Love Like Crazy

Love can change a person; it makes our hard hearts into soft squishy things. But do we truly know what love actually is? There's songs about it, books about it, words to convey it - but do we actually understand it? We talk about how much we love people, but do we actually love them? Here is the definition of love from the dictionary: "an intense feeling of deep affection"; do you think that's actually just what love is? We see "love" (or what we guess to be love) all around us, but maybe it's not real, true love. To acquire perfect love seems simple enough, but it isn't. We don't know of perfect love on this earth.

When I was younger and we were learning about the Fruit of the Spirit, the first one I learned about was love. We would recite the fruits all the time, whether it was with our parents or just with the Sunday school class. For a five year old child, I didn't know anything about love. As far as I was concerned, love was just a word and something that my parents showed me, though I couldn't exactly see it. Nowadays I still feel like it's a little fuzzy; do I really, truly understand love?

According to the Bible, this is what love really is:


"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails." 1 Corinthians 13:4-8a

That verse right there shows us exactly what pure love is. Love is patient, love is kind. Love does not envy or boast. In other words, that right there is perfect, unadulterated love.

Love is so crucial in our lives; I can't even stress how important it is. It's not the kind of love where you fall in love with someone and then marry them. This is the kind of love, where if someone is in desperate need, you come alongside them. It's the kind of love that when a friend is being wrongly accused, that you protect them. It's the kind of love that doesn't get jealous of things. It's the kind of love that is selfless; willing to lay down one's life for the other. It's the kind of love that slaps satan in the face, especially when he deserves it. It's the kind of love, that never fails, no matter what. So maybe love isn't like in the movies with a princess and a prince charming. Maybe love is when someone asks you for your coat, and you give them your shirt too (see Luke 6:30, Matthew 5:40). Love is going that extra mile when carrying someone's baggage on a rainy day.

It's hard to love. It's hard to love your enemies, because enemies can sometimes be stupid. And really, does God want us to love stupid people? I mean, come on God, even that horrible person that says rude things about me and hurts my feelings all the time? Even them? Yes, as hard as it is for me to say, God does want us to love our enemies, even the stupid ones. After all, love keeps no record of wrongs, and it always perseveres. "But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven." Matthew 5:44-45a So yes, love your enemies as much as you love the people around you; in fact, love them more then your friends or your family. If someone has wronged you, hurt your feelings, or you feel like they used your trust, love them to the moon and back.

My challenge to you is to love like crazy. Love because God first loved us. Remember 1 Corinthians 13 and it's tale of love, depicting what iridescent, beautiful love is. Pray for your enemies and your friends/family. Love the unloveable. Give someone your shirt and your coat; walk the extra mile. There is so much gorgeousness in our Father's love, and mirroring that only makes you a more gorgeous person too. And if it's hard to love someone...well, all I can say, is that is more reason to love them. By doing this, you could make a new friend, change a life, save a life, and change your heart.

"Love that will not betray youDismay or enslave youIt will set you freeBe more like the manYou were made to be"- Mumford and Sons (Sigh No More)

Dear God, You're Boring

When I sit through a long lecture, no matter where I am - or who is talking - it's incredibly difficult for me to enjoy and fully listen to what I'm hearing. In other words...it's far too easy to get bored. I find that our culture, is easily bored. I watch people get "bored" all the time, and know that I'm just as bad as they are. We marry someone, and we get "bored" of them, so we go after someone else. We start a hobby, but we get "bored", so we start a new hobby. It's an on-going cycle of what bores and doesn't bore us. I know this to be true, only because I have the same problem. I don't know if I really like the thought of always being bored with the things around me.

