Kimmer: El Kanna The Jealous Lord Who Loves us Passionately :)

Thursday, June 22, 2006

El Kanna The Jealous Lord Who Loves us Passionately :)

This was posted in conjunction with Sunny's post of 6/22, it had also been the topic of our lesson in Wed night church yesterday....These are notes from my Pastor's lesson that night:
El Kanna, the Lord whose Name is Jealous is used in Ex 34:10-14, Duet 4:23-24; and Duet 6:13-15. In our language ‘jealous’ usually has a negative connotation, but this reference to God is not the human emotion of selfish doubting envy, but rather refers to His devoted love for us, desiring our affection in return.

In a healthy love – God’s Love:
a. There is an exchange of love – in a healthy relationship there is an exchange of Love; both parties deserve to and hope to receive love from each other.
b. There is an equality of passion – both parties desire an equal level of passion from each other (for example, if a man says to his wife,’ I love you with all my heart’ and she says…’ yeah, I like you too honey’; that’s obviously going to hurt him) In a healthy relationship both parties desire to love each other with like levels of passion
c. There is an exclusiveness to the love relationship – not shared with anyone else. Just as with a married couple this is true, so also in our relationship with God. He should not have to compete with other things for our love.

In Jere 31:3 he says I have loved you with an everlasting love…. There is no end to His love for us :)
He loves us so wholeheartedly that He pursued us passionately before we even existed – before we gave Him the first glimmer of a thought!

He was lovingly pursuing us at Calvary when He paid for every sin we would commit.

The proper response is for us to love Him the same in return. If we set our affections and devotion on other things, we are taking what belongs to God and it hurts Him and ends up hurting our relationship with God. Other ‘gods’ can be anything else that become pre-eminent in your life, taking the center stage of your affection.

Duet 6:13-18 – when your love relationship with Him is right, there will be a blessing that will flow into your life from the Lord. It is good to examine your heart every now and then and ask yourself, how much do I love God?

Matt 22:37 Jesus tells us to love the Lord with all our heart, all our soul, and all our mind – with everything that you have. There are times we may come to the realization that our love has grown cold or our gaze has slipped but that is when we refocus and center our affection on Him. He has given us everything, and He’s asking if we will give everything back in return.

I posted a while back how I’d been sensing the Lord dealing with me over the last year to just not have the TV on so much…. And to spend more time with Him. Without meaning to, it is easy to let the TV just drain the evening away in no time flat with nothing really good on. I was being aware and disciplined some weeks, not paying attention forgetting on others. Then the Lord had my silly local small town cable company lose its contract with CBS & Fox…. Which is when I realized, huh, those are the two channels I watched the most…. Hmmmm….. I knew in my heart it was not a coincidence ;) Guess what, after a few months, I’m not hooked on tv anymore- hee. Had to learn it the hard way. Now we have the channels back but I’m no longer hooked. I’m with you Sunny, there are online Bible studies and other resources we have available that we can better spend our time on. I’ve been trying to focus on things of that nature too. And I’m with you Jess, it can be easy to let the internet whittle away an evening if you aren’t careful. I have been conscious of that too and again, trying lately to not let that take too much focus. This blogging and getting to know you ladies I think is a good thing…. in that I believe we are used to lift each other up in prayer and to help encourage each other along the way, to share what we are dealing with, and also share what we are learning in our walk with the Lord with each other. When we are sharing and even sometimes kidding, I have found it to be a surprising fellowship of believers, I never expected to find such a group of people online and I appreciate you blogettes!

A.W. Tozer said the great in the kingdom of God have been those who loved God more than others. They had a spiritual receptivity – an openness to heaven, a spiritual awareness which when cultivated, became the biggest thing in their lives.(quote very paraphrased from my notes)

This whole thing makes me think of Charlie Hall’s song on Everything Glorious called ‘Center’.
You’re the Center of the universe
Everything was made in You, Jesus
Breath of every living thing
Everyone was made for You
You hold everything together
You hold everything together

Oh, Christ, be the Center of our lives
Be the place we fix our eyes
Be the Center of our lives

We lift our eyes to heaven
We wrap our lives around Your life
We lift our eyes to heaven, to You

Turn your eyes upon Jesus
Look full in His wonderful face
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim
In the light of His glory and grace

Blessings :)

6 Comments:

At 6/28/2006 7:45 PM, Blogger Unknown said...

Hi Kimmer

GREAT post! Very true. God does desire us to Know Him and make Him known by reflecting Him. He desires us to spend time with Him, trusting Him, getting to know Him.

He desires us to walk holy with Him and wholly with Him, along His road - because obedience pleases Him, and because it is the best road (not to say it is a road of propserity or happy happy joy joy as it is the narrow road and a cross bearing road, a road of fire and flood but it is the way of holiness, and the way He has prepared and walks with us)

We need to lift our eyes and look with eyes that see eternity, not temporal earthly things eh.

I like what A W Tozer said... do u have it in full??? I would be interested in reading it....

Bless you, especailly in your times with the Lord

Claire

 
At 6/28/2006 9:37 PM, Blogger Kimmer said...

Thanks Claire,
so very good to hear from you! And thank you for your encouraging thoughts as well :)

How are things with the little ones? It is a very busy time at work lately which has kept me from keeping in touch as much as I'd like. Yes I like where you said we need to lift our eyes and look with eyes that see eternity, not temporal earthly things eh; so very true in the midst of the things that come our way during the day.
The Tozer quote I will try to find exactly for you, as what I posted was my notes and I think I missed part of it.......
Hope that you and all yours are well Claire,
Blessings all :)

 
At 6/29/2006 12:15 AM, Blogger Kimmer said...

Claire-
looks like from a search it is two quotes from Tozer:
"The great of the kingdom have been those who loved God more than others did."
"I venture to suggest that the one vital quality which they had in common was spiritual receptivity. Something in them was open to heaven, something which urged them Godward. Without attempting anything like a profound analysis I shall say simply that they had spiritual awareness and that they went on to cultivate it until it became the biggest thing in their lives. They differed from the average person in that when they felt the inward longing they did something about it. They acquired the lifelong habit of spiritual response. They were not disobedient to the heavenly vision. As David put it neatly, "When thou saidst, Seek ye my face; my heart said unto thee, Thy face, Lord, will I seek."

-- A.W. Tozer --

 
At 6/29/2006 9:18 PM, Blogger gail said...

Hi Kimmer that was such a great quote from Tozer.Thanks too for your notes on the El Kannah.They are very enlightening.

I love Charlie's song and am making it my heart's prayer!!!

You have a beautiful heart for God.
Love Blue

 
At 7/01/2006 8:28 AM, Blogger Masked Rabbit said...

Hi Kimmer,

Gail (Blue) put me onto your blog and in particular for this post.
It's all true but so hard to do.
Thanks for sharing.

 
At 7/01/2006 7:37 PM, Blogger A Captured Reflection said...

A wonderful post Kimmer. Put so well! I posted on jealousy yesterday, the human connotation but have found myself thinking of God being a jealous God - jealous for our affection, our time, so when I just read your posting I was blown away!

 

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