My Sorrow -- Grace

It is hard to love someone who denies your longings.

It is hard to love someone who listens to your prayers for over a year and does not answer them.

It is hard to love someone who brings your dreams within your grasp . . . and snatches them away again.  You totter forward to take them, so excited and giddy with delight because at last you will have the desires of your heart . . . and just when you are about to take them, the hand seizes them away from you and you fall, face-first, into a mud puddle.

It is hard to love someone who seems to tease you with things you want . . . and never gives them to you fully.

It is even harder when that someone is God.

It is hard to give utmost devotion when you feel that God no longer cares, when you feel that He does not answer prayers, and when you feel that He has been teasing you by almost giving you exactly what you’ve wanted for a long time.

And yet that is what He asks us to do.

“Take up your cross and follow Me,” Jesus said.  (Matthew 16:25).  He went on to further say that to take up one’s cross is to deny himself ungodliness and worldly lust.  And in Luke, Jesus said that those who do not take up their crosses cannot be His disciples.  (Luke 14:27).

I do not believe that God in any way hurts us just to hurt us.

I do not believe that God in any way desires to break our hearts.

I do not believe that God in any way wants to tease us.

I do not believe that God in any way desires us to feel lost and alone.

But I do believe He wants me to follow Him.

I am wayward, selfish, and immature.  I sin, I desire ungodly things, and I am in no way prepared to follow Him.

His work is preparing me for that.

His work is preparing me to follow Him to the ends of the earth if need be — at ANY cost.

His work is preparing me and in that preparing me He must sometimes deny my desires.  He must sometimes break my heart.

In breaking my heart, He will renew it, and in renewing it it will be molded to follow Him.

And so it is, with bitter tears still on my cheeks, I close my eyes and breathe a deep sigh.

I open them to find Him in front of me, holding out His scarred hand.  I take it in my own.

Together we walk down the narrow, straight way.  Together we navigate life’s storms and He shelters me from the bitterest.  Yet He knows when I need to build strength and He lets me suffer when I must.  This might mean my muscles are sore from walking with Him; my feet may bleed from traversing the narrow trail.  Perhaps it rains and I become wet.  Perhaps a tree falls across our path and together we must move it.  Yet always this builds strength of soul and adds to my character.

It is His love for me that does so.

It is His love.

God is love.

(From my blog, Zion Calling.)

-- Grace <3