I got a fantastic letter the other day from one of my good friends, telling me how she felt bored with God. She wasn't saying it like she just thought God was getting old and tiring and didn't want a part of Him anymore; she was saying it like for some reason, she never felt a spark whenever she read her bible; there wasn't an a-ha moment if she read something profound. God just wasn't as interesting as He used to be. I sat there with the letter, thinking. Bored with God? I had thought, frowning as I looked into her cursive letters on the page. I could almost hear her speaking the words, and they felt all too close to my delicate heart, because the words slammed into me like a thousand shards of glass. I knew the exact feeling she was struggling with, because at one point, I had been bored with God.

Being bored with God isn't just waking up one day and deciding that God hasn't moved mountains or brought the dead back to life so you should stop following Him. Being bored is waking up one day, reading the bible, and not feeling something anymore. Like when you open the book, smooth out the extra thin pages and search for something more beyond the inky letters, there just isn't the same level of beauty or excitement that was once seen shortly ago. And now, that shortly ago feels like forever ago. I know the same feeling all too well. Then all of a sudden, you read your bible less and less, because when we get bored, we move onto the next thing, right? So slowly, the firm hold we once had on God begins to slip away, slicing between our fingers and running down the drain.

I wish I could just come to you and say that magically the "boredom" with God fixes itself after a couple of weeks, but it doesn't quite work that way. God doesn't send angels singing at your doorstep, or move mountains for you like you may have hoped. He doesn't speak to you until you run flying back to His arms. Maybe it's not so much that God gets boring, as it is that we get bored. A youth pastor once told me: "Only boring people get bored."Is it possible that maybe we are so mundane, that we get bored, versus God getting boring? I've realized there is only one way to cure this excessive boringness: don't stop searching.

When we get bored with God, we fall away from Him, but I've discovered that when I start feeling bored with God, it's because I've slowly fallen away from Him. I have come to the conclusion that I need to never stop searching for the awesomeness of the Creator. The only reason I feel that God becomes boring, is because I stopped searching for the excitement that bounces off the pages of His Word. To make God exciting in your life, actually search for Him and His adventures; God is so thrilling and so beautiful, but we have a hard time seeing it because we get bored easily. My challenge for you, is that if God doesn't feel exciting, make Him exciting! Search for the adventurous world that lays beyond the pages of the Bible, buried inside your prayers.

"Don’t burn out; keep yourselves fueled and aflame. Be alert servants of the Master, cheerfully expectant. Don’t quit in hard times; pray all the harder. Help needy Christians; be inventive in hospitality." Romans 11:11-13

Isolation

It happens when you're on a Jesus high; one second everything is so fantastic, and the next, it seems as if it's crumbling down around you. It has symptoms; anxiety, depression, loneliness, heartache, paranoia that at any moment you just might go insane. I wish I could explain how it feels; how it feels when your life seems to be spiraling down in an uncontrollable tornado that has you screaming and begging and pleading for peace and joy and comfort from the ones around you. I wish I could explain how it feels to be under this nearly constant attack, in a battle you know you are only a pawn in. But I can't. The words are too simple, the adjectives not grotesque enough and the nouns far too innocent. One can't explain the mental aspects of this devastating feeling that has loneliness lapping at your toes, burning at your insides. It's far too hard to really get the perfectly horrific picture of this feeling. It's like in that single moment, everything that you previously had, was harshly yanked away from you, leaving you exposed and alone – naked with no protection. If you haven't already figured out what I'm talking about yet, I will give you the answer: isolation.

This corrupting feeling of isolation is one that is far too close to me. It's almost too easy to feel isolated. Some of you may be wondering whether I'm talking about God or not, and the answer is no. No, I do not feel "isolated from God". When times were (and are yet to come) hard between God and I, I felt abandoned, not isolated. No, I am not talking about God. I am talking about people around me. To say there are bad people around me would be a disastrous lie; I have wonderful people around me, and they are all very sweet and nice, and I adore them to the moon and back. But, there are times in my life that I feel isolated from them, as if friends in my life have suddenly walked away. It feels as if they’ve walked away, even if they haven’t literally walked to a different part of the country. I can’t find a friend; I feel so exposed and chaotic. That’s only the first part of isolation. After that, comes the part where it feels as if there are no human arms out to hold me; it’s in this time that I start to feel frantic; have I lost everything so quickly? Why is everything shattering before me, leaving me in a room full of broken pieces? Why would God be stealing away the people around me and making me so unhappy? Could the Creator of the Universe really be so cruel? At first, I thought so. Why would God dare to be so abhorrent when I was so joyous? After all, didn’t He want me to have friends and be comforted by the people around me?

