“For the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God.”

Deuteronomy 4:15-24, “So watch yourselves carefully, since you did not see any form on the day the LORD spoke to you at Horeb from the midst of the fire, 16 lest you act corruptly and make a graven image for yourselves in the form of any figure, the likeness of male or female, 17 the likeness of any animal that is on the earth, the likeness of any winged bird that flies in the sky, 18 the likeness of anything that creeps on the ground, the likeness of any fish that is in the water below the earth. 19 “And beware, lest you lift up your eyes to heaven and see the sun and the moon and the stars, all the host of heaven, and be drawn away and worship them and serve them, those which the LORD your God has allotted to all the peoples under the whole heaven. But the LORD has taken you and brought you out of the iron furnace, from Egypt, to be a people for His own possession, as today. Now the LORD was angry with me on your account, and swore that I should not cross the Jordan, and that I should not enter the good land which the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance. For I shall die in this land, I shall not cross the Jordan, but you shall cross and take possession of this good land. So watch yourselves, lest you forget the covenant of the LORD your God, which He made with you, and make for yourselves a graven image in the form of anything against which the LORD your God has commanded you. For the LORD your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God.”

Do we really see the Lord our God as a “consuming fire, a jealous God,” as jealous as a lover? A playwright once observed “God made man in His own image and man returned the favor.” There are few today laying hold of chisels to make a graven image as a substitute for the Lord God Almighty. Instead, we have more subtle ways; just look at our checkbook stubs and our use of the amazing gift of twenty-four hours we have every day. We find it much harder to do as Jesus did, to regularly come away to a lonely place to seek fellowship as Adam had, to walk with the Lord in the cool of the day. Our pastor has coined a wonderful phrase that we can use as our prayer, to find things that “stir our affections toward Jesus.”

Lord, open my eyes and lead me in Your paths of righteousness to those things that stir my affections toward You!