I believe that's been happening a lot more recently. Where I'm having to verbally communicate my thoughts. And it's hard. For example. I know how and why I feel the way I do bout prayer. But most of the times it's unexplainable because you yourself don't necessarily have to define it to yourself in words. Cause.. Well you already understand it. You collect all this from experience, emotion, knowledge, etc. It's hard to clump that into words that restrain all of the above. Esp for me. Because I don't know many words. I have many hand movements but that doesn't truly justify the depth or feel of my thoughts towards something. It's possibly only a glimpse. Maybe it is always just a glimpse and it's for the receiving end to experience the true depth of the other's worded thought in observation. That made it sound like watching lab rats... I need to quit rambling.
Is it just me or does it feel like ages when you're going through something. And you look back and realize it had only been one day or two. For two days this past week I was silent towards God. The feeling of complacency. No need for God seeped in. I felt numb towards any desire to seek Him. I felt blank and quiet. So I watched TV. I watched two. No. Three TV shows. You're probably thinking that's not horrible. But I quit watching TV because I am a fiend when it comes to watching television. Regardless I continued to feel nothing because nothing was really going on. (That's a horrible excuse. Stupid.)
Then Sunday morning came and God woke me up that morning and sweetly asked in a whisper how come I hadn't spent any time with Him. And that broke me. Every emotion of shame to sorrow to being shown grace overflowed in me that brought me to tears.
Exodus 34:6-7.
...The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin.
How much love. Seriously. God is compassionate towards people who flat out sin against him. It's humanly impossible to wrap my mind around how great His love is. Esp. when I read through the Bible and time in and time out read bout how rebellious the people are yet God's compassion never fades. He never quits pouring out His love.
Nehemiah 9:19-21, 27, 30-31.
Because of your great compassion you did not abandon them in the desert... You gave your good sPirit to instruct them, You did not withhold your manna from their mouths and you gave them water for theird thirst. For forty years you sustained them in the desert; they lacked nothing their clothes did not wear out nor did their feet become swollen.
From heaven you heard them and in your great compassion, you gave them deliverers, who rescued them from the hand of their enemies.
For many years you were patient with them... But in your great mercy you did not put an end to them or abandon them, for you are a gracious and mericful God.
Jeremiah 32:41.
They will be my people, and I will be their God. I will give them singleness of heart and action, so that they will always fear me for their own good and the good of their children after them. I will make an everlasting covenant with them: I will never stop doing good to them... I will rejoice in doing them good... with all my heart and soul.
Romans 5:8.
But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinner, Christ died for us.
1 John 3:16.
This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us.
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I was reminded of Revelation 2:4-5. "Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken your first love. Remember the height from which you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first." I recently heard a sermon on Revelation 2. and the tonality he spoke about stuck out to me. He was talking bout how it's one thing to be told gently, "God loves you." But it's another when a preacher shouts at you, "GOD LOVES YOU." It doesn't sound like sweet, affectionate, lavish unconditional love. Does He say it in anger? To drive guilt into you? You can say something really sweet in the wrong tone and it can change the meaning of it.
"What's the tone that Jesus uses in this passage? I don't know for sure but I have a guess... I think He says it with a broken and tender and compassionate heart... My best friend in college was dating this one girl for a year, year and a half and one day out of no where she changed her mind and broke up with him. One Saturday morning I remember he woke up and he was weeping. See that's the emotion of one who loves and is rejected its this tender compassionate broken heart because he still loved her but she didn't love him back. With Jesus there is no body, no one, no one, no one (singing Alicia Keys) who loves you like Jesus loves you. I feel like he says it like a lover who has been rejected." -P. DC
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God, You love me.. I'm so unworthy for this love. Yet how can I say no to such pure and unconditional love. How can I say no to true love. When all of us are out to fulfil the deepest longings and desires in our hearts. I've been found by Love. I'm loved by the King. And how foolish it would be for me to reject the deepest desires of my heart to be met. When it is so freely given to me. (1 Cor. 2:12) I'm in the presence of True Love.
No eye has seen, no ear has heard,
No mind has ever conceived
The glorious things that You have prepared
For everyone who has believed
You brought us near and You called us Your own
And made us joint heirs with Your Son.
How high and how wide,
How deep and how long,
How sweet and how strong is Your love.
How lavish Your grace,
How faithful Your ways,
How great is Your love, oh Lord.
Objects of mercy who should have known wrath
We’re filled with unspeakable joy.
Riches of wisdom, unsearchable wealth,
And the wonder of knowing Your voice.
You are our treasure and our great reward,
Our hope and our glorious King.
-Mark Altrogge, How Great is Your Love
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That was a lot of rambling.
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