The other day my elder daughter said that one of her classmates tried to find out errors even a Chinese character stroke from another classmate’s exam paper as the student got a score of 100 points on that social studies exam. “The student who attempted to  pick out errors did it out of jealousy, not out of  caution, because he scored 99 points on the exam,” said my daughter.

We are often green with envy as we see someone succeed and prosper, particularly if that person could replace or endanger my position? As we read 1 Samuel 18, David continued to succeed in everything he did and King Saul became jealous of him and even more afraid of him. King Saul was afraid of losing power and kingship, so he plotted to get rid of David. However, until Saul died David honored Saul and didn’t want to kill Saul even if he had many chances to do so. Another example happened to Jesus who was followed by a large crowd and they would like to crown him as king of Israel. The Jewish leaders and teachers of law were jealous of him and handed him over to the Roman government and to be crucified.

Jealousy can kill others as well as ourselves by stealing our joy and rob us of our peace of mind. The only way to kill jealousy is to ask God to forgive the sin of jealousy and praise God for the person we are jealous of.

jealousy can steal your joy, rob you of your peace and ultimately kill you.