God's love

Sharing this blog post I first wrote when I was 23. Praying that this blesses and encourages you!

I recently read a quote where someone compared God's love to ruby slippers, those glittery red shoes Dorothy wears in The Wizard of Oz. I don't think any analogy could ever really perfectly describe something as vast and deep as God's love, but I actually liked this comparison.

Here's the quote:"Everything you long for, you've already been given. You're already loved beyond your wildest dreams. You are wearing the ruby slippers. They've been on your feet the whole time." 

For most of the movie, Dorothy searches for a way to get home, unaware that she already has what she needs. The ruby slippers she was given are the answer. All along, she's had what she needed. But it took her a while to realize it.

So often we go searching for love when the greatest love has already been given to us - all of us. We're already wearing the ruby slippers. We always have been. But we've lived like we were barefoot, always looking for what we don't know that we already have.

I do think there is a difference between God's love and love from others - and that we need both. While I do believe that God's love is complete and perfect, I also believe everyone needs love from other people too. Even God Himself, after He created man, said it wasn't good for him to be alone, and then He created woman. God wants us to be in relationships with others. To love them with the love He loves us with.

I just think the problem is when we try to substitute love from others for God's love, expecting them to love us as only God can. The greatest love in all the world is the love God has for you and me.

God loves each of us with a love so indescribable and vast and and amazing and that if we could just fathom an iota of it, it would change our lives forever.

God's love is the love every soul longs for. And I believe God designed us that way - with this longing - to draw us to Him, to seek Him, to find Him, and to discover in Him a love that sustains us and heals us and makes us whole.

God's love adds the sparkle and the beauty to our lives, makes every day an adventure and every breath a gift. It allows us to live with joy and peace, knowing that beyond the stardust and the clouds, there is a God who is our Heavenly Father, always watching over us and caring for us. It gives us confidence and strength and hope and everything we need.

And eventually, God's love changes our hearts and lives so much that we have to say something and share with as many people as we can about the greatness of His love so that they could walk through life knowing this.

So that they could take each step aware of the ruby slippers they wear and not spend another second thinking they're barefoot and unloved. So that they would forever know that God has always loved and will always love them. And that that will never change.

Part Two: Praying for Your Future Husband

Hey, friends!

Thanks again for joining me on this journey as I blog through the book, Praying for Your Future Husband, by Robin Jones Gunn and Tricia Goyer.

For this post, we'll be studying chapter 3!

Chapter 3: Pray He will be a God Lover

Robin lives in Hawai'i and she shares in this chapter that there are apparently over 60 words to describe wind in the Hawaiian language. I never knew this! Wow! She mentions two in particular: one which means a light "scattering flowers" wind and another which is quite different - "canoe-eating" wind. 

Robin shares her wish that our English language had more words for the different meanings of love.

She then describes an example of this very thing in her life. She was 15 years old when a guy told her that he loved her for the first time. And he said it on the very first day he met her. (Umm...red flag right there!). Anyways, his name was Davey, he was 16, and they met at a church youth group event. At the end of the day, he wrote down her phone number on his hand and as she drove away in the van with the other girls, he shouted after her, "I love you! I'll call you!" 

He did call - every night for a couple weeks. And then, the calls slowly stopped until he never called her again. Robin didn't seem too scarred by it. I'm sure he didn't mean to hurt her (hopefully). She writes that while his love might have been sincere in the moment, it wasn't lasting. It was like a "scattering flowers" sort-of love. She goes on to write that "real, true, lasting love isn't rooted in emotions. True love comes from God's heart" (p. 29).

This story highlights an important point. We can get all excited about love when someone shows interest in us, yet then it doesn't last. We can be disappointed by a man. At the same time, we can also be very blessed by a man's affections for us.

However, as wonderful as it could ever be, God's love will ALWAYS be greater. God's love for each of us is "a passionate, 'canoe-eating,' life-changing, lay-down-His-life-for-you sort of love" (p. 29). And God commands us to respond to His love by loving Him in return. We love because He FIRST loved us (1 John 4:19).

