Do I dare trust His heart?

As I've been reading this book, my first thoughts were excitement over it, then a feeling of being let down because I didn't feel like it was affecting me. It felt like just one more thing to add to my to do list, one more thing to get through because I had to. Between reading chapter 6 today and a long hard conversation that was had, I now feel like this book truly will help me in my growth towards the Lord.

Chapter 6 takes a long hard look at who God is and why he even bothered with us. So often, I forget who God is, what his heart is. I view him (if subconsciously) as a task master: someone to tell me what to do, what not to do, what I should be doing if I want to get it right. I also have a prevailing image in my brain: I am a soldier. That is what I am good for, that is my purpose. I am only a bloody, bruised soldier going to war. Suit up, and go. But today I had a thought. Does that give too much credit to the enemy even then? Yes, we are soldiers fighting for the Lord. He wouldn't give us armor if we weren't. But is that the prevailing image that I should have all the time? No one wants this ALL the time.

God is a lover. More than any of us, myself especially, can understand. While I'm always ready and waiting for him to bring down the hammer on everything I have done wrong recently, or haven't done perfectly, he has been waiting to bandage my wounds, tell me what I did right, and draw me nearer to him. So, how do I let my guard down enough to allow him to come near? This is a hard thing in this hard, task driven society. It's hard to imagine that God really (outside of us glorifying and praising him) just wants a romance with us. But isn't it romance that will drive the deepest loyalty, the strongest conviction, the hardest fight we have? We fight harder for things we care about and for people we know love and care for us. We throw down with others over insults to them. Doesn't it stand to reason that God is the same way?

God is the hero of the fairytale that I have spent my entire life yearning for. I've always wanted to be brave enough to have the adventure, to be the strong woman at the side of the hero. Truth is, I am part of a fairytale, and have been kept asleep to the reality of it. I don't see all the spiritual battles going on around me and over me. Even as I know they are happening, I've still been kept alseep to their realities. But God wants me to be his maiden. And not just a strong woman, but his damsel that he rescues and they go on to have glorious adventures together. So often I feel that I just need to run harder after God, I need more of his heart, I'm not doing it right, I have nothing left to give out anymore. But He has been pursuing me. Before the beginning of time. And there lies my hope, that while I am still walking this out, still figuring out how to let him in to the deepest parts of me, still allowing myself to be vulnerable with him, he won't give up and walk away.

Simon Tugwell said it beautifully at the end of the chapter: "So long as we imagine that it is we who have to look for God, we must often lose heart. But it is the other way around. He is looking for us. And so we can afford to recoginze that very often we are not looking for God: far from it, we are in full flight from him, in high rebellion against him. and he knows that and has taken it into account. He has followed us into our own darkness; there where we thought finally to escape him, we run straight into his arms. So we do not have to erect a false piety for ourselves, to give us the hope of salvation. Our hope is in his determination to save us, and he will not give in."

~Staci