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Tucked
back into the corner of a loud and bustling taqueria
we met for lunch. The food was good but not nearly as
filling as the conversation and fellowship we shared.
Over the noise of a million other conversations and
orders being called, I poured out my heart to Robyn.
Robyn is a friend that I met on a trip to Israel. She
has a wonderfully vibrant yet gentle spirit. As I have
gotten to know Robyn over the last year and a half,
one of the things I appreciate about her is that she
cares for people, a quality that I know comes from a
heart that seeks after God. Today we met to talk about
struggles in my life and where they are coming from.
Out of the conversation came the deeper issues of knowing
and believing that I am totally and completely loved
by God. Many young women struggle to believe this.
As
Robyn and I applied the truth of the scripture to my
problem, I shared with Robyn a realization I had come
to a couple months earlier. “Challenged to look
at who I really was I began to see in me a great need
to be loved, a need for attention and affection.”
“What a woman desires is unfailing love…”
Pr. 19:22 (NIV). “It was like someone had dug
in my heart this huge hole and given me a tiny cup in
which to gather something to fill it with, and I felt
desperate to do so. Every morning I woke up I felt as
if I would pick up my little cup, sit on the street
corner of life and beg for any love anyone could spare.
The most discouraging part of all was that not all types
of love filled the hole. Some love and attention only
seemed to dig the hole even deeper. Lies masquerading
as healthy affection took what genuine love I did have
away with it. Each night I would return home from my
begging to cry to my heavenly father. I had cried to
him, but not out for him, I hadn’t come to the
place of being willing to turn wrong love away and ask
for his extravagant love alone. Here he was waiting
to fill me past capacity to overflowing, yet each night
I would fall asleep exhausted from my best efforts,
closing my eyes to the gift of his unconditional love.
I am desperate to be loved,” I told Robyn. “Finally
I am learning where to get real love from and I recognize
the rest for what it is, lies and thieves.”
After
my confessional blurb, Robyn made the remark “The
thing women struggle with most is the desire to be loved,
whether single or married.” She said, “We
need to stay single minded on Christ and his love.”
We continued to discuss how to solve some of the female
population’s love issues when we came to the point
that: though many of us know God is love, we don’t
believe in our hearts that he loves us personally. Psalms
32:11(NIV) says “Many are the woes of the wicked,
but the Lord’s unfailing love surrounds the woman
who trusts in him.” It is this statement that
brings me to my point:
Many
of us are believers living in unbelief. We cannot
live in the love of God because we don’t truly
believe the Lord’s declaration of love is for
us.
I
asked Robyn, “How do you get what is here in your
head, down here into your heart and into your life?”
She looked at me and replied “Maybe we should
start by praying, spending time asking God to change
our hearts and help us to see his love as a reality
in our lives.”
Driving
home my heart was convicted of the power of that prayer.
If I, or any of us women, would spend time on our knees
asking God to change our hearts, to heal us of our unbelief,
I think the outcome would be amazing. Lives would be
changed, relationships healed, the hurting would find
comfort. All of this is nothing new; it is the same
gift God has been offering for generations. Let us not
pass this gift by, let us be a generation of women that
truly grabs a hold of the message and life changing
power of God’s unconditional love for his children.
I came away from my Thursday lunch date with Robyn with
an even stronger grasp of the calling God has given
me: to build a website that ministers to the needs of
Christian, young women, to provide an additional place
where they can refresh themselves in the love of God,
so that they might live daily in his love, bringing
glory to the Father. “And I pray that you, being
rooted and established in love, may have power, together
with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and
high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this
love that surpasses knowledge- that you may be filled
to the measure of all the fullness of God.” Eph
3:17-19 (NIV)
written
by Brooke Heidi
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