The Lord is with me; I will not be afraid. What can mere mortals do to me? — Psalm 118:6
It
was pretty late. Most of the lights were out. I had gotten tied up with
friends and packing and forgotten that my parents kept 10:00 p.m.
bedtimes. But they were still up waiting for their oldest daughter, the
first one to have left the nest — a freshman now at the University of
Arkansas — to come home for the weekend.
This
night I went into their room and sat on the corner of their bed, home
from college with something important to talk about. I am sure that
night I looked to them like their little girl who hadn’t really grown up
that much, like I might be asking if I could go to a dance with a cute
boy or spend the evening out with a friend.
But I wasn’t asking to go to a dance.
After the wooden crosses at camp, God kept getting bigger to me.
I
was hearing Him and God was real and speaking and moving in me. I was
hearing Him and obeying — but was I obeying Him in every way, no matter
the cost?Was I willing to do anything He asked?
When
God began awakening in me, He started awakening me for the things of
Him. I wanted to be about building His Kingdom, not only at the
University of Arkansas but throughout the world. I was feeling led
overseas. It was not clear where, but I could go for a year or two and
serve through a ministry I was involved with in college.
As
I sat on their bed I told them, “Mom and Dad, I feel like God is
calling me to go overseas. I don’t know all the details, but I feel sure
of this calling in me.”
I looked at them expectantly, waiting to hear what they had to say.
Every
conscious person has thoughts, feelings, and passions streaming through
him or her. These streams never stop, and they’re rarely filtered. They
flood us with messages, and out of those thoughts we live, we make
decisions, we create — we even regress as a direct result of these
streams moving to and from our hearts and minds.
The
obvious streams are our preoccupation with food or sex, or more likely,
returning e-mails or building grocery lists. But the deeper streams,
the ones that control our lives, those are where we doubt and dream and
feel afraid or insecure. Typically we just leave them all there,
streaming through us, controlling us.
God
often speaks of the heart, or our souls. Nothing about me matters more
than my heart, so why can’t I seem to control my heart or even locate
it? For most of my life it seems to have had its own way, navigated by
fear or desire. It moves and it ends up moving me.
I know my heart is tangibly real in this sense—I see evidence of its affections. But how does one control the heart?
Ever
since I was young, I have been fascinated by the life of King David. He
made so many terrible mistakes, and yet he bled God. He was passionate.
Over and over again throughout his journaling through Psalms, he says
variations of this phrase: The Lord is with me; I will not be afraid. What can mere mortals do to me? (Psalm 118:6).
And
his life flowed out of this mentality. Because he feared and adored
God, he feared nothing else. No one else. What was different about my
faith than David’s? Why did I live with this stream of fear of people?
I grew up knowing the facts about God, and one of those facts was that he wanted to possess my heart completely. That I would love the Lord, my God, with my all my heart, soul, mind... that all of me would love Him the most (Deuteronomy
6:5). But I couldn’t live it then. I was busy making most everyone in
my life happy, and it was working for me—at least most of the time.
I’m
lying. It wasn’t working. I was completely wrecked inside. How does
anyone ever make everyone happy? I waited for my parents’ answer.
Was I the only one torn like this? In love with God and yet eagerly serving everybody but him?
That
night on my parents’ bed, as I told them I wanted to obey God by
serving Him in another country, far from their categories and dreams,
many streams flooded me. They were streams that, at the time, trumped
the planet-building God.
My
parents weren’t wrong to express their opinions. I was only eighteen,
and I was their daughter. They never said I was forbidden to go. But I
was intuitive. I could feel it. I could feel their disapproval.
So I didn’t go. I didn’t even think about going anymore.
In
the decade that followed, as much as my love and understanding of God
grew, this river of idolatry only rushed stronger and stronger,
oftentimes making me anxious, even frantic. Since the invisible thoughts
of people are not easily controlled, I would spin, longing to control
them.
People had to shrink for me before God had me completely... but how?
When
I get still and hear the loudest thing in me, it is often that I am
chasing everyone but God. And I fear if he gets too close, he’ll see it.
But if I let him close anyway, we sit together on days like that,
looking over the frantic river that is wearing me out. He never says, I
told you so. He could, but He never does.
Love is jealous... especially God’s love. He wants me, and I want everybody else.
God
knows we all have this problem, loving everybody but Him. So he called a
prophet to dedicate his days to answering the same question I ask: how
do we stop chasing everybody else and come back to God?
Continue to our blog
to read the rest of today's devotion by Jennie Allen (it's another long
one, but worth the read!). Jennie continues with an examination of what
we can learn about God's jealous love from the life of the prophet
Hosea.
Your Turn
Is God your only thing? Whose approval do you need to abandon to live fully for God alone? Leave a comment on our blog. We'd love to hear your response today. ~Devotionals Daily
Tidak ada komentar:
Posting Komentar