It will never cease to amaze me how God can take this thing called love and make it an endless lesson. He has made it my life long pursuit and I can honestly say that I don't understand how vast of a subject it really is, but I guess when love is a Man it is a subject that I cannot afford to not chase after every single day of my life.
A couple years ago I was sitting in my pastors office. I was in a point of my life where I was unsure of what I was doing with it and was struggling with the direction God was taking me. As I sat there trying to explain what I was doing, though not really knowing myself he pointed something out to me that I am so glad he had the guts to say. He told me that I was living a very selfish life. I was pursuing my "ministry" and my "goals" but completely missing relationships in my life. I was focused so much on becoming something that everyone could be proud of instead of caring about the thing that God cares most about. People. My pastor went on to ask me where a husband and kids fit into my picture and what about getting plugged in to a church family. He pointed out that I cannot do what I was trying to do without letting people in and establishing solid deep relationships.
So here I am, further down the road in life and God has placed a wonderful man of God right in front of me. He is my very best friend and I couldn't imagine doing life with anyone else. God has been so faithful to work all things for good in our relationship but I was so hesitant to be in this relationship. My biggest setbacks about dating Corey were two lies I fell for.....
1. A boy will distract me from my relationship with God
Now this has the potential to be true if I were to pick a man that is not pursuing God but in this situation that is the biggest lie in the world. I am so grateful for how Corey loves God and pushes me to love God. He is a man of the Word and is always wanting to talk about what God is showing us in our personal quiet times. He has chosen to be consumed by who God is and therefore by being with him, I am forced to be pursuing God as well. But the most amazing thing I have been learning lately is how God uses how Corey loves me to show me how HE wants to love me! As Corey learns to love God, he learns how to love me and it shows me a completely different aspect of God's love for me that I could never learn on my own because the way Corey learns about God's love is different from the way I learn about His love. I also was afraid that I didn't have the capability to love God with everything in me AND a man without it taking away from my love for God. But what I have seen is that I cannot love Corey without loving God first. When we both are passionately pursuing God and continuously learning how to love Him, we have no choice but to learn how to love each other, and let me just say I have had some awesome revelations about God's love from how Corey shows me love and it blows me away! God created marriage and it is not meant to be a distraction from Him but rather a runway TO Him.
2. I have to have MY life completely figured out and put together BEFORE I can date
Ok, so I totally understand how relationships can be a distraction from pursuing your life goals and what God has for you but I am sick of hearing that you have to wait until you are done high school, college, have your dream job and everything perfectly in place before you can even think about dating. Everyone is different. You cannot put a to do list on life because God's plan is different for everyone. Corey's and my relationship is a total God thing and he's not finished college yet. I still live at home with my mom. By the worlds standards we should technically wait until he's finished college and I need to be living on my own and have my own career before we should even pursue this. But here's the thing, God has strategically moved Corey and I closer and closer together and even gone out of His way to redeem our relationship when it looked completely hopeless. Where we are now is a straight up miracle!!! So why should we ignore what God is doing with us just because we don't have everything checked off the worlds to do list. I know finances are a big deal and wisdom should be used in preparing for marriage but it should NEVER be the reason not to. I have seen God provide money for me and I still cannot explain how I got it so to not be obedient to what God is doing with us would be doubting the faithfulness of God to provide. He is a provider! We have been prayerfully moving forward in this and believe that God is telling us to stop procrastinating. We wasted a year apart, it's time to be serious about His plan for us.
Then there is the fact that Corey is not finished school. I have been told that it's gonna be hard. I have been told marriage is hard but hey guess what else is hard.....LIFE!!!!! But you don't see people telling me to give up on life because it's hard. There will always be trials in life, they will either shape you or break you but the outcome is always up to you. Relationships are hard, yes, but they are a part of life and they are something God values. God uses relationships to refine us and teach us to love like He does. YWAM was hard, and going to Finland by myself to help lead a school was hard, so was leading an outreach by myself but you never heard people tell me NOT to do any of these things because they were gonna be hard. I came out of these experiences with a deeper relationship with God and a maturity in life. I learned so much from these experiences but I learned BECAUSE they were hard. If things were always easy, we would never grow. If I choose to stay single for the rest of my life (and let me just say there is nothing wrong with this if it's what God has called you to) I would choose to limit what God wants to do in my life.
Relationships are a good thing. They are a God idea. As long as you pursue God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength He will bring along a person to continue to pursue God with you. God in a person is attractive. You cannot love God and NOT be attractive to someone. Learning to love is a lifelong pursuit. It starts with God and overflows to others, especially that one person that you chose to love God with. The results are a beautiful thing.
Love is a choice, and choosing to love Corey is one of best choices I will ever make.
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