A Mystery*

Last week, along with my church, I was fasting and praying. This is just one of the things the Lord pointed out to me during that time.

“As the Scriptures say, ‘A man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one.’ This is a great mystery, but it is an illustration of the way Christ and the church are one. So again I say, each man must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.”

-Ephesians 5:31-33 NLT

How exactly are men and women “one”? We are all taught that 1+1=2, not 1+1=1. This is just one of the reasons this concept is somewhat of a “mystery” to us. But what I love about it is that it really is an illustration of the love that Christ has for us. He chose to leave His father in heaven to become “one” with us, the church. How or why would the Lord of the universe want to do this?! Because He loves us tremendously!

God created men and women in His image. He made us to be a reflection of Himself. One way that He did that is how He created men and women to “fit” together. Separately, a man and a woman are each still whole pieces, but there’s a desire for the other. A longing for a deep, meaningful relationship that’s more intimate and lasting than any other. This is the relationship Christ desires to have with us. He wants us. Desires us. Can’t stop thinking about the relationship He wants to have with each and every one of us because He loves us. Loves.

As the church, we “fit” into Him. Without us, He’s not “incomplete,” but He misses us. His desire is for us to desire Him. In a similar manner that men and women desire to have a deep, devoted, lost-in-each-other relationship.

But what I find to be the greatest mystery isn’t in the similarities of the analogy, but in one of the major differences. In the relationship of a man and women, both are imperfect, mistake-making disasters, undeserving of a perfect true love. With Christ and the church, we are the vastly imperfect, mistake-making disasters being pursued by THE Perfect True Love of all time. We are completely undeserving of the Love that He gives us. He loves us as He loves His father, who He is a part of. How can we not at least attempt to show Him the respect and love that He truly deserves?


*This is a blog post from my old blog, originally written January 21, 2011.

Fear--How "Myself" Can I Be?

Alright, I'm going to start something new. Kind of like a "fear series" of sorts. Things that scare me or make me nervous about being in a relationship. Some of them might be kind of stupid, others deeper. I guess we'll just see how this turns out ;)

So I guess the fear that I'm going to kick this off with is this: how much of "myself" can I be?

This is a weird question, I know, but let me explain a bit. For me, it's easy to be honest and myself with God. He created me, He has given me the personality that I have, He knows me far better than I know myself. And He's God. He will always love me. No matter what stupid things I do or say. Make a dumb joke or trip walking up stairs. Whether I sing in the shower or vacuum not as frequently as I would like to. Any of the weird quirks I have, it doesn't matter, because He will always love me. (Which is, quite honestly, astonishing and I am so thankful for this truth.)

But what about a person? A person who is just as flawed as I am? Who can walk away at any moment? Someone who can choose to stop loving me whenever they realize just how weird I am? How can I put that much trust in someone if they may back out once they see the truth?

Let's be honest, relationships are not all fun and games. There are hard times and sometimes they take work. And not only that, but once you marry someone, your sins are not only your problem to work through...they're a problem for both of you to work through. That freaks me out. I like my problems to stay my problems, and just me and God can work them out. Because I know that He will stick by me and love me and He really wants me to figure out my junk so I can be even closer to Him.

I think one of the funny things about this fear is that once I'm with the man God has for me, I know that I'll be able to love him and stick by him through all of his quirks and flaws. Why do I know this? Because marriage is a commitment and I will keep that commitment. Because I know that God has given me wisdom in being "picky" when it comes to who I will date, let alone marry. The man that God is working on setting me up with is going to love Jesus immensely.

And this is where I need to get comfort. God is the one setting up this lifelong friendship that I will be living. He sees my quirks, faults, and flaws and He's working on a guy to complement them and even them out. And He's doing the same thing for my husband with me. And this man will love Jesus and carry the convictions that I myself seek to have.

And the fact that he is a godly man will be evidence enough to know that he will choose to love me through the quirks. Through the sins that we will both have to face and turn over to God. Through the challenges that a lifetime together will throw at us. This could actually turn out to be quite fun.

Growing from Small to Great

So, this weekend I was able to escape grad school for a bit and see my family for a mini-vacation. I don't think I've mentioned them much so far in this blog, but just for the record, I absolutely LOVE my family. I have truly been blessed and I am so grateful for each and every one of them :)

Anyways, so I was talking to my dad about the previous day, when I had gone to my job and my boss had me do some fairly menial tasks. For some reason, my boss had been having an off day and he was a bit grumpier than usual. And for some reason, I felt the need to detail all of this to my dad.