Jesus said that the greatest commandment is to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength. When you love God, you are then able to love your neighbor as yourself. Robin points out the order: first, we are commanded to love God and then, out of His love for us and our love for Him, we are enabled to truly love others. In order for our earthly love stories to flourish, we must first be rooted in the love of God. Wow, that's so good! 

Tricia then starts her section of the chapter and shares how she got her first kiss when she was 13 years old. His name was Steven and afterwards, Tricia began spending all of her time with him. She hadn't wanted to sleep with him, but she rationalized that all of her favorite movie characters did that with their boyfriends, so why shouldn't she? Plus, she didn't want to lose him and she thought "if I gave Steven everything he wanted, we would stay together forever" (p. 31). Yet before the summer ended, her dream to be with Steven forever was dashed forever; his family was moving away. 

I cannot imagine the kind of pain young Tricia must have been feeling right then. And at only 13 years old! What's so amazing is that she writes that she didn't know it all then, but God was pursuing her in her brokenness and wanting to have a relationship with her even when it felt like her heart would never be whole again. Amen! No matter what, God is always reaching out to us in His love that makes us whole, His Truth that sets us free, and His grace that allows us to believe in His love and Truth. 

Tricia and Robin wrote out a list of things to specifically pray for regarding our future husband and his love for God, as well as for ourselves. Check it out and begin to pray these things for your future husband:

• Ask Jesus to help you break emotional and physical bonds with any guys to whom you have given yourself in the past. Jesus wants to be the One you love with your whole heart.

• Ask Jesus to help your future husband break off and be free of all emotional and physical bonds he has with old girlfriends.

• Pray that both of you will set your hearts and your affections fully on the Lord.

• Pray that both of you recognize that God is the Relentless Lover and that He wants your lives to be rooted in Him (p. 33).

During this series, I'll be concluding each blog post with a prayer that I've written. Read their book to see the prayers Robin and Tricia have written for your future husband. Let's pray that our future husbands will love God with all they are:

Dear Heavenly Father, 

What a beautiful adventure it is following Jesus! :) Thank You for all of the blessings You have given me - from the smallest things like sunshine to flowers blooming to friends and family to Your great love for me. I pray in Jesus' name that You would capture my future husband's heart with Your love. Let him know Your amazing love for him and let it rock his life! If he is giving away parts of who he is to someone else, show him Your better way and heal him from past relationships. Give him clarity and wisdom to make choices that please You. I pray the same for myself. Give me the strength by the power of Your Holy Spirit to stand up for Your Truth and my convictions for Your glory. Where we need forgiveness, God please forgive us. Where we need healing, God please heal us. Where we need the knowledge of Your love, show us the Truth. Your Word says in 1 John 3:16 that "This is how we know what love is: Jesus laid down His life for us." If we ever question or doubt Your love, turn our eyes to Jesus and show us again how far You went to tell us that You love us. Let us both walk in the light and meet each other walking on the narrow road, amazed at Your gracious love and Your perfect ways. Above anyone or anything else, let us love You, Father. Let Your opinion of us matter the most to us. Let Your Truth speak louder than everything else. Let Your glory shine through our lives. Teach us how to love You with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength so that one day, we can love each other, rooted in Your love. Thank You for hearing and answering our prayers and thank You for always working everything for good when we love You. We know that true love for You is obedience. Show us how to walk in obedience in every area of our lives and how to honor You with all we are. We love You! In Jesus' name, Amen. 

Thank you, friends! This is a 12-part series and I plan to post every Thursday. See you next week!

You’re so loved and cherished by Jesus!

Colleen

P.S. I just heard this song for the first time tonight and it was so beautiful I had to share! :)

UPDATED BLOG SERIES: Praying for Your Future Husband

Hey, friends!

I first published this series almost five years ago. God’s put it on my heart to share this content again. I pray that these posts are an encouragement and blessing to you. That’s why I’m here. That’s why I write. Most of all, I pray that they point your heart to Jesus, the true Lover of your soul.