Yes, God does want me to be lighthearted, but He wants me to be lighthearted in the right way. When I began to feel isolated, I was so focused on wanting a friend, that I was missing the friend I already had: Jesus. Even though I was on a “Jesus high” and was in an awesome relationship with God, I was too busy running after having a physical friend, that I was shoving Jesus roughly aside. When God chose to isolate me from my friends, I thought it was Him being heartless, but in truth, that wasn’t what He was doing at all! By leaving me completely isolated from the people around me, God was creating a clear path straight into His arms. When I’ve got people around to care for me and hold me in their arms during hard times, or listen to my crazy rants, I don’t depend on Him the same way as to when I’m isolated. I had been so petty to think that God was trying to tear my friends away from me, that I didn’t realize that He was only trying to pull me closer to Him.

Isolation and loneliness are nearly the same thing, and I can attest to that. We feel lonely when there’s no one pursuing us, and we feel isolated when there’s no one around us – they’re almost identical. It was in one of my lonely and isolated times that I stumbled upon a perfect quote by one of my favorite authors, Max Lucado:

“Loneliness. Could it be one of God’s finest gifts? If a season of solitude is His way to teach you to hear His song, don’t you think it’s worth it? So do I.”

At first, I thought Mr. Max Lucado was crazy; loneliness and isolation are one of God’s finest gifts? That is outrageous! He is clearly incompetent, I had thought to myself. But now, I realize wasn’t as lunatic as I’d thought; he was genius. Like Hayley DiMarco and Max Lucado have both said, isolation and loneliness are exactly what God wants, because it only causes us to go careening back into Him.

Do you hear that? It’s the sound of isolation and loneliness. Do you hear that? Listen closer now. Do you hear that? It’s not silence. Do you hear that? It’s the sound of God crying out your name.

Do you feel that? It’s the feeling of isolation and loneliness. Do you feel that? Try a little harder. Do you feel that? It’s not the emptiness of nobody’s touch. Do you feel that? It’s God’s arms wrapping around you, drawing you closer to Him.

“Like a shepherd, He will care for His flock, fathering the lambs in His arms, hugging them as He carries them.”  Isaiah 40:11a

When God Laughs

I'm a planner; I just can't help it. I haven't decided if it's just me that feels the need to plan things, or if it's everyone else too. I feel the need to plan lots of things, whether it be what I'm supposed to do and when, or what I aim to do with the rest of my life. Recently, I was talking to my sister and I found she also felt the need to plan what she was going to do with the rest of her life. Maybe I wasn't so crazy, after all.

Not too long ago, I was sharing my plans with my mom. I was telling her all about where I was going to college, where I was going to travel and what I was going to do. I even knew what I was going to paint my house and what furniture I wanted after college. I was giving her the whole nine yards of my life. Yet in the end of my tale of my future life, she stated something that I hadn't thought of. "What if that doesn't happen?" I hadn't exactly thought about what would happen if my plans didn't turn out the way I wanted them to. I asked her what she meant by that, and she elaborated.

According to her, what she meant wasn't just a question, it was more the question beneath the question. She asked me the same question, but worded it differently, "What if God doesn't have that happen?" That was another question I hadn't thought of. I had never thought about God changing my plans. After all, doesn't He want me to be happy? I let this idea of God having a different plan for me roll over inside my head for quite a few days. But what if I didn't want God to have a different plan for me? When I had thought about this for about a week, I finally became okay with God having a different plan for me. It reminded me of a conversation I had with one of my friends. At youth group one night, we were talking about how God takes control of your life. My best friend Beth said that whenever she began to think about what she wanted to do and what plans she had, she could hear God saying something. She painted a picture of what He was like when He was getting back at her plans. This is how she described what He said to her, "Haha, Beth, you so funny!" Those were the words she used whenever she talked about God changing her plans.

