Jealousy can eat away at your soul.

Why are people jealous? What is the root of jealousy?

We all have expectations. We have a vision of what our life should look like, how much money we deserve, the kind of home we should live in, the happiness we are entitled to and so on.

When we don’t get what we think we deserve that is bad enough but when we see someone else’s success, forget it! It is the greatest insult. Why should he get all the breaks? Why does everything seem to work out for her?

Instead of rejoicing in another’s success, we become jealous and envious.

It doesn’t stop there. Jealousy can cause you to act completely irrationally. Sadly, people will even act against their own best interests in order to hurt the person they are jealous of! Hence the expression, “Cut off your nose to spite your face.”

Jealousy is a lack of faith in God. How so?

When you are jealous it means that you believe God is making a mistake in how He is running the world. You don’t have faith that God knows what He is doing. You have faith in your thoughts and are convinced that you know better.

In the ancient world water was one of the most important commodities. Villages were built where water was accessible as they did not have the technology to move water from its source like we do today.

Yet the Philistines stopped up the wells that Abraham had dug! Why would they do that? They need water to survive! It is suicide!

The Bible tells us why. They were jealous of Abraham’s success. They would rather die of thirst than see Abraham succeed. This is what jealousy can do. Isaac is forced to re-dig those wells.

We should all do our best to focus on what we have, our own blessings and rejoice in other people’s success. It will bring us great joy.