Some people may wonder what’s the point of praying for a husband when God may choose for you to stay single. Marriage, after all, is not guaranteed to us. What’s my response? You’re right. And yet…

…God has shown me in so many ways that the dreams He plants in our hearts are there for a reason. Ever since I can remember, I’ve dreamed about being a wife and a mommy. I’ve hoped and prayed for this for YEARS. I’ve surrendered it to the Lord and prayed fervently for His will. And this dream still remains. And so I pray. Not to convince God to follow my plans, but to seek Him for HIS dreams for my life. If you too feel called to be married one day, I invite you to join in this 12-part blog series on praying for your future husband.

This is going to be so fun!

For the next several weeks, I am going to be blogging through the book, "Praying for Your Future Husband" by Robin Jones Gunn and Tricia Goyer. I first came across this book when I was a senior in college and it was a great encouragement and inspiration to me. I am praying that this blog series will be a blessing to you! God has good plans for each of us and while we wait for the love story He has for us, let's prepare our heart and pray that God will prepare our future husband's heart as well. We may not always understand God's timing, but it is perfect. He is never late. 

I'm 31 years old and waiting for God to write my love story. If you had told me when I was thirteen that I would still be waiting on God for this, I probably wouldn't have liked to hear this! But you know what? God is so amazing! He knew that He had to work on my heart and my dreams before sending the right man into my life. I know that God didn't want me to be distracted or to go through unnecessary heartbreak, and while it hasn't always been easy, it has been SO WORTH IT! I wouldn't change anything. Not having an earthly romance has opened up my eyes to the beauty of a heavenly romance with Jesus. He is the Lover of my soul and while I look forward to being my future husband's bride one day, I know that even though that will be so wonderful and a long-awaited dream come true, it will never, ever, ever surpass the greatness of God's infinite love for me right now in this moment. How I pray you know the love of Christ like this!

The words of Ephesians 3:16-19 are my prayer for us as we get ready to start this journey together:

I pray that out of His glorious riches He may strengthen you with power through His Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, 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. -Ephesians 3:16-19

As I've waited for my earthly “fairy tale,” I’ve really met Jesus and my heart’s realized that it was His love all along that my heart was craving. I share all of this because I want teen girls and young women to know this Truth: Jesus' love is the love that your heart truly longs for; He loves us with an everlasting love. Wow! We can completely and fully trust Him to bring about the right relationship with the right man at the right time - IF THAT’S HIS WILL - because of who Jesus is and who we are to Him.

Instead of grumbling through or wishing this season of singleness away, look at it as time to really discover who Jesus is, how much He loves you, and how much you mean to Him. When you discover this, it will change your life and you'll live with an unshakable confidence and beauty because of Jesus' love for you. Instead of looking for Mr. Right, you'll start looking for those ways that God wants to use you to be a blessing to this world because you know that Jesus is taking care of your heart and your dreams. 

So, let's begin this journey! 

For Part One of this blog series, we will be going over chapters one and two. 

Chapter 1: An Extraordinary Mystery 

In this first chapter, Robin and Tricia both share how they began praying for their future husbands when they were just teenagers. How awesome! They also describe how praying for our future husbands is not just for ourselves, but for our generation. Through prayer, we are asking God for a generation of set-apart men. This is bigger than ourselves and our Pinterest-inspired wedding dreams; this is a battle! The enemy of our souls does not want men to be set-apart, radical followers of Jesus Christ. The devil wants them plagued with compromise, met with defeat, and weighed down by sin. God has specific purposes for men and for women; He designed us to compliment and help one another. There are unique roles He has for men to fulfill as sons, brothers, husbands, fathers, and leaders. We are not just praying for the heart of our future husband here - but for the heart of our future children's father, the heart of the future leader in our home, our church, our society, our country, our world. Whoa. Let that sink in.

Robin and Tricia describe prayer as an "extraordinary mystery." We do not always know all the reasons why we are to pray or all the ways God works through prayer, but we are commanded in His Word to pray as an act of obedience to Him and to pray without ceasing (1 Thessalonians 5:17). As we pray, God changes us and our heart begins to reflect His heart. He broadens our perspective from that of one just concerned with ourselves to one burdened for our city, our generation, our world. A heart that doesn't just long for one man to turn to God and live set-apart for Him, but to see a GENERATION of young men choosing to forsake the world and live for God's glory, honor, and praise - even when it's not popular, even if they have to stand alone. To see more men in our generation living victoriously, unashamed of pursuing purity, unafraid of the enemy's schemes, and boldly and courageously doing the will of God - this is WHY we pray. If we as daughters of the King will ask Him to change the hearts of the young men all around us, we would see the world change like we could never imagine! 

