Myself and doubtless other foolish Christians have probably wondered time and time again, throughout history, "Will I ever find someone I love as much as her/him?"
Short answer is it doesn't matter. That's heartless and doubtless makes everyone want to leave, but it's O.K. The door's somewhere between Ctrl and W.
Anyway, let's get down to it. So what I mean is this; if you love God, it'll ALWAYS be O.K. Got it? God loves you. Jesus loves you. The Holy Spirit actively, really, functionally helps you through life.
This isn't just about how things are going to be okay or anything like that, though. It's also about how, because God constantly, completely, unreservedly loves you, you can be confident that, as his love grows in you, you will be forced by the grace and love and his forgiveness of your sins to show that love forth.
And you know what, it'll be glorious. Amazing. Spectacular. Unimaginable.
Often, I find myself wondering if God's love could be sufficient, as, after all, falling in love with a girl is really, really amazing. Right up until she says no and over the course of the next six months you're forced to accept that you're still on your own...with the God of the universe.
I've also taken some comfort knowing that she'll be there praising God for eternity. It's like, hey, girl, I'd really like to go out with you, but if not, that's okay.
I'm gonna spend eternity with you praising God. Now works. Tomorrow works. Next year works. But if all I see of you is you glorifying God 'til and then past the end of time, so be it.
But back to my point. God loves you, and because of that, you love people more. Right now is never as good a time to fall in love as tomorrow when you've got God unreservedly loving you for the rest of time, and then throughout eternity. Tomorrow is okay. I will know more fully God's love, and my love because of that knowledge will be greater for whoever I find then.
He loves you today, and he'll continue loving you tomorrow. He'll love you 'til the day you die.
It took plenty of grace and love to realize this, but it WILL be okay if I fall in love/get married in my late twenties. In my thirties. In my forties. In my fifties. In my sixties. In my seventies. In my eighties. In my nineties. In my hundreds. I guess I can settle for that many years.
Trust God. He's busy living out the greatest love story ever written, and you're worried that tomorrow you'll not have a date. He's so in love with you that he wants to spend eternity with you; how could you imagine that, if a relationship was actually good for you, he would keep true love from you?
I hope that made sense; these sorts of things I primarily write out for my own sake, but if this helps you, eat up.
!Noah!
September 10, 2014
September 05, 2014
To God:
I am tired. Exhausted. My energy is expended, my heart hopes and dreams, yet beats without rhythm. For God's glory would I toil, but instead my heart is divided, and indecisive, hoping for lesser wonders, for smaller glories.
I don't really know what to say. I'm so, so fatigued, weary, and broken. I could claim that my work situation provided sufficient work and stress to cause my current distress, but that would be half the truth, at best. I am beset with desire, I am continually diverted by longing, and my heart is in no way purposed or directed for anything. I am a lost sheep with muddied fleece and confounded mind. I am lost and confused, I am fickle and in mere breezes do my blades sway and rock. I turn one way and another, only to find further confusion and longing.
To say this, does it make me weak?
I think not; the condition of a Christian is one of weakness, one of being continually lost and repeatedly found again. It is one of constant improvement, but it is also one of a great abyss, whose depths are unexplored and unknown by us, which houses the greatest of rottenness and the foulest of diseases. Our lives consist of continually falling through said chasms, seeing further and further evidence of the darkness inside our own hearts...
...but simultaneously we fly upward through the darkness toward unimaginable light. We careen like the foolish lemmings we so often are toward such beauty, majesty and glory that our condition can be none but that of immense and spectacularly serendipitous and fortuitous condescension. We are hunted by the knight of light, the desire of our wayward hearts, though we know him not, and run, terrified like deer of the hunter.
Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts!
In this terrible, wonderful journey I find myself. When in my flight from God I remember him, my tears come and of two minds, two hearts, divided by the waves of the sea and the gusts of the air...
I am split.
Lord, find me near your heart, and saturate, fill, drown my heart in your love. All else is secondary, tertiary, even nil. Renew my heart and mind, and send it as you will, without hesitation or division. Let it be your vessel and your vehicle, a great red flying, swimming ice cream truck of love, following the fault lines of your heart tirelessly to the end of time, through the rivers of truth and beauty, glorious for the destination it will one day find. Spare no expense to love me to my knees, to grace my feet to the velocity of your desire, to forgive me with less hesitation than I so continually turn away from you...
In all things, Lord, let my life dance to the rhythm of your heartbeat, my feet run barefoot on the footpaths of your love, my heart and head hand in hand fight the lies, desires, and folly that keep me from you.
In this unending ocean let me bathe forever in your love, and swim, continually exhausted and driven by the power and magnitude of your grace, bombarded without end by the typhoon of your mercy.
And for goodness' sake forgive me for my foolish pride in the words you give me to speak back to you. They are yours and they are yours. I but speak the love that you have caused me to tread in for all these years.
One day I will write you an unending love song. One day I will sing to you in fullness, and in your spectacular radiance and the perfection bought with such unknowably precious blood, my voice will falter not for a thousand and one years.
xoxo
!Noah!
I don't really know what to say. I'm so, so fatigued, weary, and broken. I could claim that my work situation provided sufficient work and stress to cause my current distress, but that would be half the truth, at best. I am beset with desire, I am continually diverted by longing, and my heart is in no way purposed or directed for anything. I am a lost sheep with muddied fleece and confounded mind. I am lost and confused, I am fickle and in mere breezes do my blades sway and rock. I turn one way and another, only to find further confusion and longing.
To say this, does it make me weak?
I think not; the condition of a Christian is one of weakness, one of being continually lost and repeatedly found again. It is one of constant improvement, but it is also one of a great abyss, whose depths are unexplored and unknown by us, which houses the greatest of rottenness and the foulest of diseases. Our lives consist of continually falling through said chasms, seeing further and further evidence of the darkness inside our own hearts...
...but simultaneously we fly upward through the darkness toward unimaginable light. We careen like the foolish lemmings we so often are toward such beauty, majesty and glory that our condition can be none but that of immense and spectacularly serendipitous and fortuitous condescension. We are hunted by the knight of light, the desire of our wayward hearts, though we know him not, and run, terrified like deer of the hunter.
Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts!
In this terrible, wonderful journey I find myself. When in my flight from God I remember him, my tears come and of two minds, two hearts, divided by the waves of the sea and the gusts of the air...
I am split.
Lord, find me near your heart, and saturate, fill, drown my heart in your love. All else is secondary, tertiary, even nil. Renew my heart and mind, and send it as you will, without hesitation or division. Let it be your vessel and your vehicle, a great red flying, swimming ice cream truck of love, following the fault lines of your heart tirelessly to the end of time, through the rivers of truth and beauty, glorious for the destination it will one day find. Spare no expense to love me to my knees, to grace my feet to the velocity of your desire, to forgive me with less hesitation than I so continually turn away from you...
In all things, Lord, let my life dance to the rhythm of your heartbeat, my feet run barefoot on the footpaths of your love, my heart and head hand in hand fight the lies, desires, and folly that keep me from you.
In this unending ocean let me bathe forever in your love, and swim, continually exhausted and driven by the power and magnitude of your grace, bombarded without end by the typhoon of your mercy.
And for goodness' sake forgive me for my foolish pride in the words you give me to speak back to you. They are yours and they are yours. I but speak the love that you have caused me to tread in for all these years.
One day I will write you an unending love song. One day I will sing to you in fullness, and in your spectacular radiance and the perfection bought with such unknowably precious blood, my voice will falter not for a thousand and one years.
xoxo
!Noah!
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