shall not make for yourself a carved image—any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God. (Exodus 20:2–5 NKJV)
The language in these revelations express, with incredible clarity, at least two foundational principles. The first is that there is no question that when it comes to God’s relationship with us, love is a foundational principle. It is the primary force underlying our covenant bond with Him and returning it is not optional.
A Required Component ~
Beyond that, God makes it clear that exclusivity is required. The command not to put other gods “before” Him eliminates any and all tolerance for competition. There are to be no alternative recipients of the love, adoration, and allegiance He claims for Himself. Nothing put in His place will ever be accepted or overlooked. Again and again throughout the history of His people, God made it clear that 
violating the exclusivity that His love expects is a serious matter. Staggering and painful repercussions have resulted and God intended them to be instructive and a warning to others who might consider following their example.
Reportedly, jewelers in France in the 1300s began stamping symbols in their creations that were used to to validate the authenticity of their work. Those images and symbols came to be called “hallmarks.” They were indelible imprints ensuring that the item was not a fake or forgery. Practicing the exclusivity that God’s love calls for is one of the greatest hallmarks of its authenticity and one of the most powerful means we have of preserving the blessings and benefits this His love bestows on individuals and cultures.
Whether we treat God’s love with the exclusivity that He expects either validates its authenticity or denies it. When we allow the allure of things like wealth, notoriety, unrestricted sexual liberty, or the promise of personal autonomy to lure us away from God, we obliterate one of love’s greatest hallmarks. To the degree that we fail to put God first as individuals, not only do we help to unleash a Pandora’s Box of evil, but we also contribute to inflaming His jealousy. Repeatedly, God watched His people reduce themselves to a nation of spiritual harlots, putting their love on the open market and selling themselves to the most opportune bidders. The end result was cataclysmic judgment.
As we consider the role of love this Valentine’s Day, may God help us to remember that the One who loves us beyond anything we can comprehend is also a jealous God. With His help, may we deny every force and eliminate every competitor that rises up to vie for His place in our life. May each of us display to the world around us that our devotion is not for sale . . . and our love can’t be bought with the trinkets the devil offers.
“TWEETABLES” ~ Click to tweet and share from the pull quotes below. Each one links directly back to this article through Twitter . . .
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- “I can’t recall a single ballad, worship chorus, or uplifting story about what a treasure it is to contemplate the fiery wrath of God’s jealousy. That’s one of His attributes that none of us wants to see or experience on a personal level.” @GallaghersPen (Click here to Tweet)
- “There is no question that when it comes to God’s relationship with us, love is a foundational principle. It is the primary force underlying our covenant bond with God – and returning it is not optional.” @GallaghersPen (Click here to Tweet)
- “The command not to put other gods “before” Him eliminates any and all tolerance for competition. There are to be no alternative recipients of the love, adoration, and allegiance He claims for Himself. Nothing put in God’s place will ever be accepted or overlooked.” @GallaghersPen (Click here to Tweet)
- “When we allow the allure of things like wealth, notoriety, unrestricted sexual liberty, or the promise of personal autonomy to lure us away from God, we obliterate exclusivity – one of love’s greatest hallmarks.” @GallaghersPen (Click here to Tweet)
- “God repeatedly watched His people reduce themselves to a nation of spiritual harlots, putting their love on the open market, selling themselves to the most opportune bidders. The end result – cataclysmic judgment.” @GallaghersPen (Click here to Tweet)
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© 2023 Gallagher’s Pen, Ronald L. Gallagher, Ed.S. All rights reserved.
Gallagher's Pen ~ 
We too often forget the jealousy aspect when it comes to God, yet that’s the natural reaction in us when the love connection we have with another person is threatened. God knows us only too well, using our natural inclinations to convict us and compel us to return to Him, our first love. This is so beautifully and thoughtfully written, Ron. Thanks so much for inspiring us with your words and images.
Happy Valentine’s Day!
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Happy Valentine’s Day to you, too, Martha, and thank you for the kind of love that always gets interwoven to the things you write and the encouraging comments you send out to those of us who love you back. I hope whatever special expressions you receive and send out this Valentine’s Day become messages from the One who loves like no other.
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Always enjoy how you have a way of taking us someplace that we never see coming. We’re just reading along and then, “Hey, how’d we get here!?” 🙂 I could not agree more that we do indeed serve a jealous God, and deservedly so I think. For all He has done for me, and all He has given me, He deserves my unshared, unparalleled, an unashamed love. We’ll get into that last one later.
