Originally posted September 24, 2007
Sunday was an incredibly revealing day for me. God has been rocking my world for the past two weeks and reconfirming so many things to me. I made the decision a long time ago that I didn't want to love God like everyone else does. I want to fall totally 100% in love with Him. I figure that I can't love other people the way that God created me to if I don't understand how to love God how He created me to love Him. It has been my prayer for a while for God to show me how to do this. Unfortunately there is not a prescribe method. No one wrote a book called Dummy's guide to loving God. I think that it HAS to be an individually based path for everyone because we all are unique and we all come with our own baggage. God has been showing me that to fully love Him I have to fully trust Him. I would love to be able to say that I fully trust God with everything. I mean I trust Him with my salvation but at times I find myself not trusting Him with smaller things than my salvation. God has really been using events from my past to show me His faithfulness and how easily I trusted Him, like moving out to SC as a prime example. God's way to get to me a lot of the time is to ask me questions. These questions initially make me feel cool, until He finishes and I realize the answer. Jesus did this a lot in scripture. He rarely ever answered questions with an answer, but rather with another question. Usually it boils down to me realizing that I'm not trusting God with the situation. So...once I realize that I fix it...immediately. I remember it was in August and I was sitting in a service at NewSpring and I had been battling for months about transferring to NewSpring and becoming a member and leaving the church I had been at. There was only 1 thing holding me back. Sound. Music is one of my great passions. It's an awesome way for me to communicate with God when I can't find words myself. I always have atleast one song playing in my head..if not multiple ones. I walked away from music once. It was the worst 5 years of my life. I never wanted to do it again. God put some pretty big dreams on my heart about sound. Now it seemed as though He wanted me to potentially walk away from it? That made no sense to me. I have so much respect for Joel, the resident sound guy at NewSpring. I understand and respect why he has things happen the way he does. I get it, really, I do. But it just kinda sucks on my end at times because right now, I'm not able to do sound with them. So that being said, back to me sitting in the seat during the service. I felt the H.S. (Holy Spirit) call out to me with a question. "Explain to me how you can move 1100 miles away from everything you knew to a place you have never been and know no one?" My answer: "I trusted God. I knew that is where He wanted me to be." Question two: "So explain to me why you won't commit to becoming a part of the life at NewSpring?" Ouch...that hurt. My answer: "Apparently, I'm not trusting God with that move because I'm holding onto doing sound at Marathon." It was in that moment when I realized that I wasn't trusting God that I repented and made the decision to follow God's will, even though I didn't understand it. That night I signed up for membership class and grouplink. Following God's will in the decision has been the greatest blessing. I am part of a body of Christ that is sooo passionate about Jesus. When people are passionate about Jesus, they then in turn become passionate about people. I have met so many people and made so many new friends. It's blown me away at how quickly I have been plugged into the life at NewSpring and I'm loving every moment of it.
God has also been teaching me a lot of things about relationships lately. I recommend reading the books, "When God writes your love story" and "Choosing God's Best". These also deal with trust. I have to trust that if it is God's will for me to get married, He already has the perfect guy picked out. I don't need to be dating around, which I'm glad to hear. Guys, mental note as a thing NEVER to say to a girl. "You have a great personality, your just not pretty enough to date." I won't lie. I have actually had guys tell me this. I didn't realize how much that statement has messed me up. Honestly, guys don't even have to verbally say it. I'm had it said to me a lot of times just by the way that they look at me. Until I started viewing myself as the way that God views me, I always had that in the back of my head answering my questions like...why don't I get dates. Is there something wrong with me? Being really honest here, I've never dated. I've never had a boyfriend. Do you realize how much slack you get from society when you admit that right there? It's bad! But God has shown me what a blessing that has been. He has been protecting me heart from it getting totally stomped on by failed relationship to failed relationship. Girls, I challenge you to really pick up these books and see what it is that God wants to say to you. I learned sooo much about purity in "When God writes your love story." Do you realize that your heart is a pearl? A treasure that God has created for 1 man. The man you will marry that you will become husband. When you starting giving away pieces of your heart to someone other than your husband you are being essentially unfaithful to him. Even if you haven't met him right now, you are being unfaithful to him in emotionally and mental ways, even if you are being physically pure. We are called to be pure emotionally and mentally as well. Proverbs 31:12 rocked my world. It is talking about the qualities of a godly wife and it says that she brings him good, not harm, ALL the days of her life. I wish when I was younger someone would have explained to me that purity was more than just a physical thing. Take heart though. God wants to restore us back to beauty. We just have to be willing to take Him up on it. It's not easy when you get around a man that loves Jesus. Personally for me, it is super attractive when you meet a guy who has his heart abandoned to God. Who treats women with respect and honor. But I don't need to look around questioning God if this is the one or that is. I need to look at these guys, and guys in general, as though they are just more brothers in Christ and then I can see past the potentially falling for him factor. I want to be faithful to my husband. I have to imagine that he is sitting next to me all the time and he can read my thoughts. Are they pleasing to him? Are my actions towards other guys pleasing to him? Or am I going to make him want to punch another guy in the throat? I had one of those epiphany kinda moments this weekend. I always knew that I wanted to get married, but I couldn't make the connection in why I wanted to get married. It finally dawned on me. Through reading one of my books, it expanded on the whole Adam and Eve thing. God created Eve as a way for Adam to learn how to love God more. That's what I want from my marriage. I want my husband, who will be a blessing from God because I'm trusting God and waiting for His choice, to help me discover how to love God more. I want my marriage to glorify God and have someone that will be running right next to me in my pursuit to an incredible relationship with Christ. Through loving and honoring my husband, I will essentially learn how to love and honor God more.
I met with one of my friends from the Marathon worship team today. We were talking about my transition to NewSpring because as of Sunday I am no longer on the sound team at Marathon. I have officially put my heart in God's hands and am trusting Him with my future in sound. She made the comment to me that I am glowing. My first thought was that's because I'm in love. I'm in a love with the God who created the universe yet wants to have a deeply intimate and personal relationship with me. He is the twinkle in my eye, because my eyes are definitely twinkling. Most people might think that I'm full of crap, but they can think that. I have soo much joy in my life that is only caused by my love for Jesus. Are things perfect in my life? Nope, and I doubt they ever will be. I'm struggling with my relationship with my dad. I'm struggling with some co-workers at work. I still have my struggles. But I don't focus on them like Satan and society would like me to in order to steal my joy. In light of all of those struggles, I know that I am safely held in the arms of my God who will never forsake me and loves me beyond my wildest dreams. I am blessed far beyond my struggles. I am in some storms right now, but I know that God is there and I will eventually see daylight and come through them. That's why I can say that I'm doing great. I have something greater in me than what I could ever face before me. I'm in love and I'm falling more and more everyday. Nothing can steal that joy as long as I continue to learn how to put my trust in God and obediently follow Him. I may not understand it at the time, but I have found from experience that it is totally worth it. He has something greater planned for our lives than we could have ever imagined. I'm so greatly thankful that I learned sooner than later of God's amazing love for me because now I have more time to explore it and grow in it.
I think I'm finally done, but that is what has been on my heart. Oddly enough, it's only a part of what's been on my heart, but it'll do for now.
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