In each of us there is this longing. The longing to feel and know that we are fully loved. This knowledge is something that I have literally searched all over for. I have looked for it in people, in places and my favorite things. And every time my heart has been wrecked with disappointment at the feelings of discontentment I have had when I didn’t find it there. The emptiness, the depression and sadness. The broken pieces after someone left me or broke my heart. Plans that were dashed, and promises broken.
Lot of things didn’t work out the way I wanted…
When GOD called me back to the missions field, it was following the hardest season of my life. I had almost given up hope on life, and was overcome and honestly tormented with anxiety on a daily basis. I was totally drained, and then all of a sudden, before all I could see was darkness, it was like GOD started to breath life back into me.
It was little by little…
No huge, one minute transformation, but a culmination of people praying for me, speaking life over me, and JESUS healing me. I began to feel� better after making some lifestyle choices that led me to freedom. I changed the way I thought, ate, and dove into the WORD. And yet something was still missing!
I had somewhere forgotten that GOD loved me. The season I had endured turned me into a defensive, fearful, unloving person whose faith was based on acts and not love. I lived in constant fear that GOD just wanted to punish me, and not love me. And I was miserable.
Well that season led me up to this point in my life. And just in these last few days I have begun to realize the magnitude of the LOVE of JESUS. The importance of HIS work on the cross, and the truth that until I gain revelation of His love for me, I can’t love HIM properly (as my love is only a reaction to HIS), nor can I love myself or anyone else correctly. The walls I have built up around my heart, the attitude, and the defensiveness are all a mechanism to keep some type of control in an area of my life where I am losing control.
But do I actually trust GOD?
I have to genuinely ask myself this question when I exude characteristics of trying to control my life that HE so willingly died to give me Freedom in. I continually have led myself into bondage by choosing my way over HIS, and the TRUTH?
I need to follow HIM, because I love HIM!
I am not in India sharing the Gospel because I just love it here, or because I love the people so much. I am here because I serve a GOD who loves me, and has graced me to do HIS work, as HE so miraculously heals me, and shows me HIS love at the same time. And in the chaos of abandonment, GOD is showing me what it is like to be Fully loved my HIM. Despite my flaws, my short comings, mistakes and imperfections. I honestly struggle to accept this truth most days. To forgive myself for past mistakes and live in the Freedom that HE died for me to have. The freedom that HE so willingly gives me.
But I believe that it is in these broken roads, and dirty faces, in the eyes of the sick, and the oppression of the unbelievers that HE will show me once again what it means to be fully loved.
And that is an adventure I am ready to embrace!
1 John 4:19
We love because HE first loved us.
