thought for food: why don't we desire more from our relationships with God?

I mean, he only promises that he will give us the desires of our heart (Psalm 37:4), that he is mighty to save (Zephaniah 3:17), that he seeks to place us on firm, unshakable ground (Psalm 40:2), that his righteousness flows like a mighty stream (Amos 5:24), that he will shut the mouths of lions to preserve us (Daniel 6:22-23), that he will turn our valley of death into a door of hope (Hosea 2:15), that he renews our minds day by day (Romans 12:2), that we will appear before God with Christ in full glory (Colossians 3:4), set out where we should live and what we should do, so that "in him we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:26, 28), that his perfect love casts out fear (1 John 4:18), that he has overcome the world!! (John 16:33: "I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.")

What's left?

Somehow we don't live like these things are happening. We don't love like we are intimately known by Jesus, loved anyway, filled and have sunk our identity fully in his name.

A couple of quick reasons come to mind (tell me some more)...

a) because we don't know how. We've never put our trust in God, we don't know how to really experience him, we don't even know how we really experience him. We say, "Lord, Lord," like foolish builders (Luke 6:46), that are founded in caterwauling and carrying on about

b) because we take the burden of salvation upon ourselves. (disobedience, which is sin through and through, has been explained to me as any and all ways we try to be our own savior.)
But Ephesians 2:8-9 says, "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith — and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God — not by works, so that no one can boast."
It specifically says there is nothing we can do to deserve God's favor more or less, and consequently nothing we can do right or wrong to make him want or love us more or less.

Something that has been sticking with me is tiffany young's one question during women's time last night, that her one question to God would be, why on earth did you choose us, let alone send your son for us, to 'live and have our being' here when you knew we would forsake you (supposing, of course, that God is all-knowing, all-loving, all-powerful?) To which Stephanie Dunnam replied, how would we ever know what need meant if God did not give us a need for him? How would we ever know what perfect love meant if we had not first experienced and been disappointed by imperfect love?

I find it amazing and beautiful and true (that's the Don Miller in me speaking) that the Father loved us so much that he let us, stupid, pitiful, despicable creatures as we are, actually CHOOSE whether or not to love him back, knowing that many of us would not, but that his work never ended (John 10:14-16: "I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me — just as the Father knows me and I know the Father — and I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also.")

Of Jesus, who had no fear of intimacy, Don Miller writes in his Searching For God Knows What, "But if the gospel of Jesus is relational; that is, if our brokenness will be fixed, not by our understanding of theology, but by God telling us who we are... then this would require a kind of intimacy of which only heaven knows. Imagine, a Being with a mind as great as God's, with feet like trees and a voice like rushing wind, telling you that you are His cherished creation.

"Earthly love, I mean the stuff I was trying to get by sounding smart, is temporal and slight so that it has to be given again and again in order of us to feel any sense of security; but God's love, God's voice and presence, would instill our souls with such affirmation we would need nothing more and would cause us to love other people so much we would be willing to die for them.

"Perhaps this is what the apostles (those who diligently followed Jesus and basically were the original evangelists and church planters because of how convicted they were of his lordship) stumbled upon." (47)


Finally, Jesus entreated Peter three times, do you love me, because he KNEW we were prone to wander, he knew that we would stray, that we are those sheep who scatter at the slightest hint of darkness, who skitter and jump and do not trust the master to take care of us.
By saying this, by pointing all this out, we must not forget that Jesus also gives a command along with this quiet reproach.
It is an if-then statement, meaning that there are no exceptions.
"Simon, son of John, do you love me?"
"Yes, Lord, you know that I love you."
"TEND MY SHEEP."
"FEED MY LAMBS."

That is our commandment, too.

We had a... monumental women's time yesterday. Getting together in our pj's, tucking into a cozy nearby cafe-turned-slumber-party-host, a great game of shuffle your buns!!!, then hot seat questions (lots of deserrrt island questions, emphasis on the deserted part and, um, kissing project boys) and finally a revealing time with Stephanie Dunnam.

She spoke of the decision she had made to honor her parents, specifically her mother, but only until it had conflicted with obeying the Lord her God - whom she was known by and knew personally - with going ahead with a blessed marriage where, when her parents dropped out, unable to let go of Stephanie as a functioning adult, a new, extended family was able to step up and give her love and full acceptance. Where her mother could not even rejoice with her chosen wedding dress, where her own father could not walk her down the aisle, nor pay for her wedding, where she has not spoken to her mother since, her grandparents, fellow church members and sisters-in-law have stepped in as total blessings. So the image she carries in her head of her wedding could have easily been marred and blackened by the pain of her mother's disapproval, but God protected her and provided her with Christians that completely funded her wedding. So she could easily be the victim, but that "isn't the image I have in my head" of how it went, because of how close and how intimate she was with her heavenly Father, the giver of good gifts.

I have a limited memory and probably will remember better stuff about this later, but even more revealing to me was how something clicked in my head about who I am. Usually I am awful at talking things out, instead choosing to weigh and balance things and fit puzzle pieces together in my head, but I just needed to talk, I didn't want to keep it in any longer. As a precocious but trusting third-grader, an equally precocious boy who I saw as my best friend attempted to take advantage of our closeness. He took me behind a tree at my day camp and tried to touch me... I completely did not understand and likely would have let him do exactly as he wanted if we hadn't been called back inside. Recently I've been fighting and struggling a friendship that has turned extremely familiar because I treasure my singleness so highly it has made me defiant of all relationships. I didn't know till that point that it was totally because no guy has ever treated me with such unconditional favor since third grade, and when something happens where perhaps there is something greater than fellowship I have no idea how to deal with it. Even if it turns out to be nothing, I am grateful that all this has surfaced... I no longer have to struggle with what I don't understand, and I require healing from an area that I didn't even know I was hurting from. My discipler here, Jaci, has been completely excellent... I've met and talked with her once (talked her to death) and she's extracted this need to protect my heart from truly softening. I wonder all the time why I can speak truth and yet not believe it myself, and it's because all these things are buried deep down so far that I am still trying to untangle and trace all its roots and figure out that I'm fighting something I didn't even know was there. To care, to love, to trust fully has been so scarring an experience that I've never done it before until recently, with girls, and now, slowly, with guys.

So, in effect, I told a group of girls, and am now releasing to the world (ha, I know I flatter myself thinking the world reads this), something I have never told anyone... not even my parents, not my sister, not my youth counselers, nor my Davis friends. And it was beautiful - I have had tears shed for me that I can't even cry myself, but I'm still touched in my heart of hearts, deep down low. This is why I fight so hard getting close to people, this is why I hide behind my laughter, I'm so good at using my randomness as a shield. But I'll talk this to death if God asks me to.




something fitting lately that makes me smile:
A Prayer for the Ephesians

For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever!

Amen.