Love

Love – 10/27/02

I know what you’re thinking; you’re thinking “whoa girl, that’s a weird transition. From ‘stupidity’ of the Stella Awards to ‘Love’?” I know it’s an odd leap, but I just had to relieve myself of this burden of thought.
I was just watching the sequel to “Carrie”, you know that movie about that chick that has the ability to move things with her mind and she burns down her school on prom night? Anyhow, it’s an old horror flick and this one is about a descendant of Carrie or something. Basically the same plot is integrated into this film too. The Romeo and Juliet story woven through a modern day setting with age old dramas of star-crossed lovers. This girl Rachel is the descendant of Carrie and she has the power or whatever…and this popular school jock guy falls in love with her…but naturally his peers give him a hard time about it because she’s ‘uncool’ and not ‘popular’ and such. Anyway, they get together and his friends set her up for a fall without his knowledge. The some ‘old stuff. The thing is; I saw the ending of this movie even before I saw the beginning. I guess the channel was running a horror film festival where they’re showing the same film over and over all night. So I caught the tail end of it and just got done watching the beginning. I didn’t want to see the end again because it was sad. The nice jock guy, who saw Rachel for who she really was, survives the great tragedy and Rachel herself dies. Then the film skips forward to show him a year later, dreaming of the day he’ll get to see her again. It showed the classic example of desperate Love. The kind of love we all long for so bad that sometimes we convince ourselves that we’ve found it already in mere infatuation. It’s a lesson that all church kids have grown up hearing. “Love can not be found at first sight…that’s infatuation.” Naturally love is something to be learned. But ‘desperate love’, I think that is something completely different. Desperate love is not something that is ‘learned’, but is something that is stirred by the Holy Spirit and then ‘affirmed’ as you grow closer and find that this is the person that you’ve been desperate for all your life.
I know for a fact that God has placed a desperate love in me. And I know for a fact I’m on the verge of seeing what He has in store for me over that horizon. However, I know that I will never be able to fall desperately in love with a man until I fall desperately in Love with God Himself.
I have been reading this amazing book called “Celebration of Discipline” by Richard J. Foster. The Lord has been speaking some amazing things to me this summer and he hasn’t stopped talking to me since the year has started either. I came across an interesting lesson concerning prayer which then led me to realize something very comforting. Foster mentioned in his book that when he was studying the prayers spoken by Jesus and His disciples in the Gospels, he noticed that not once did any of their prayers end with “If it be thy will.” He realized that they obviously believed that they knew what the will of God was before they prayed the prayer of faith. He said “they were so immersed in the milieu of the Holy Spirit that when they encountered a specific situation, they knew what should be done.” He goes on to say that “I saw that when praying for others there was evidently no room for indecisive, tentative, half-hoping, “If it be thy will” prayers.”
I mean naturally there is, of course, a proper time and place to pray, “If it be thy will.” Such as in the prayer of guidance it is the great yearning of our hearts to know the will of God. But as Foster said in this book, this sort of ‘searching prayer’ should permeate our entire life experience. And then in the prayer of relinquishment, we are committed to letting go of our will whenever it conflicts with the will and way of God. There is that time when you are in direct connection with God. It’s that time when you feel an incredible burden or erg to pray for someone out of the blue. I have felt that intense desire to pray for my future husband. Why would God place it on my heart to pray for my future husband and kids if He didn’t intend for me to have any? This was an incredible comfort to me that the Lord does have a plan to bless me with someone special like that.
“That is why it is so vitally important for us to be thrown in utter dependence upon God in these matters. We are seeking to think God’s thoughts after Him, to delight in His presence, to desire His truth and His way. And the more we live in this way, the more God utilizes our imagination for His good purposes.”
As I’ve become more in tune with God, I have begun to really understand why He made me the way I am. I understand why he gave me the incredibly over active imagination that I have. I understand why He has given me this incredible longing to sit and simply dwell on certain (and sometimes ridiculous) topics in which I dig myself into a hole with. Now that I’ve finished the chapter in Foster’s book concerning meditation, I realize that God has shown me certain things. Certain images, reflecting His will.
I firmly believe that the closer I get to God and the more that I learn to make my will the same as His will, the clearer I begin to see pictures of what He wants and desires for my life.
I have felt the call to meditation. The reason I get caught up in dwelling on certain things is because God is telling me to dwell on Him, to bring myself before Him and allow Him to draw me closer.
I received a confirmation of this idea the last time I went to GROUP on Wed. This was around the same time I posted that entry about seriously needing a hug. I now realize that what I was longing for was to be wrapped securely in the strong arms of God’s peace. I wanted to literally feel His warmth and comfort. The reason this desire was so powerful was because it had been festering inside me for so long. The reason it festered so long was because it was physically impossible to satisfy. I was not going to find that kind of intimacy with anyone on earth. No one can satisfy my desire for intimacy with the Father other than the Holy One Himself. That night the Lord answered my cry for peace and comfort. I fell to the floor and the voices of praise began to drowned themselves out and soon it was just me and the Lord; in silence; cut off from all the people around. (I’m not even sure if anyone saw me go down; I wasn’t really paying any attention.) I saw a vision of the Lord Jesus Christ standing out in front of me with His arms wide open and I quietly was broken. There was no grand scene and no public display of conviction. In fact, there wasn’t any conviction at all, simply comfort. The Lord satisfied a longing in my heart that cried out for peace. I felt ‘desperate’ for God and no one else and I still do. The Lord met me right where I was at. That night He satisfied my true desperate LOVE. I had been teetering on the verge of desperate love for so long and at that moment I had let go and fallen over the edge. I relaxed and let my imagination run away with the Holy Spirit. And by the grace of God, He caught me in His embrace. The great thing about a hug from God is that I know, from experience, that He’ll never let go. He utilized the gift He gave me, my imagination, to answer my prayer. I know right now that there is not one girl reading this who hasn’t experienced the “cut-off” hug. I know there’s probably a better name for it, but I can’t think of one right now. The “cut-off” hug is those hugs that you want to last longer. They are the ones that are cut short. You get a hug and you don’t want to let go. Well, let me tell you, God doesn’t give cut-off hugs. He gives forever hugs. And I know he will bless me with an answer to my desperate love, just as faithfully as He has answered my prayer for a desperate eternal love.
In the movie I was talking about in the beginning of this post. Rachel found the love she desperately sought in the nice jock guy, but she knew it wouldn’t last forever, so she chose to die rather with the knowledge of that love, rather than live with the risk of loosing it. The problem was, that desperate love; that comforting hug of peace was cut short. The desperate love that we all feel can only be satisfied eternally in the Father God. It is only when that love is found and embraced, that our desperate love on earth can be satisfied.

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