It's a love story.
Your life. My life.
We were born in love, by love, and for love.
We are living out the greatest love story ever known. It's epic. No literally if you think about it we are living out an epic even great er than The Odyssey but it all comes back to the love part of the story.
God enables us to love and he gives us the freedom to do so. Why? If you want to know if love is real you must have the freedom to choose it. I was reading a book titled Epic written by John Eldredge and I came across this quote that really made me think even though he uses it as a refrence:
"Power can do everything but the most important thing: it cannot control love….In a concentration camp, the guards possess almost unlimited power. By applying force, they can make you renounce your God, curse your family, work without pay, eat human excrement, kill and then bury your closest friend, or even your own mother. All this is within their power. Only one thing is not: they cannot force you to love them. This fact may help explain why God sometimes seems shy to use his power. He created us to love him, but his most impressive displays of miracle-the kind we secretly long for-do nothing to foster that love. As Douglas John Hall has put it, "God's problem is not that God is not able to do certain things. God's problem is that God loves. Love complicates the life of God as it complicates every life." (Philip Yancey, Disappointment with God).
Love is chosen. You cannot force anyone to love you.
God loved us and put us in the most beautiful place, Eden. Unfortunately we all know what happens in that garden. Eve was decieved by a serpent. He placed the idea in her head that God might just be holding out on her. She can't trust his heart can she? Why doesn't God want her to eat the fruit from the tree? The devil asks us the same questions or tell us similar statements. "Trusting god is risky." "Rewrite your story." "Arrange your own happiness." "God is holding out on you" THAT IS A BOLD FACE LIE right there. But something shifted after we ate that fruit. We ask ourselves why life is not what our hearts desire. The poet George Herbert declared, " I cried the day I was born and everyday shows why." It's one of the sad realities of this world. We are not who we are supposed to be.
John 5:19
"The whole world is under control of the evil one."
It's like the story of Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, or Chronicles of Narnia. We are captive, but rescue is God's plan for us. Exodus 15:3 says "The Lord is a warrior." He has come to rescue us. Do we realize how deserate we are for rescue? Do we realize how captive we really are? Will we let ourselves be rescued? Will we cry out for help or stifle our cries because we believe the lies told to us daily that now weigh heavy on our hearts? Do we realize it is those lies that keep us held captive?
John 15:9
"As the Father has loved me so I have loved you. Now remain in my love."
How will be rescued? Well our rescuer will have to die to rescue us. And he did so upon a cross. Even though he was betrayed, he went willingly to prove that the heart of God is good. Now God asks us "Do you trust me?" "Will you let me come for you?" He is pursueing us because he love us. We were rescued. We do not have to be held captive any longer. God gave us a choice. Free will. Do we forget that we are the ones who betrayed him and not the other way around? We chose to mistrust God back in the garden. We made ourselves captives.
Deuteronomy 30:19
"I have set before you life and death…Now choose life."
Could our story that started with "Once upon a time…" really end with "happily ever after"? Isn't that what our hearts long for? Will we believe in that hope or is it to painful of a thought? Do we check out rather than feel the actual depth of that longing? God is a God who restores. He will restore our stories to the way they should end. Imagine that. Can you? I've been imagining what it would be like when I walk off the plane after just arriving back home. Will those I love be there to greet me? Will I run to my dad first or the man I love first? How will I be able to choose? Will there be shouts and laughter? Will there be signs for me held by those who I hold dear? Will we go out to dinner or go back home? I'll try to imagine it but I doubt my imagination will do it justice and that excites me. Now if I take that vision how does it compare to my homecoming when I finally get to meet my Father and my Beloved. How can I out imagine the God who created the universe when it comes to that homecoming? I doubt that my World Race homecoming will top my final homecoming.
So Taylor Swift got it right when she sang "It's a love story, baby just say yes"
Baby just say yes.
Just say yes.
Be rescued.
Live happily ever after.
