The sad part about existence is we can search our whole lives for the One who was in front of us all along, simply and lovingly waiting on us.
“From one man he created all the nations throughout the whole earth. He decided beforehand when they should rise and fall, and he determined their boundaries. “His purpose was for the nations to seek after God and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him—though he is not far from any one of us. For in him we live and move and exist. As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring” (Acts 17:26-28, NLT).
In all our wondering and wandering, God is near, standing before us.
“Sometimes we make this God-thing too hard.” That's what my husband says. I wonder if it’spartly because we want Him as a different version of Himself—one who conforms to our terms? But deep in our guts we know we can't have Him our way, so we reject Him. We want a different God; a God with different expectations and desires of us.
The thing is, the One True God requires our all—all of our worship, all of our reverence, and all of our obedience—yes, even all of our heart and existence. But the "all thing" is the problem, it’s what we reject because, if we must give our "all," then, what on earth will be left of us?
"There's too much living to be had," we think to ourselves.
• We like our individuality.
• We like our fierce independence.
• We like making our own decisions.
But the question we must ask ourselves is this:
Is my way working for me?
In the stillness, am I fully alive and crazy satisfied?
Am I deeply comforted in spirit, or is my soul feeling strangely alone?
What about death?
Do you look forward to the day you'll shut your eyes here, eternally?
Or does the thought scare you to death?
If so, I get it.
There was a time I feared death, too.
I feared not knowing what eternity was like.
Was heaven for real, and hell, too, for that matter?
If so, I wanted heaven!
Today is much different, though. Today I want the Jesus of heaven. My Beloved Savior, Whom I cannot wait to see face-to-face. Because I love Him so much… Because He has loved me so much—even in all of my messiness and human frailties.
Yesterday a friend asked me while talking about Jesus, "You really feel it, don't you?”
"I feel Him...yes. When I don't sense His nearness, honestly, I’m miserably lonely."
Cause, that’s just it.
When we lose our lives in Him, that's when we find the fulfilling life we're dying for, and pining for. What we're searching for is Him, Jesus the Christ. We want His love, His forgiveness, His grace, and His purposes at work in our lives. Indeed, Love Divine, the LORD God Almighty, there's no one or nothing like Him.
That's what I tell Him all the time.
I cannot get over Him. Nor do I want to. He's everything to me.
And I want Him to be everything to you, too.