Oprah Winfrey: "Jealous God."

“I took God out of the box because I grew up in the Baptist church and their rules, and belief systems and doctrine. I happened to be sitting in church in my late twenties. I was going to a church where you had to get there at 8 o’clock in the morning or you couldn’t get a seat … a very charismatic minister where everybody is into the sermon. This great minister was preaching on how great God was and how omniscient and omnipresent and God is everything and then he said, ‘the Lord thy God is a jealous God.’ I was caught up in the rapture of that moment until he said ‘jealous,’ and something struck me. I was like 27 or 28 and I’m thinking, ‘God is all. God is omnipresent. And God is also jealous?’ God is jealous of me? And something about that didn’t feel right in my spirit… and that is where the search for something more than doctrine started to stir within me.” This is a quote from Oprah Winfrey from a few years back. It is sad to hear her turn her back on the Lord because of a misunderstanding of scripture. I wish I could ask her if she asked the minister to explain what a jealous God means. Honestly, it just sounds like an excuse to leave the Baptist church more than anything else. But what does it mean to say God is a jealous God? Does God really envy something that Oprah and others have that He cannot get for Himself? “You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. Or do you think Scripture says without reason that he jealously longs for the spirit he has caused to dwell in us? But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says: “God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble (James 4:4-6).”” 

 What Oprah doesn’t realize is that God isn’t jealous of her as if He wants something she has. God is jealous because He wants her and like all lost people, they would rather try to fill the void left by the absence of the life of God indwelling them with everything the world has to offer. Oprah has, in effect, said to God, “I don’t want You. I want all that the world offers from fame and fortune to New Age false religion.” And because she has so much of what the world has to offer, it probably gives her justification for what she believes. After all, in her mind, God must be pleased with her because of the fame, fortune and influence she has amassed. This is not too much different than what many Christians believe and probably why so many so-called Christians fall for her deceptive beliefs. The pride that comes from worldly success can lead to a person not believing they need to be saved by coming to faith in Jesus. But, God’s indwelling spirit is His life and He wants us to learn to trust in and depend on Him because He created us so that we cannot properly function apart from Him. That is why it says, “His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness (2 Peter 1:3).” God is jealous when we are seeking everything we need apart from Him. He created us to be indwelt by Him, so that in Him, we have everything we need that the world cannot supply.