Jealousy is pure evil! It tends to open the door to demonic spirits in our life like no other sin. Jealousy inspired Cain to kill Abel, Joseph’s brothers to sell him into slavery and King Saul to want to destroy David, his greatest and most loyal soldier. Like the women who lined the streets and sang, “Saul has killed his thousands, and David his ten thousands,” in 1 Samuel 18:7 (NLT), jealousy is often inspired by someone getting more attention or being more popular than we are. Saul’s jealousy opened the door to the spirit of insanity and murder in his life (see 1 Samuel 18). It transformed a once humble farm boy into a mass murderer!

The Apostle James wrote; “So wherever jealousy and selfishness are uncovered, you will also find many troubles and every kind of meanness” (James 3:16 TPT). I have struggled with jealousy most of my life but sometimes failed to recognize it for what it was because jealousy wears many masks. Sometimes it calls itself discernment as it searches the heart of its victim looking for reasons to discredit them. But the gift of discernment, anointed by the spirit of jealousy, is suspicion. Suspicion is discernment’s wicked stepsister. This is a twisted version of discernment and if this is how you usually operate in your gift perhaps today is your invitation into transformation. When you allow your gift to be anointed by the Holy Spirit instead of the spirit of jealousy, you’ll start discerning the favor on the lives of the people around you!

Jealousy Has No Friends!

Although jealousy has many faces, it has no friends! Partnering with jealousy will lead you down a lonely path of disconnection, disappointment and dejection. When you allow jealousy to dictate your actions, you’ll find yourself liking a person one day and viewing them as a threat the next. As long as you feel more popular, more talented or more powerful than them, you promote them, but the second that person’s notoriety, favor, talent or power surpasses your own, the war begins.

Jealousy leads us to try and reduce others, highlight their weakness, build structures to control them, develop a case against them, and/or incite a crowd to persecute them. Jealousy can build a beautiful palace, but a destroyer is lurking in the basement just waiting for the opportunity to mastermind some ploy to bring down its victims.

4 Steps to Overcome Jealousy

So what do we do? Here are four steps to overcome jealousy:

1. Face the problem. First, we must admit that we are jealous and stop justifying our sin! If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck and walks like a duck, it’s a duck. Telling people how much we love or admire the person we resent is not genuine and is masking our sin, which allows it to grow into a monster in our lives.
2. Invest in the person you’re jealous of. Then their victory will be your victory. War against the spirit of jealousy.
3. Refuse to embrace it! Don’t give your mind permission to compare yourself with others. Instead, cultivate a truly thankful heart for them.
4. Remember who you are and who you belong to. We can’t forget that our Father has plenty of love, provision, fame, and so forth for all of his children. When someone gets what we long for, there is still plenty left over for us. One person’s promotion is not another person’s demotion. But if we can’t celebrate the victories of others, the Lord will not let us have our own. On the other hand, if we humble OURSELVES he will exalt us in the PROPER time!

Honor Brings Blessing

When we realize that honor brings an open door to inheritance, it’s easy to posture our hearts to receive from those who have gifts we long for, rather than persecuting them. Overcoming jealousy is not about competition. It’s not about proving yourself. Rather, it’s about aligning yourself with the season God has you in so that you can receive everything you need to grow, mature and prosper. Posture your heart in thankfulness for those who are being promoted around you and you will experience a chain reaction of blessing in your own life.

Originally posted on 07/25/2019 on krisvallotton.com, this version adopts The Passion Translation for some verse references.