I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy. —2 Corinthians 11:2
I do not make New Year’s resolutions as such, but every year the first thing I write in my diary, on January 1, will be something with reference to my prayer for the coming year.
When I was preparing to write the book Meekness and Majesty, these were my words: “A jealousy for God’s name.” Jealousy is the sin nobody talks about, and it is most certainly the sin to which nobody admits. Yet how it crops up!
Having a jealousy for God’s name, however, will change our perspective. If I revere the name of Jesus, I will prefer the honor of the one whose gift is exalted. What I will not do is to say, “I’ve got a gift that is better than his. I don’t know why they don’t use me.” If I honor His name, I will prefer the honor of the one whose gift is needed and whom God selects. God may select someone inferior to you, but if that is the way He chooses to honor His name, then you should honor it, because He must be doing it right; He has His reasons for it.
Maybe in your opinion that person does not deserve to be exalted, and maybe that is not whom you would have selected, but if that is what God has done, to show that you honor His name, you will make that subservient. You will make your name subservient to the honor of His name.
When we truly honor the name of Jesus, we will feel what God feels. We will hurt when He is hurt, and we will want only the honor of His name in the earth. We will say, “God, take me away, make me nothing, that Your name may be honored.”
When we have this, we will begin to restore the honor of Jesus’ name in the church and in the world.
Excerpted from Meekness and Majesty (Christian Focus Publications Ltd., 1992, 2000).