Reading your post, I smiled and felt a warmth in my heart that only my most cherished memories bring. This early morning, it was one of a sunny afternoon at, interestingly enough, my dad’s Texaco station. At 6’2″, 185lbs. of solid muscle and a gap-toothed smile, Stewart Adams (my adopted dad) was a meek, gentle, warm, giving, and dangerous man. We didn’t see it often, but when attempted auto repairs went south, or other frustrations in life I couldn’t understand as a young teen set in, I knew to “hit the decks” the second my “Dad Volcano” erupted. It started with a loud exclamation of a colorful language he seldom used. Next came his can of Mountain Dew, or wrench, or hammer, or whatever else he happened to be holding. My dad was a “thrower” and if he ever got angry or frustrated enough to start cursing and throwing things, you knew to give him a wide berth and keep your head down for a while. Anyway, back to the subject at hand and what my dad has to do with it. 🙂
Stewart Adams was known around town as a fair, gentle, and giving man. He would go out of his way to help someone, and often did. When he died, he still had his “cry-box” of unpaid bills for auto repairs, gasoline, tires, and other things (even loaned cash) that he had extended to customers through the years. Yet, as evidenced by the comments and remembrances of him at his “Homegoing Celebration”, he was by far, the richest man in our little southern town.
The memory that you invoked this morning was what he told folks now and again about his wife, our mom. To us kids, it was, “Whatever I have is yours. However I can help I will. I will love you always, but remember this, you can have everything I have but one thing, Mom. You will not disrespect, dishonor, or harm her. The moment you do, you’re mine.” My dad carried out that warning in his life and he held all us children to that as well. Maybe that’s why he threw wrenches now and again. In all the years he and mom were together, I never once heard him utter a harsh word or argue. He would always take it elsewhere. To others, it was a less stern but every bit as effective warning, “You can have everything I have but one thing, you can’t have my bride.” “My bride” I’ve always loved how dad said those words and how mama would shine just a bit more when she heard them. The love these two shared was what I had always dreamed of. It wasn’t a mere physical manifestation of admiration, it was a total and complete dedication of one to the other. Something I had never seen before, but came to admire (and desire) in my own life.
This takes me back to two of your points. One is that everything that this world says is love (especially these days) are fakes, replicas, and cheap imitations. Satan is a master copycat, but like anything, it can never be genuine and real. God’s love is the standard, the original and real love, by which all others must be measured. And like the love my parents had for one another, all others fall short. The second is that as much as mom and dad loved their children, that love was only a product of their genuine and original love, and nothing or no one could ever interrupt or change that. It was in thinking of that memory many years ago that I’ve come to understand what it means to be a “bride of Christ”. It is to be in a love relationship that trumps all others, overrides all others, and is stronger than all others. It is from that original source of love He has shared with us that we should extend it to others.
Was my dad jealous? I can’t say that I ever saw that side of him with others, at least not in the way the world wants to define it. You know, Matt’s way. 🙂 If a willingness to give all but that one thing is jealousy, I stand before you, guilty as charged. Thank you for a wonderful start to my day. I sense that we two old “pump-jockeys” share an outcropping of God’s love for us with our respective Diane’s. And I suspect that they both make us the luckiest guys alive.
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Diane is sitting over there smiling and saying, “OK, that’s another J.D. response we ought to post” Meanwhile, I’m sitting here re-living the feeling I used to get when my grandma would unexpectedly bring out some dessert that she’d made and kept hidden. That surprise always made an otherwise ordinary day suddenly feel very special. The guided tours you give through some of the experiences you’ve had and the introductions to the people God used to mold and shape you never fail to make ordinary days feel special. We love seeing how God used them to equip you for the various missions He’s sent you on.
It’s also heartwarming to see the place that your sweet Diane holds in your heart, and the response you’d have if she was threatened is one I share with you. If somebody presented a threat to the second greatest love of my life, my non-violent tendencies would be gone in a flash. But it seems as though direct attacks are not generally the enemy’s starting strategy. The blatant onslaughts against Christianity we’re seeing these days have been prefaced by generations of subtle deceit and seduction. The devil has been slipping in his substitutes a little at a time along with the lie that little excursions into the forbidden territory here and there don’t really hurt anybody. What a pernicious piece of deception. Sin always hurts somebody, and the greatest hurt is always felt by the One who loves us most. And we’re so prone to forget or ignore the impact of that hurt on the heart of God, which leads to the whole jealousy issue and the kinds of judgment that God has proven again and again that He will send if the spiritual harlotry continues.
But once again we thank God there are guys like you who keep demonstrating that indelible hallmark of the love by which all other loves are measured. God bless you for the spiritual and emotional boost you brought to us this morning. And also for the good news about your Diane that you shared in this week’s post. It gives us hope that it won’t be too much longer till she might feel up to sharing a meal with us. We look forward to cranking up a road trip to Texas whenever that day comes.
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