Jealousy’s antidote

Have you ever been jealousy of a person before?   How did you overcome the jealous? Or are you still battling with the emotions of Jealousy? In today’s study, we would look at a well known passage of scripture. Let’s turn the bible to Genesis 37

In this passage, we see the family of Jacob that they are now receding in Canaan land the land God promised to Abraham’s descendant.

Jacob had 12 sons. From our previous episode 094 and episode 095 we see that  Rachel has 2 sons for Jacob and their names were Joseph and Benjamin.

Jacob loved Joseph the most. He was his favourite child and this was evident to all his other children. 

Joseph and Benjamin were born to Jacob by the wife he loved, Rachel. The woman he worked 14 years for. 

Jacob made Joseph a coat of many colours and his brothers were envious of this.

Then again Joseph shared his dreams of becoming a leader and ruler and they were even more jealous of him.

What  is  Jealousy? – feeling or showing an envious resentment of someone or their achievements, possessions, or perceived advantages.

The emotion of jealousy that Joseph’s bothers did not deal with led them to  want to kill their own younger brother, it led them to put him in a dry well and then eventually sell him into slavery. It led them to lie to their father that their younger brother Joseph was dead.

I once shared this story with a  group  of children,  which brought the question of how we handle jealousy. This emotion is experienced even among  little children. One of the answers explored in the Sunday class was. Why didn’t  Joseph’s brother just ask for a special coat from their father as well?

So I began to explore all the actions Joseph’s brothers took and see if the opposite would be tools to handle the emotion of Jealousy.

When Jacob gave Joseph the coat, his brothers were jealous and kept it in their heart. They did not speak to their father about it.

Then Joseph had a dream and his brothers were jealous of his dreams. They taunted him but the emotions of jealousy were still evident. 

And as soon as they were opportune, they acted on those negative emotion of jealousy of resentment to do harm to their younger brother

In the 10 commandments it says Thou shall not covet your neighbour’s property. 

The first tool from this passage to handle the jealousy emotion is to speak to God about it.

Ps 84:11 For the Lord God is a sun and shield; The Lord will give grace and glory; No good thing will He withhold From those who walk uprightly.

Instead habouring the feeling of jealousy, speaking to God. We would never  know if Jacob would have given the other sons a coat like Joseph or if he won’t. Or maybe he would have given them a different thing entirely.

When we ask God for things we think we deserve because we see our neighbour has it, God gives us what we need. He assures of His love (Phillins 4:19)

And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.

2. We see Joseph’s brother began to plot against him. They wished and did evil to him. But the absence of Joseph in their lives did not increase their father’s affection towards them. So now they had in addition to jealousy the guilt of selling their brother.

Another tool on handling jealousy is to deal with the emotion promptly as if not dealt with it would lead to actions that are regrettable and that is a sin.

The 3rd tool to dealing with jealousy is to practice gratitude. Since jealousy focuses on what another person has, it breeds discontent. Focusing on what one has enlightens the heart and mind to the graciousness we have enjoyed from God.

We have a free resource on our website titled “Learning the Acts of Gratitude”  you can either go to the resource page on the damselwrites/simplymo.co.uk website to download your copy or click on the link in the show notes.

Learning the Acts of Gratitude

So if you or I ever feel jealous about something. Or a young person in your life exists jealous there are tools to tackle these emotions. 

Off loading our feelings to God in prayers

Tackle the feeling immediately

And Acts of gratitude..

I hope you have been blessed with this study.