I’m reading this John Eldredge book right now, and it’s really interesting. It’s more or less the story of his own devotional life over a year, through all kinds of circumstances. The passage I read yesterday was talking about his “story of love.” Not his love story, as in with his wife, but rather his experience with God’s love, and the agreements he’s made about it, because of experiences throughout his own life. Or put a different way, the lies he’d come to believe about God and his love.
He talks about how one of the agreements was “love never stays.” It’s easy to imagine how this would affect your life. If, because of a personal experience, you’d come to believe that God’s love would not and does not endure, like whatever had happened in your life. Like what happened in Eldredge’s. To me, that would make it very difficult to both love, and accept love from others. At least, that’s the way it worked for me. I’m still not very good at accepting love from people. Not family, and not friends most of the time. It makes me a little uncomfortable.
My few experiences with romantic love had left me either raw and hurting, or cold. When I gave my heart to someone, they would hurt me. Therefore God would do the same. And when I added to that my experience with my parents, it left me believing that not only had they suffered my existence without really caring much about it, but that God had done the same. I believed this garbage for most of my life, even after becoming a believer. I can see that now.
And because of that belief, because I knew in my heart that love was not something that endured, that it either faded like an old pair of jeans or disappeared completely (if it was ever there at all), I lived my life accordingly. I took comfort in the short term. In things, rather than God, family, or friends. In food, in alcohol, in empty relationships. I tried and failed to fill an immense void in my heart and my life.
I did this for such a very long time. I believed it was how my life would always be.
Thankfully, I was able to open up my heart enough to God that I had the experience of letting him fill it. It wasn’t easy, and it took a long time to get there. But it finally happened. And reading that passage from Eldredge the other day made me realize that this filling needs to take place daily. I need to make that, or rather allow that to happen. Because if I don’t allow my heart, my self, to be filled with the Love and comfort of God, something else will fill it. And there is nothing the enemy would like more than for me to come to more agreements about God.
That’s the other thing. I know I have more agreements about God. I know there are lies I believe that I have not uncovered yet. I think it takes an emotional trigger to uncover them. And once uncovered, I can hold them up to God’s truth. I suppose I need to pray for triggering then, don’t I? I need light shined on the hidden places in my heart. And the cool thing about God is that he will not remove something without replacing it with something else. When I relinquish my death grip on those old lies and agreements, Jesus replaces them with truth.
Another point Eldredge makes is that we can also come to positive agreements about God.
That He will always be there.
That he loves not just us, but me.
That His love endures.
Give thanks to Lord, for He is good, His love endures forever…
That snatch of song just occurred to me. How interesting the ways God chooses to reveal truth. Through song. Poetry. A word from a friend, even.
Anyway, it’s 6:30 a.m., and I just remembered that I forgot to feed Kiki and Little Man. I remembered that I forgot. is that even possible?
….sigh…..
A Work in Progress 