Not just when I make time for You in my room with a guitar and a Bible. I want to be caught by You, swept off my feet, and completely starstruck by Your love.
Last week, I said that I would set a reminder to update this weekly, searching out who Jesus is today, and who we are to Him, and how He demonstrates Himself to and through us in our lives.
"Behold, I stand at the door, and knock."
It is not us, but He, who is doing the pursuing.
... but what is this voice inside, this longing, this utter groan that is not satisfied by love? Why do I feel like all of my time with Jesus is just me pursuing Him, and Him sometimes showing up? Why do I not always feel secure in His love? Is it my fault? Is it that I don't believe enough? I do believe, and that is why I am feeling...
H U R T
I am in pain. Inside, I am wounded, feeling rejected, like a friend who is a secondary friend, just there because the One who invited me didn't want me to feel left out. As if I have believed and gone and sought after Him, and He met me there, but didn't return the favor.
As if He appreciated and responded to my love, but never returned the affection.
Have you ever felt like God is only there for you when you're there for Him?
"If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and
we will come to him and make our home with him."
But I already believe and keep Your word.
I believe that God is pursuing me, and pursuing those that I talk to at the gas station, in Walmart, at the park, and in my friend circles.
"So, Abba, why do I feel like You don't dwell within me?"
I was in the shower, listening to a message for women about how God pursues each one of us according to our experiences, likes, and love languages.
As I was listening, there was a part I couldn't quite make out clearly, and it sounded like the speaker said "... storehouses of pain."
I was confused, because this didn't sound like it fit in the message.
Immediately after that, I saw (in my imagination) a room in my own heart, that was a room of pain. It was the place where I stored all of my rejection, every painful memory, every hurtful word, even every awkward situation. Everything that hurt me was boarded up in this room. It was the very room that I avoided like the plague.
I denied that I even had that room.
I believed I was unoffendable, untouchable, unmovable.
But there in the shower, in my spirit, I knew that I had just entered into this room, and I began to moan and cry.
It's a dark room. It's a lonely room. It's a room that I believed was washed away in the blood of Jesus.
But it's very real.
When I entered this room, I was feeling the pain that I had pushed away for so long, fresh and new. I was receiving what I had been bottling up for so long, and I was finally admitting to being hurt.
And that's when He surprised me.
Just as I saw myself in this room, and felt the pain of it, I saw that Jesus was standing—no, sitting—in the very middle of it.
He didn't have His hands wide open...
He wasn't shimmering with light...
He was simply, totally, and confidently...
there.
The Lord is near to those who have a broken heart, and
saves those who have a humbled spirit.
Family, He is in your pain. He has borne our griefs.
And He is with us.
... and they shall call His name Emmanuel...
God with us
This is who Jesus is.
This is how He shows Himself to us.
This is what He wants to restore to all people through us.
This, my friends, is our God. This is who He is today.
I invite you to go to that place of pain. I promise you that He's there. And I know He will never leave.
<3
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