I am SO in love...

with Jesus!!!  My heart feels like it could burst out of my chest as I must explain why!

Journals, I have found, can be one of the biggest blessings in disguise.  It is a place where we let our guard down and share our innermost secrets…where we write the juicy gossip, vent about situations and people, and share our deepest aspirations.  Journals are the one place we hold nothing back.  We tell of the good, and the bad…not withholding any information…it is our safe haven.

Personally, my journals act as my prayers.  I admit that if I pray in my head, within 2 minutes, I am thinking of something totally random and off topic...making my prayers aloof and un-concentrated. SO, I write them out; forcing myself to stay on track. It is my safe haven, where I hold nothing back while presenting my heart to the Lord.

A benefit, I have found, to writing out my prayers is I have the ability to go back and see how God answered them.  I often forget how far He has brought me, because I often forget the small triumphs in between each trial… I get caught up in the day-to-day issues and lose sight of how I was brought to that day.

I was in the middle of writing this very blog, telling of how I am so in love with Jesus, when I spotted my journal.  I felt inclined to read it, and opened to the very page that I had prayed to God asking Him to make me fall in love with Jesus! 

The date was October 2, 2011 and on that day I watched the Passion of the Christ.  Upon watching the Son of God under-go the shameful death for my souls sake… stemmed my prayer to fully surrender to Jesus out of the love He demonstrated for me.  I asked Him to crucify my desires and thoughts and transform them to His.  I did not want to be simply an on-looker in the crowd who was moved by His death because I believed He was the Christ…but I wanted to be one of the few who helped Him carry the cross to Calvary’s hill.

“Therefore, behold, I will allure her and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her.  And there, I will give her her vineyards and make the valley of Anchor a door of hope”- Hosea 2:14-15

Looking back to this day in my journal, God did take me to the wilderness.  He stripped away the allure of the world and brought me into His presence.  He had to remove me from what I considered comfortable…and take me to a place I was unfamiliar with. It forced me to rely on only Him.  His consistent and constant voice reminded me, HE IS ALL I NEED!  The truth of His steadfast love was given to me over and over.

“And in that day,” declares the Lord, “you will call me ‘My Husband’ and no longer will you call me ‘My Baal’”  For I will remove the names of the Baals from her mouth, and they shall be remembered by name no more.”- Hosea 2:16

God started conforming my desires to His…being in the desert was more appealing if it meant I had more of Him.  The things that once seemed SO crucial to my happiness and advertised false fulfillment to my desires, no longer interested me.  I wanted more of my Jesus.  I stopped fearing for my fleshly body and started to fear for my soul.  (Matthew 10:28)…knowing that my soul is the well spring of eternal life, and my flesh is dying; Jesus being the only cure to salvage the spirit within me.

It took experiencing the truth of Ephesians to prove that not one man is good in his flesh, Jeremiah 17:9 to tell me my heart is deceptive and sick, Proverbs 3:5, 28:26 to tell me I cannot rely on my own understanding, for me to comprehend and believe God's steadfast love for me. (Psalm 86:5, 89:31-33) 

I have read one too many dating books…and the good ones will tell you to GUARD your heart.  Wanna know why?

BECAUSE PEOPLE SUCK!!!

We are Imperfect, and unable to love perfectly.

We change our minds, and change in personality.

We are selfish and love ourselves above anyone else

We Lie

We Cheat

We are deceptive

We disappoint, and fail to follow through

We have this permanent thing called SIN…. It never goes away!  Sin is a curse to ourselves, to everyone we encounter, and it mocks the very One who created us!

I believe now, the Lord has allowed me to experience first hand the detriment someone else’s sin can cause to your heart…. ONLY so that I would become fully surrendered to HIM and HIM ALONE.  Wanna know why?

BECAUSE HE IS PERFECT!!!!

And His love is perfect; it is unable to be anything less.

He is incapable of lying, cheating, or deceiving me.

His love never changes, because He never changes.

His love is not just a bunch of words, but they have been carried out.

His love is selfless and sacrificial.

His love is steadfast, eternal, everlasting, and unable to fail.

The best part is… FOR THE FIRST TIME…I do not have to guard my heart! 

“And I will abolish the bow, the sword from the land, and I will make you lie down in safety.  And I will betroth you to me forever.”-Hosea 2:18-19.

I have been a follower of the Lord for 13 years this month.  I have always understood Gods love for me, and I have genuinely loved who He is…  BUT, as of lately I have become so IN LOVE and fully captivated with Him!  

Having been in a romantic relationship where I was “in love”… I now understand the symptoms and side effects that take place from being in love.

I think of Jesus all day long.

I talk about Him at every chance I get.

I have a giddy, stupid grin on my face.

I wake up early, just to be alone in the quiet with Him.

I talk to Him all the time.

He has become my confidant, and best friend.

I crave His word, wanting to know Him fully.

I long to please Him…I want to put His wishes before my own.

I desire for others to know who He is.

My life would cease to exist without Him.

Surrendering my life to Him is no longer a sacrifice, but a pleasure.

His voice is no longer an interruption, but a divine invitation.

My plans are held loosely, in concordance to His plans.

My life is now complete; my soul is finally satisfied.

