It's been just a little over 10 years since Oprah Winfrey revealed publicly why she walked away from Orthodox Christianity.

Orthodox simply means standard doctrine which was what the vast majority of Protestant churches believe. The reason she walked away from her faith in her late 20s was because she heard a sermon on Deuteronomy, I believe it's verse 24 of Chapter 4. It says, "For the Lord, your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God." After hearing that, it really bothered Oprah. Especially as her career started to gain steam and she started to become more and more famous with more and more wealth. It always bothered her that God was jealous of her. She didn't understand how that could be.

Well, God is not jealous of her. And I think it's really important every now and then that we kind of pause on some of the verses in the Bible that might sound a little confusing to us at first glance. God is not jealous of us and and I find the notion of a jealous God who describes himself as a consuming fire to actually be very comforting because think about it. God is the host of the angel armies. He's the Alpha and the Omega. He's the beginning and the end. In fact, Psalm 50 tells us that he owns the cattle on 1000 hills and Psalm 147:4 tells us that he names and numbers the stars.

So what in the world do you and I have that God has not given us? The answer to that is nothing. So then we have to ask ourselves, then what is this jealousy? God's not jealous of us. God is jealous for us, and that changes everything. His love for you is so great, that anything that would cause you to stray from him and put your trust in something that can only fail you. That infuriates him, that's why he's a consuming fire. And it's that white hot love that sent His Son to the cross to finally and fully consume sin and death. So God is not jealous of you. He is very jealous for you.