Monday, January 18, 2010

Surrender & Hope


“Worry implies that we don’t quite trust that God is big enough, powerful enough, or loving enough to take care of what’s happening in our lives.”
-Francis Chan, Crazy Love

Talk about a slap across the face. Last night I practically cried myself to sleep in a whiny and frustrated act of self-pity. All I could think about was how there couldn’t possibly be any guy out there searching for me. That I would be alone forever. That Kyle was right, maybe I am supposed to cause single forever because there can’t possibly be anyone out there who wants me.

It’s like 1:30 in the morning last night, and all I can think about is how I don’t want to be like Pat and Earlyne (even if they are happy being single and have amazing ministries). How I don’t want to be single forever, how unfair it is that I would have so many dreams and never get them fulfilled.

Me, me, me, me. Whine, whine, whine.

Then this morning, I’m still thinking about this. Frittering my life away by detail as Thoreau would say, and then I start reading. I am reading my Bible. I was reading in Ezra about the rebuilding of the temple. God had such specific detail and directions for the temple. So much detail and He understood them all and made sure everything was just right.

Then I open up Crazy Love and start reading Chapter 2: You Might Not Finish This Chapter, and Francis Chan is talking about how there is nothing normal in any given day. It only seems normal because we (I) wrap ourselves (myself) in our (my) worries and personal lives (life).

Each day is detail and wonder, and this shouldn’t suck away my life and heart. No, it should be expanded to the point of bursting.

What is it to worry? It is to think God can’t control it all or that He doesn’t know me well enough to see and understand my dreams, and to think that He has forgotten what He has created me to be. It is to forget that God is big enough, powerful enough, and loving enough to take care of what is happening in my life.

God is big, powerful (all-powerful), and He loves me.

God has placed in my heart a large and plentiful supply of love that is holding on for the day He brings the right guy into my life. He has given me my dreams, and God knows all the details of my life. All of them.

God will make a way when there seems to be no way, like it says in that song.

More importantly, I do need to surrender my dream of finding the right guy and falling in love. Not because I should give up hope and not because it will never happen, but because I don’t know how it will happen. Only God does, and on top of that, God knows every detail and dream and whisper of a hope in my heart and far He knows them fair better than I do; I wouldn’t even know what I should be asking for.

This should actually give me more hope. God loves me and knows my details. When I cry myself to sleep thinking God’s being unfeeling or that He will take my dreams from me, I’m being an idiot.

The only time God will take my dreams from me is so that He can take them, reshape them, and make them even better.

Two verses to ponder:

“Daughters of Jerusalem, I charge you
by the gazelles and by the does of the field:
Do not arouse or awaken love
until it so desires.”
-Song of Solomon 3:5

and finally:

“He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also in set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.”
-Ecclesiastes 3:11

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