Everything has become faded at His illumination.

I am finally at peace, because I am no longer searching.

In my first blog, (now found under http://psalm139-verse14.blogspot.com/p/my-verse-14.html) I wrote about my desire to be a wife…to be loved and adored by her betrothed.  To love and to serve, giving my life to another…

Jesus is the ONE my soul has longed for.  I am HIS bride, adored and loved by Him, my betrothed.

“I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and mercy.  I will betroth you to me in faithfulness.  And you shall know the Lord!” -Hosea 2:19-20

On October 2, 2011…I wrote out this whole verse of Hosea 2:14-20 in my journal.  And from it, this was my prayer…

“Imprint this verse on my heart, in my mind, and on my soul.  When I grow weary in the wilderness, make me fall in love with You.  Bring me so far with You, that only You can be responsible!”

His faithfulness is only one of the hundred attributes that make me in love with him.  From October 2, 2011, to now January 18, 2012…the Lord has brought me to the wilderness, romanced me with His steadfast love, changed my heart towards the idols I placed in my life, and brought me into an everlasting covenant with Him though his grace and all perfect love.  He has brought me from simply loving Him, to being compassionately in love with Him. I am finally experiencing the truth I have known my whole time as a believer…

He has brought me this far with Him, and only He is responsible!

I decided to fast.

People fast all the time.  However, I have tried and failed multiple times due to my love for food and hate towards the discomfort of hunger.  But, despite past failures, I was determined to be strong and push through 24 hours without food.

The purpose of my fast was to for-go my fleshly desires, and rely fully on the Lord; to pray at each discomfort, and seek the Lord for fulfillment of His Word and Spirit.

I started off strong, by missing my favorite meal of the day… BREAKFAST!  By lunch I was hungry, but felt confident when I denied both Dunkin Doughnuts and a PB&J Sandwich.  As I spent the afternoon in Barnes and Noble, I started to become faint.  But continued to write out prayers for the next half hour, until I was too light headed to think (pathetic, I know).

Rather than to use my hunger to engulf myself in prayer and fulfill my purpose in fasting, I headed home to take a nap…knowing sleep would take my mind off my hunger.  I justified that my nap would leave me refreshed and therefore promised myself to finish the night by reading and praying.

Sleep worked like a charm, until I was woken to my Mom calling me downstairs.

The moment I stepped out of my room, I knew I was in trouble…and trouble was confirmed the moment I met my family gathered around the dinner table with plates full of pizza and wings….MY FAVORITE!

I quickly justified to myself that I needed to join my family, as it was my brothers last night before he headed back to University for the semester.  Before I had time to comprehend what I was doing, I had already eaten 2 slices of pizza and 3 wings.

It tasted so good!

But no sooner had I started eating, did I feel the urge to vomit. I could not move, every motion made me queasy.  I laid on the couch for 2 hours, feeling sick and sulking in my defeat.  Not only had I given in to temptation and failed once again, but I also just wasted most of my night.  I will never see those wasted hours again.

Praise to Gods grace, that I was not left sick for too long and he redeemed my failures by teaching me a lesson through a tangible analogy.

My failure started before I ever took that bite of pizza.  It started when I became weak and tired; when I no longer was dependent on the Lord...when I decided to do things my way and take the easy way out. (ie, take a nap)  

It worsened, as my nap took me out of prayer and communion with God, and I was left weak.  Being weak, while presented with temptation is a recipe for failure.

Failure happened when appeasing my flesh became more important than honoring God to every extreme.

The satisfaction of quenching my desires through temptation left my flesh satisfied for only a brief moment (ie, eating cheesy pizza),  but created a lasting effect on my soul.  It took less than 10 min to eat that pizza, but left my stomach and mind in anguish 12x longer as I spent 2 hours on the couch.  Clearly turmoil and regret were not worth savory taste buds.

My defeat left me useless, as I was not able to fully carry out my ambitions and goals.  It took away precious time, that I will never get back.

I am aware that eating a few slices of pizza in the midst of a fast, does not qualify me in the world record book of sinners (if there was such a thing).  But it is in the small and weak, that God reveals the big and powerful. Through this small story of my weakness, He has taught me a big and powerful lesson:

I cannot rely on my flesh, except in expectation that it will lead me astray.

A moment of walking on my own is the invitation to multitudes of temptation and failure.  Doing things my way will always get me off course.

Satisfaction is only found in the Lord.

Enticing things are usually a pathway to deception. Sin takes me farther than I ever intended to go, and costs me more than I ever expected to pay.

Justification is another term for disregarding God.  It is an ugly word with ugly results.

No matter how confident I may be to overcome something, my flesh will always fail me, and it is through humility of my spirit and denial of my flesh, God will be the one to over come.

“God uses various forms of discomfort to woo us to cry out to Him, but He never forsakes us.  God is the only one who is not repelled by the depth and length of our needs”- Beth Moore.

My favorite part of the lesson was to be taken deeper with my Heavenly Father…even through the means of justification, temptation, choosing my flesh, and experiencing failure.  To know that His love is unfailing despite any circumstance or failure I might encure, I am free to rely on Him and ditch my flesh! 

In my weakness, He makes me strong!