Chapter 2: Pray for His Heart

Robin shares the idea of our heart being like a garden and that whatever we plant and nurture there will grow and bear fruit in our lives. When she was just 13 years old away at summer camp, she truly surrendered her heart to Jesus and "opened the gate to the garden of her heart" to Him. She gave up her plans for her life and prayed this prayer to God:

"I want to live the life You dreamed up when You created me."

Wow. Isn't that so beautiful?! Asking the God who created you to help you fulfill the purpose that He created for you. I can really think of nothing greater than this after accepting Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. This is a prayer that God always answers! Nothing brings greater joy to His heart than when we, because we have been made right in His sight through faith in Jesus, ask Him to work through us to love and bless this world. We give up our will, our plans, our dreams - and ask the Creator of the entire universe and of our very life to empower us to live the life that He had in mind when He thought of us.

Hear this: All of us are here for a reason. None of us are accidents or mistakes. God has amazing, glorious, and beautiful plans for every single person in this world. 

And yet how many of us actually humble ourselves and ask God what we should do with our lives? We so often go after what we think we should do, or what our parents think we are good at, or what our teachers or coaches said we should do.

But what about God? What about His opinion? Surely He knows exactly why He created us and has us here at this moment of history for such a time as this! It's no coincidence. Each of us has been lovingly fashioned by the hands of God to show His love, beauty, grace, and Truth to this world through the lives - the very breaths - He has given to us. Our lives are a gift! Doesn't that thought just overwhelm your heart with the love of God? His love is so amazing - beyond all of my words to describe it. Please go read Psalm 139. You are SO LOVED by Him.

And God doesn't just love you and me this way. But this whole world. THIS WHOLE WORLD! Every person you ever meet. Every stranger you walk by on the street. Every person in the world! His heart for each of us is that we know His love through faith in His Son, Jesus Christ, and then out of that love, live with a new heart desiring to live the life that He planned for us long ago before the foundations of the world (Ephesians 1:4).

As we begin this journey to pray for our future husband, no prayer is greater than asking God to lead him to this place also. A place where his heart is open to God's love and Truth through Jesus Christ. And then out of this revelation, that he would allow God's love and Truth to set him free and change his heart so that his greatest desire is to know and love God and thereby live out the purposes God created him to walk in, fulfill, and accomplish. Wow, that's so exciting! Prayer is so exciting! 

God wants to use our hearts that have been changed to cry out to Him in prayer that others' hearts would also be changed. That they would cry out in repentance and experience His forgiveness and salvation. That their heart would be awakened to the great mission and purpose God created just for them to do on this earth. Prayer aligns our hearts with God's heart so that others’ hearts may know His heart.  

Let's conclude with a prayer for our future husband's heart and for the hearts of the young men of our generation:

Dear Heavenly Father, 

Thank You for Your unfailing love and faithfulness. Thank You for drawing my heart to Jesus, changing my heart by the power of the Holy Spirit, and working in me to accomplish the great and glorious purposes You created for my life. I ask with confidence and boldness that You would do the same work in my future husband's heart, as well as in the hearts of the young men of my generation. Let their hearts beat to praise You and to receive Your praise; let them not be distracted by this world or deceived by the enemy. Guard their hearts and teach them how to guard their hearts as well. Lead this generation of young men into all of Your Truth and inspire them to abide in Jesus and His Word, which brings cleansing, healing, restoration, and new life. Convict them of the areas of their hearts they need to surrender to You and fill them with the power of the Holy Spirit so that they may live radically set-apart lives for Your glory, honor, and praise. Let them be completely unashamed of the Gospel which is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes. Most of all, fill their hearts with Your great, great love so that they would love You with all of their heart, soul, mind, and strength - and out of Your love for them and their love for You - be compelled to love everyone around them. In the strong name of Jesus we pray, Amen. 

You’re so loved by Jesus!!

See you soon for Part 2!

Colleen