"Precious, Oh Lord, are your thoughts of me" (Psalm 139)...How can I begin to describe this amazing love; this enveloping truth that is too great to fully comprehend? Passionate, pursuing, renewing, consuming, captivating...these are all descriptors that are accurate, but even they cannot begin to describe the intimacy found in God's love. God's love is beyond what humans can fathom. It is all-seeing, all-knowing, and all-forgiving. It is unconditional. It is sacrificial. It is beyond human ability to produce this pure and complete love. It is life-changing.
The only way I can describe the impact of this love, is to explain how it has affected my own life.
My childhood is a blur. This has always frustrated me, because there are many things that I wish I could remember. The few memories I have before the age of five consist almost entirely of my parents fighting. There were never physical fights, for which I am incredibly thankful, but at an early age I was exposed to the reality that people are consumed by a thirst for satisfaction. We, as humans, recognize that there is a hole of sorts in our heart...a void that needs filling. We seek out fulfillment in a variety of ways - through relationships, success, security, etc. - yet we inevitably realize that these things are not enough.
After the divorce I rarely saw my dad. However, I was so young that at that point there weren't any repurcussions. I did incredibly well in school and was involved in many extracurricular activities. You could say I was your average, happy kid.
The effects of the divorce didn't really begin showing up until my late middle school years. I knew that a part of me was missing, and I felt that I was unwanted and unloved - I was convinced that I was a mistake, and that I ruined my parents' marriage. This was when I began feeling the void in my own heart. I tried to find satisfaction in a variety of ways. At that point in my life the main way was through success in singing. I was involved in a wide range of music-related activities, and I knew that I could have lead roles in whatever I wanted...yet, I was still not satisfied. In high school my search for satisfaction was directed toward boys. I behaved in ways that I am definitely not proud of, and I went to just about any length to try to fill the void through relationships. Once I realized that satisfaction could not truly be found through relationships either, I drifted into a depressed and angry state of being. I decided that if I couldn't find happiness, that no one around me should be able to either. I lived for making others feel as miserable as I was. Whether it was through lying, gossiping, ruining relationships, etc., I would stop at nothing. The reality of what I was doing was too much for me to bear, so I turned to alcohol as an escape. The last two years of high school are a blur of drunkenness, anger, jealousy, and other shameful activities.
I knew that what I was doing was wrong. I knew that I was hurting others and myself. Was I ashamed of myself? You bet! But I didn't know that a better life was possible. In deciding where to attend college, I knew that I needed to go somewhere far away if I wanted anything to change in my life. I was accepted to a university close by, but at the last minute I decided to attend an out-of-state school. I set ambitious goals for myself the summer before school started - some of which involved no longer drinking, and being a "good person" so to speak. However, the first weekend at school my goals were forgotten. I found new friends to party with, and new relationships to seek satisfaction through.
About two or three weeks into school I met a sophomore girl. As we began to hangout more and became friends, I realized that she had something I didn't. Somehow this girl was satisfied. She was genuine in her relationships with others, and the void in her heart was filled. She began introducing me to her friends, and the love they had for one another amazed me. There was no drama, no gossiping, no artificial friendships. It was like my eyes were being opened to a completely different lifestyle. I soon realized that all of these people were part of an organization called Campus Fellowship. The only experience I had had up to this point with "Christians" led me to believe that they were all naive and hypocritical. It fascinated me that these people were different. It seemed that they truly lived out what they believed. If you had asked me at that point if I was a Christian, I would have told you that I was. I knew the "story" of Jesus, and I went to church several times growing up...I was even involved in youth groups and the choir. But it was nothing more than a religion to me - a box to check off on a form.
One night some of these girls asked me to come to a Bible Study with them. No part of me actually wanted to do it, but I didn't want to let down my new friends after they had been so nice to me. I can still remember the topic that night...we talked about prophesies, and how Jesus had fulfilled all of them. We talked about the analogy that says in order to fulfill only eight of these, it would be like finding a specific quarter when the whole state of Texas was covered knee-deep with them. Afterwards the sophomore girl asked me what I thought would happen when I died. I told her that I was 75% sure I would go to heaven, but I didn't know why. I had no concept of salvation. She told me about Jesus...the truth. She told me that it was a gift of salvation that was permanent, and that it was my choice to accept it. She told me that once I placed my faith in Him, I could be 100% sure that I would be going to heaven. She told me about God's love.
That night I went to my room and found a Christian radio station on the internet. God had softened my heart, and I was completely broken before Him. I spent a good portion of the night weeping and confessing to the Lord about how I had repeatedly tried to give away His place in my heart to other things. Although I had heard about Jesus' death on the cross before, it had never meant anything to me until this night. That night I entered a relationship with my Lord, Savior, Lover, and Friend - Jesus Christ.
Since then, God has been working in my heart non-stop. Some things in my life changed immediately - I no longer had a desire to escape through alcohol, I was joyful, and I knew that my life had a purpose. For the past two and a half years, God has been teaching me how to grow closer to Him. He has been, and will continue to refine me until the day that He chooses to take me from this earth. He is loving, good, and faithful - regardless of my response. Because of His love for me, I have chosen to live every day of my life to bring Him glory. Do I still mess up? Of course...but God still loves me, and He is constantly leading me toward Himself.
Everytime I hear someone's testimony of how they came to know the Lord, I am filled with joy, love, and sorrow. I can't imagine what it must feel like to love people so much, yet choose to abstain from alleviating their suffering in the hopes that they might love you back. In Acts17 Paul writes:
"26From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. 27God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. 28'For in him we live and move and have our being.' As some of your own poets have said, 'We are his offspring.' "
Some people question the fact that God is loving. They say that a God who allows suffering could not possibly love people. But they are wrong. God knows what we
have to go through in order to seek Him. For me, it was suffering through divorce, depression, and feeling like I wasn't loved or wanted. God had to watch me, His child, in such pain...and He watches many others go through the same thing. He could potentially interfere, but if He did, His children might never recognize, understand, and receive His grace and His amazing gift of salvation. God is love.
