9 "How can a young man keep his way pure?
By living according to your word. 10 I seek you with all my heart;
do not let me stray from your commands.
11 I have hidden your word in my heart
that I might not sin against you."
2 Timothy 1:7
"For God has given us not a spirit of fear but of power and love and self-control."
Psalm 37:4
"Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart."
Psalm 139:14
"I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well."
I recently finished reading "Blue Like Jazz". Btw, great book. GREAT book. The Author, Donald Miller, had a lot to say about love and the Gospel. I found many of his ideas profound. After reading a friend's facebook status which said,
"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken." C.S. Lewis The Four Loves
and "if love was a choice, who would choose such exquisite pain?"
I had a eureka moment. In response this is what I said:
Love makes the world go 'round! Dude, love is really all we have, we are commanded to love one another... Christ demonstrates how we should treat each other by loving, being compassionate, caring, putting others first, being close (and by close i mean intimate...) really knowing each other. If we live like this and remember that we are all siblings, and how much we love our siblings, then how should we love our neighbors? As ourselves right? which also means we are to love ourselves. God created u sin His image. We are image bearers and heirs to the throne. Why wouldn't we love ourselves?
Psalm 139:14 "I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well." So... after all is said and done... LOVE WINS. God is Love. :) *steps off soap box*
To elaborate, I'm just realizing that we are called not only to Love God above all others, and love others before ourselves, but that does not say we can't love ourselves. Simply stating that we should love others before ourselves implies that we are to love ourselves. I take joy in the fact that I am a masterpiece and that my Father rejoices ("hallel"-hebrew word meaning 'to spin about wildly'... cool huh?) over me with singing. Would I not be so honored to be the creation and delight of the most High God? This brings me to my next idea.
It is that we are to ENJOY following God's laws. Although, they are Laws, they are put in place to keep us from harm. God uses that same thing in parenting. It's parallel. When you have children, you tell them do not play in the street, it is so that they don't get hit by a car. They are to have a healthy fear of the street. At the time, the child is not aware of why they shouldn't play in the street, just that they are limited to the yard and sidewalks and that their parents don't want them to be able to go anywhere else. They look at it like a restriction or that they're just being mean. We ought to thank and respect our parents for setting rules for us as children and teenagers because that is how we've learned. We've learned either by listening to what they say. or by mistake. That's how I normally learn things. As adults, we think we know so much more... which relatively, we do. But looking at the big picture, for us, there are so many pieces missing. We can't really even see the big picture. So when God puts rules into play to keep us safe, physically, emotionally, mentally, we feel that He's a mean God, that He's got all these laws that we're supposed to follow.. Being a gospel believing christian is NOT about following the laws. Now, that is a very important piece of the puzzle, but to focus on and get caught up in following the laws makes being a christian a duty. Why would we want just another duty? We DON'T! We should take joy in following His laws because when we are inconstant communion with our King, we don't see His rules as being mean, We see his rules as gifts, from a loving father who loves us so much that he would put those into place to keep us safe. In Psalm 37, verse 4, David says, "Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart." --- This verse you can look at all together, and you can separate it and digest each part individually.
"Delight yourself in the Lord..."
First, look at what Thesaurus.com has to say about the what it means to delight:
| Main Entry: | delight |
| Part of Speech: | verb |
| Definition: | make happy; experience happiness |
Synonyms: | allure, amuse, arride, attract, be the ticket, charm, cheer, content, delectate, divert,enchant, enrapture, entertain, exult, fascinate, freak out, gladden, glory, go over big, gratify,groove*, hit the spot, jubilate, knock dead, knock out, please, pleasure, ravish, rejoice, satisfy, score, send, slay, thrill, tickle pink, tickle to death, turn on, wow
|
Isn't that interesting? Just sit and ponder what it would be like to do all those things. And then think about what all "The Lord" encompasses. How are we to delight ourselves in the Lord? Compare your relationship with Christ to the relationship you have with your best friend, your spouse, or your healthiest relationship. Think about even the small things that bring you joy in those relationships. God is SO MUCH BIGGER than that. He should be your EVERYTHING. I'm so guilty of putting myself, control, others, material things, love, etc.. in priority over Him. How does it feel to be 2nd? not great right? If you're married, or have every been in a relationship, how would it feel if your significant other put someone else before you? How would it feel if they loved that other person, pursued that other person, spent more time with that other person more than you? AWFUL. HEART WRENCHING. Think about it. It grieves the heart of God. Why would we ever choose anything but Him anyway? Anything other than our Lord falls short. Anyone other than our Lord will give us TEMPORARY, SHALLOW, CONDITIONAL, at times DRUNKEN, APATHETIC, and SELFISH love and acceptance. I'm not saying that we are incapable of having deep and meaningful relationships with other christians and even non-believers! We are! But nothing will ever be as satisfying as the UNCONDITIONAL, FOREVER, INTIMATE, SELFLESS, HONORING, RESPECTING, COMPASSIONATE, DEEP, SINCERE, AND GENUINE, love and acceptance that we have to only RECEIVE from the heart of God. Why not delight in that? ha! We'd be crazy not to! ... or sinners...
"... and He will give you the desires of your heart."
The second part of this verse can be taken two ways. He will give you the things that your heart desires, OR, He will cause your heart to desire what His heart desires for you. Which would you prefer and why? I prefer the latter. If I long for my life to be good and pleasing to him, to honor my Lord, to praise him in everything, through everything, and all the time... and He knows far better than I what is best for me, then why tell him what I think is best? He does enjoy to bless us with things that we desire, but He also blesses us with things that we don't know we desire until we experience that blessing. Again, the big picture that we can't see, is so vast. This part, once you get that they are HIS desires that we long to long for, it's pretty simple I think...
