Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, all of your soul, and all of your strength.
I always knew of that verse, and always knew that was the most important commandment and what not, but for some reason I never really considered applying that to my life. I mean, I think that I've believed in God for a long time, and I got baptized when I was 14 and all, but lately I've just been discovering how lacking my walk with God has been. I'm rediscovering verses and theology that I've always known, but have never taken seriously.
Seriously, do we really think about what it means to love the Lord your God with all our hearts, all of our souls, and all of our strengths?? That's something just revolutionary!
This Thanksgiving break has been something of a rediscovering God and rediscovering myself. It's like a mid-life crisis kind of thing, and I was just questioning where I would go from here. I was questioning my faith, and it was hard for me because I had some pretty intense feelings that just seemed too much to bear. It had me questioning the things that I thought I had learned, and I didn't understand the root of these feelings. Didn't I learn to put my hope in God? Wasn't God my strength? Then why do I feel like I'm in such despair?
Well, I learned two things so far. Faith isn't depending on whether I'm feeling like I have faith in God. And two, I learned that I do not in fact love God with all of my heart, and all of my soul, and all of my strength. There are so many things in my life that I put above God--that seem so much more real to God. I
thought about some of the things that I was holding onto. I would say that, since James Cha came into share with CBS, I think that I'm pretty ready to give up my own professional aspirations (but we'll see how true that is in the future). I'd always reasoned that I could glorify God wherever I was, so I might as well be a professor, but I realized after James Cha shared that I have to glorify God, not in whatever position I am, but in whatever place God calls me to be--whether that's being a professor or a missionary. I think I was pretty fine with that, but honestly, the scariest thing ever for me was, what if God calls me to be single for the rest of my life =o. Am I willing to offer up relationships to Him? Am I willing to love Him above my love for that? Ugh!
I think we all struggle with different things, but I think it just means that we each have to challenge ourselves to see if there is something that we value above God. We are called to love God with all of our heart, and all of our soul, and all of our strength. The ability to love God doesn't arise naturally from our own hearts--but are we ready to give up our idols to God in prayer? Are we ready to want God to be our first love? I personally think it's a scary thought, but I know that there is no other choice.
Hopefully I do get married someday, but by committing it to God, it means that God is more important to me than that. And if it doesn't end up happening, God will still satisfy.
I feel like I should have learned this lesson a while back.
I was just thinking about some of these things yesterday while driving. Like how Jaeson Ma gave 7 years of singleness to God. And as I was thinking about it, I wasn't sure if I'd be willing to do the same, even though this life is only very very temporary and fleeting. Maybe often we don't act like it's temporary, and we don't act like things are urgent. But yea, it's def. easy to sink into despair when we think about ourselves and what we THINK we want/need.
ReplyDeletehm, also I wanted to say. Awesome. Thanks for posting. I would not have been able to post so openly about these kinds of topics. i usually leave that to boundless haha.
I should probably read boundless, so I don't need to post things like this
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