God laughs at us when we think that we can take our lives into our own hands. Every time we begin to plan something and try to go in our direction, God says, "Haha, you so funny!" It took me a little while to figure out that when I attempt to plan something, that God laughs at me because He knows His plan. He knows that He is going to shake up my world whenever I try to plan something, because He wants to show me how awesome He is. Even though God is going to do whatever His plan is, I've found a verse that shows God has two sides to His plan:

"Delight yourself in the LORD and He will give you the desires of your heart." - Psalm 37:4

Yes, God does laugh at us when we try to make our own plans without Him. We have to trust in Him, knowing that He has an even greater plan for us than we can even imagine. And while God is making His plans for us, when we delight in Him, He will give us the desires of our hearts.

Faith(less)

God has a really creative side, don't you think? He's so creative that He made ants. Yes, ants. Ants that steal food, arrive as a party, crawl over everything and sometimes even scare people. Those tiny bugs are impressive. They're impressive because God gave them something special. A minuscule, black sugar ant can lift as much as 50 times its own weight. It's crazy to think that such a small creature, could lift such huge things. I guess you could say we can apply the same idea, to faith.

It doesn't take that much to have faith in something. For example, when I get in my car to go to work, I have faith that I won't get in a car crash and die. Or when I get a cup of tea, I have faith I won't spill hot liquid all over myself when running up the stairs. Or even when I'm getting out of bed, I have faith that I won't fall over (as crazy as that sounds). I have this simple, easy faith in objects and things that I probably shouldn't have. After all, I don't know how slippery the mug is or how fast others are driving on the road.

Having faith in people on the other hand, is a little harder. It's easy for me to have faith in my parents, that they will provide for me and take care of me. But it's more difficult to have faith in other people. It's tedious to have faith in my friends, when they're asking me to do insane things. Or in people around me or at my church, because I don't know what they could do at any moment. Or in a best friend, who could up and leave at any second, but I just hope that they don't. It's harder to have faith in people then in things, because objects you can fix or exchange, but people you can't.

Having faith in objects is easy; having faith in people is hard; having faith in God feels impossible. Yes, it does feel that sometimes I am on a Jesus-high, and I could shift the Earth with my faith if I wanted to, but realistically, I do not have such a big amount of faith. In fact, my faith size is probably so small, it needs a microscope. I'm not saying this because I'm criticizing myself or my faith abilities, nor anyone else's for that matter; I'm saying this because of a verse, and here it is:

"I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there' and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you." Matthew 17:20

If I had faith the size of a mustard seed, I could move mountains. Mountains. Those giant things thrusting from the Earth that are a billion times my size, I could move; I could be the ant of real life. I could move those mountains like a piece of cake if I had faith the size of a mustard seed. The crazy part isn't about moving mountains, it's about the size of our faith. Our faith is so teeny tiny, that it's not even the size of a mustard seed. That's right; we're so faithless, we can't even stand a chance against a mustard seed. Even though moving mountains is fantastic, I believe there's something better; if we had faith the size of a mustard seed, we could move hearts. We could change the world, with our mustard seed sized faith. Yet, we don't, because we don't have a faith big enough.

Maybe we will never have faith as big as the tiny mustard seed in the jar above, or maybe one day someone will and a mountain will move. I can't really tell you, because I don't know. My challenge for you, is that you would aim for faith larger than a mustard seed, instead of sitting around in the little under-sized mustard seed world. Go out and beyond to achieve this! Have faith in God, instead of objects or people.

And have a mustard seed faith to move hearts and mountains.