how He loves

How He Loves

By John Mark McMillan

He is jealous for me

Love's like a hurricane, I am a tree

Bending beneath the weight of his wind and mercy.

When all of a sudden,

I am unaware of these afflictions eclipsed by glory,

And I realize just how beautiful You are,

And how great Your affections are for me.

Oh, how he loves us so

Oh, how he loves us,

How he loves us so.

Yeah he loves us, oh how he loves us

Oh, how he loves us

Oh how he loves

So he is our portion and we are his prize

Drawn to redemption by the grace in his eyes,

If grace is an ocean we're all sinking.

So heaven meets earth like a sloppy wet kiss,

And my heart turns violently inside of my chest.

I don't have time to maintain these regrets when I think about the way...

Yeah he loves us, oh how he loves us

Oh, how he loves us

Oh how he loves

i'm not going to go into a lot of detail on this one, because the words are so powerful i think we all just need to spend some time sitting on them, meditating over them, and letting Jesus move our hearts through them. however, there are a few things i definitely want to cover.

i think the most important thing for us to identify here is the wording in the very first line, which states "He is jealous FOR me." i want to be very clear here that there is a MAJOR difference in God being jealous FOR us versus His being jealous OF us. sadly, it was a confusion of this difference that was the first domino in a string of experiences that led our dear friend oprah to ultimately deny Christ. (if you are interested in hearing oprah talk about this, go here. you can watch the whole clip, but the part about God's jealousy starts at 2 minutes, 50 seconds). God is NOT jealous OF us. God's supreme purpose in the world is to bring glory to himself - there is nothing about us that would make Him jealous. He is holy, and we are filthy...God is most definitely NOT jealous OF us. but praise God that He is jealous FOR us! God loves us SO MUCH that He passionately pursues us. He is jealous FOR our love, allegiance, obedience, faithfulness, worship, praise...the list could go on and on! Jesus is so jealous FOR us that He took on our sin so that we could be in relationship with Him! He is so jealous FOR us that He bought us with His very life! He is so jealous FOR our praise that He commands our worship, and He commands that we lay down our lives for Him as He laid down His life for us.

after the first line, the rest of the song just gives us amazingly vivid pictures of the intensity of His passionate love toward us. can't you just see His love as a hurricane, blowing at you so violently that you bend and sway and feel like you might break? that's the intensity of His love! and the thought of grace being such a deep, vast ocean that we are all sinking? and the image of heaven meeting earth like a sloppy wet kiss, a kiss so passionate that your heart beats violently inside your chest...

HE LOVES US, OH HOW HE LOVES US!!! Praise Jesus that He is jealous FOR me!