I do not know about the rest of you, but I am sick of learning lessons the hard way! You know, when we are stubborn and think that we can do things our own way and get away with it..then it blows up in our faces. Maybe you have experienced this. Maybe it hasn’t happened to you yet! Personally, I wish I weren’t so stubborn that God has to teach and then re-teach me a lesson so that my heart actually receives the discipline. I guess I should be thanking him for his mercy and the gift of second chances.
Warning: Some of you men might find this a little too “heart” felt or mushy…you are sick of this love stuff…well, stop whining please and just keep reading. Jesus was the ultimate man…and He had no problem talking about love and demonstrating love…He showed us the ultimate sacrifice of one’s love for another by dying for us.
God is a jealous God. This does NOT mean he is jealous of you. Why would He be? He created you and He did not make a piece of junk. You are an intricately crafted piece of art created by the most creative artist ever (Read Pslam 139). It means He is jealous for you; for your affection, for your attention. He does not want you to worship or love anything above Him (Read 2 Corinthians). This is emptiness anyway. For me, this means that He loves me so much and wants to have a relationship with me so much that if anything stands in the way of His heart and my heart connecting, He is going to weed it out. He is going to go in there and dig that joker out of my heart (whatever that “joker” might be). Now, don’t get me wrong, God is a gentleman…even to you men reading this. He knocks and waits for us to open the door; He gives us a chance to rend our own hearts, but He definitely knows how to discipline us and teach us lessons, even if it means breaking us a little bit…or a lot, depending on how thick your skull is. Ha.
A few years ago I had to learn a lesson that was very painful…well it was probably a few lessons in one life experience, but the main one was learning that I do NOT have nor do I need control over my life. What a mess I would make it anyway. I only think I know what is best for me until God compares what I desire as best to His actual best…then what I wanted seems like smelly trash.
The second one was that the relationships I have with people cannot get in the way of the relationship I have with God, my first true love. I may get closer to some people than others and I may feel the compelled to lavish a little more “love” on some than I do others, but this is usually because God is teaching me or that other person a lesson. I have found that those that God has me pour into the hardest and the fastest are those that are not meant to be in my life but for a season. This hurts but it is so worth every minute, every tear, and every piece of myself that I give away. (I still hope for the few more in my life that get to stay a lifetime.)
I believe that God does NOT make mistakes and He knows the people that need to be put in my path. Sometimes, however, He has to rip people out of my path for me to learn, mature, and grow closer to Him.
You see-my heart in and of itself is a smelly, rotten, stained, shattered, decaying place that no one would ever want to enter. But with God, my heart is pure, holy, complete, and steadfast; the inside of who I am has been transformed from a darkened dungeon full of dreadful dragons into a beautifully lit palace. Now, don’t get me wrong here. I am not perfect yet, but when I allow God to clean out the wounds I allow Him to give me more space to love Him and to love others.
You still don’t get it?
Let me give you another visual that one of my professors gave me…if you have ever seen or been around burn victims you know that they must have their burns scraped and cleaned out often in order for healing to occur. Despite the pain that they are in, the doctor must scrape and dig out the rotting flesh in order for new skin to grow. Now I don’t know if you can imagine that but it hurts me to the core just thinking about it. While this is a painful process for the burn victim, the doctor knows that the pain he is causing right now can save that person’s body and help them to heal properly as time goes by.
Well, this is what God does, he scrapes out the crap (I know, this word is so lady like) that has managed to clog up your life and your heart, and it hurts like crazy. But He knows that if he can make you clean then you can heal and by healing, you live a more abundant life. I prayed often that I would love God more and that He would help me. Well, he heard that prayer when he ripped someone from my life that I had thought could fill a void in my heart. Now, I see that it took God removing that person from my life for me to understand His love for me and it makes me realize my need to cling to my Father in heaven first. It makes me sad at times that God would deem it necessary to do this in order for my stubborn heart to be cleaned out, but it also makes me aware that I never ever want to be so hard headed again that He has to do it twice.
So, recently I am learning that I have to fight to love God and I have to fight to love people with a pure, holy, and unselfish love. I have to fight against my flesh that tells me that other things can satisfy my spirit and heart. I have to fight against the enemy that says I can’t have overflowing relationships that are pleasing to God. I have to fight against my own desire to sabotage relationships prematurely because I fear God is going to take that person away or for fear of rejection…as my dad says, “let them feel the weight of who you are and then let them decide if they can handle it…”
At the end of the day I think of this. Love is a choice. It is a decision. Yes, there are emotions and goose bumps and butterflies; there are tears and laughter, but these things do not make up love, they only accompany certain stages of growing in love. So, at the end of the day I hope that I can say, at least majority of the time, that I loved deep, I loved hard, I loved without reservation or concern for myself, I loved unconditionally as Jesus did despite what others said about Him.
If you do not know what I am talking about try reading some of God’s Word. You’ll find the most splendid love story of all, just waiting to unfold before your eyes.
I John 3:19-24
This then is how we know that we belong to the truth, and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence whenever our hearts condemn us. For God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God and receive from him anything we ask, because we obey his commands and do what pleases him. And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us. Those who obey his commands live in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us.
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2 comments:
so good Jess. I could relate to the part about God asking us to pour love "hard and fast" into certain people that He has only brought to us for a season. And the part about fighting to love God and people and to say no to ourselves and to satan's voice. The Christian life isn't easy, but it is very alive...
Today in church the pastor talked about the importance of being obedient and showing love to people when we are given the opportunity. "Why should we say no?" he said. "Are we afraid of being rejected? We've already been accepted by Jesus Christ in every possible way there is to be accepted. There's no need to every feel rejected by others." Part of your post reminded me of what he said.
That is so funny that you would mention fear of rejection...I have been thinking a lot about this and have even written down many ideas as to why we act the way we do when God has called us to something higher. It is an interesting predicament..and a sad one when we are so consumed with ourselves that we neglect the needs of others.
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