“We are created to be the object of desire and affection of the One who is totally and completely in love with us”
We’ve all heard the song Jesus Loves Me. We know that God loved us so much that He sent Jesus to die for us. But taking that truth from your head to your heart is sometimes really hard.
This month, Jesus has just been blowing me away. He’s showing me that the personal relationship I have with Him is supposed to be much more intimate than just acknowledging and believing how much He loves me. He wants me to cultivate that intimacy with Him every single moment of every single day.
It started when our team was doing door-to-door ministry here in Lilongwe, Malawi. We were speaking to a group of women and I just really felt like I needed to tell them that God doesn’t only want want their praise, but that He wants their frustrations, their joy, their dreams, their past, their everything. And it got me thinking about how much I actually practice what I preach. Am I actually taking everything to Him?
It’s not just about knowing Jesus as our Savior, but as our friend, shepherd, master, groom, and father. As we dig deeper into what each of those roles mean to us, we can discover so many more aspects of His character. He’s been romancing me ever since I knew Him, I just hadn’t wanted or known how to let Him in fully. He thinks of me as beautiful, as His creation, His daughter, and His bride. Looking back of past relationships, I see myself seeking to fill my loneliness and desire for a relationship with earthly validation instead of heavenly validation. But God sees me. It’s actually starting to make it’s way from my head to my heart that the Lord will fulfill me in every single aspect of my life, I just have to invite Him in. See, God’s a gentleman and He’s not going to barge into our hearts and start fixing things if we don’t want Him to. He waits patiently, but eagerly, for our invitation into the hard places of our hearts.
And this month, He has just been romancing me in a way that I haven’t allowed Him to before. He’s taking the parts of my heart that are tender and still broken, and is filling them with more of Himself. The fact that the Creator of the Universe wants to know me so deeply that He loves when I am breathless from His creation and He grieves when I try to fill places only He can fill with earthly things absolutely blows my mind. I think the craziest part though is that just like there’s a part in my heart that only the Lord can fill and captivate and bring true life to, there’s a part in His heart that only I can fill. He wants me to be seeking after Him so hard that I come to know His heart for me and the little treasures that only He can bless me with. It’s a relationship; a two-way street. The Lord desires to be captivated by me, just like I desire to know that I am captivating and that I am worth someone dying for me even through all my crap. And that’s what the Lord has been revealing to me this month.
So this has been my prayer:
God, I pray that you will open my eyes to the ways that you are pursuing me and that only you can fufull me. Show me the areas of my life that I still need to give completely over to you in order for you to fill me completely. I want to learn to show the beauty that you gave me, but in a way that glorifies you. I want to be vulnerable, and gentle, and to always have an open heart even when people continue to reject me. I know in the past and even now, I shut down when I get hurt or I never even open up all the way for the fear of getting hurt. That’s not what you ask me to do though. And that’s not inviting people to see the work you’re doing in me either. God, thank you for opening my eyes to the depth of your love for me. You are enough.
Amen.