Shortly after this, my sister mentioned a quote that she had seen and it really stuck with me. So much so that I felt I needed to blog about it and find a picture with the quote ;)

Right after I had just got done complaining about my boss. Ouch.

This is an area that I definitely need to improve. Somewhere over the years, I have become a small person. I don't think I used to talk about others nearly as much as I feel I do now.

So I talked to God about it and came up with another goal: don't talk about other people unless it is in truth and love. The truth part isn't really the hard part for me (but it helps to also prevent gossip). For me the hard part will be the love part. I'm going to need to ask myself lots of questions when I speak: Does this lift the person I'm talking about up? Is it encouraging? Is it helpful for the person I'm talking to to hear this? Would I say this in front of the person I'm talking about? Would I be embarrassed if they knew I was saying this about them?

This also ties in to a previous lesson I've been learning about considering others better than myself (see my previous post, Eye-Candy).

It's interesting because the career path that I'm on, I chose because I want to help people. How can I help them if I don't respect and love them first? Why would they even want my help if I don't show that I care for them?

His Standards*

⁸ Taste and see that the Lord is good. Oh, the joys of those who take refuge in him!
⁹ Fear the Lord, you his godly people, for those who fear him will have all they need.
¹⁰ Even strong young lions sometimes go hungry, but those who trust in the Lord will lack no good thing.
-Psalm 34:8-10

God is so so good to those who trust in Him.  But not just "good" by our standards.  He is good by His standards.

It can be so easy to forget about this.  We are so easily deceived into believing that our own wants and desires are what is "best" for us.  But where is our heart in our desires?  "Take delight in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart."  Psalm 37:4

When we focus our hearts on Christ, He becomes our desire.  Pleasing our Master should come before pleasing ourselves.  And pleasing our Master is what should bring us ultimate joy.  What an honor that Christ loves me and desires me to carry out even the smallest bit of His plan!

When He becomes our delight, our hearts line up with His, and His desires become our own.  I take comfort in knowing that He never changes.  I am the one who is constantly changing, waxing and waning; meanwhile, He remains.  And if the things I desire are constantly changing, how can fulfillment ever be achieved?  When my desires become His unchanging desires.  He is so good.

We must take refuge in Him!  Trust Him in all things.  In doing so, He will give us all we need.  Every good thing, by His standards.  Placing our trust in Him brings us into His family.  "God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure."  Ephesians 1:5

He wants to give us, His children, good things!  In Matthew 7:9-11, Jesus displays this clearly:  "Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!"

So what is it that keeps us from fully pursuing Jesus, knowing that in doing so, He will provide us with all our needs, our desires?  What is it that triggers my waxing and waning, constantly changing?

For me, it seems to be my perception of time.  I so enjoy doing things and being with people!  Filling my schedule to the brim!  In doing this, I'm constantly aware of time.  Or at least, my earthly perception of it.  But Christ is continually bringing me back to remembering that my perception of time is limited.  He has an eternal perspective.  Concerning Christ's return, in 2 Peter 3:8, we are reminded:  "But you must not forget this one thing, dear friends: A day is like a thousand years to the Lord, and a thousand years is like a day."  God has a different perspective than I do.  When I rest in this truth, it brings me such comfort!  And yet, I can still forget.  I need to be patient and wait for His timing.

God you are so good.  Thank you.  I'm choosing to rest in you, Lord.  Please remind me when I forget.

*This is a blog post from my old blog, originally written February 20, 2011.

Consolidating my Life

Okay, so I am really warming up to this particular blog site and like it much better than the site I was formerly using.  So I'm going to start using this one exclusively, even for topics that aren't directly related to the fact that I'm single.  Being single allows God to teach me a lot of things about myself and not all of them have to do with my relationship status :)

On that note, this is just a short post informing you, my friends, that I will be working on consolidating blog posts from my old blog onto this one.  Because as my personality dictates, I like everything to be organized and found in the same place :)  And for the sake of clarity and organization, I will be denoting that they are former blog posts with an asterisk in the title and a footnote.