Unquenchable Love

Over the past several days, God has been reminding me of His love for me.

In the summer of 2006, I went on a missions trip to Jamaica with my church. Though I never would have realized or admitted to it then, I had never had an actual relationship with Jesus, only a knowledge of Him. One night during worship, God changed that forever.

As I sat with my head bowed, quietly worshipping in the warm Jamaican air, I began to see a series of Jamaican children's faces flash through my mind. Some of the faces that looked at me were sad or scared, others were hiding halfway behind something, and others simply stood and stared down at their feet or blankly at me. Then all of a sudden, the "slideshow" restarted, but this time the faces were breaking into wide smiles, and the kids began looking up and around at each other. By the end, they were all dancing and laughing with joy. My heart began to be filled with love for these kids because I knew that they had been set free.

My eyes welled up with tears as I was suddenly overwhelmed by the immense love that God was revealing to me. At that moment I was experiencing more love than I ever knew a human heart could contain. It's not something I can ever give words to, nothing I could ever have hoped to grasp without having actually known it for myself. Simply trust me when I say that it was the grandest, most overpowering, irresistible experience that I've ever had.

Wow, I thought. This must be the way that God loves us.

Yet God spoke to me in that moment and very clearly said that what I was drowning in was simply a watered-down, infinitesimal, fraction of the Love He has for us.

Something about that night completely changed the way I looked at God, the way I looked at the people around me, and the way I looked at myself. It marked the beginning of a new kind of relationship with Him. No longer was it only about living according to His standards, it became about possessing and sharing with the world that life-changing love He'd shown me.

Recently I heard a worship pastor at my church say that transformation is the natural product of encountering God's presence. That when we come face to face with Him, there is nothing we can do but fall in love and want more of Him. I am fully convinced that that is what happened to me in Jamaica.

That night is something I remind myself of frequently, and since then I have had a handful of similar experiences during which He reminds me of how deeply He loves me. But I do go through seasons during which I seem to set aside or minimize the glory of this revelation. And this is what I was recently convicted of in my heart.

If I truly acknowledged the fact that He actually craves my attention, treasures my company, and seeks me out though I am so far from Him, would I look at my time with Him so casually?

Today I was reading Zechariah 8:2, where God says

"This is what the Lord Almighty says:
'I am very jealous for Zion;
I am burning with jealousy for her."

This jealousy was provoked by His people being so self-consumed. He says to them in Zechariah 7:5-6,

"When you fasted and mourned
in the fifth and seventh months for
the past seventy years, was it really
for me that you fasted?
And when you were eating and drinking
were you not just feasting for yourselves?"

Sometimes I wonder if He doesn't ask me the same sort of thing. A part of my subconcious seems to still view Him as the big guy in the sky ready to point out all of my shortcomings and failures, when really He is jealously longing after my attention and affection.

During this year's New Life Church easter production of The Thorn, I had my latest realization of His love. As always, it was incredible to be so vividly reminded of what He has done for me. Jesus really did walk this earth. He really did perform miracles. He really did have friends, he really slept, he really ate, he really talked. And he really was tortured and crucified, with a real whip, real thorns, real wood, and real nails.

I remember watching the scene after his flogging and before Golgotha with tear-filled eyes as Jesus, bloody and broken, carried the cross through the crowd, staggering under the weight, but always getting back up. Why? I thought. Why would He go through this for US? And in the quiet of my heart I heard Him whisper,

I still would have done this if YOU were the only one that needed redemption.

And that is what I felt like God wanted me to share with you this evening. That whether or not you've ever tangibly experienced it, His love for you is immeasurably vast. That He doesn't look at you as another face in the crowd, but that He knows you intimately and His breath is taken away by your gaze. That a wide grin comes to his face when He sees you. That His heart beats a little faster when you choose to spend time with Him. He doesn't ask you to measure up to His love before receiving it, He jealously waits for you to enter His presence long enough to experience it. And when you do, you won't leave the same.

"Place me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm; for love is as strong as death, its jealousy unyielding as the grave. It burns like blazing fire, like a mighty flame. Many waters cannot quench love; rivers cannot wash it away. If one were to give all the wealth of his house for love, it would be utterly scorned." ~ Song of Songs 8:6-7

Settling Priorities

Last month, my youth pastor David Perkins came and spoke to my internship, Burn. His talk was simply titled "Seven Ideas of Leadership," and during his time with us he laid out seven principles of leadership. Here they are:

#1 Serve with joy.
#2 Champion the activity of God.
#3 Cultivate good character.
#4 Readers are leaders.
#5 Use your time well.
#6 Fight for innocence.
#7 Know Jesus.

Today I want to share some of the stuff that Perkins said that really challenged me and has been on my mind a lot since then.

First, when he was talking about serving with joy, he told us to look for every opportunity to serve. This has come back to me over and over again. It's so counter-cultural, the idea of actually seeking out chances to be servants, rather than looking for opportunities for others to serve us. But as Jesus-followers we are meant to be people who joyfully lay down our agendas and our comforts to get under people and lift them up.

Another aspect of Perkins' talk was the idea of championing God's activity, specifically what he is doing in and through our church. This point didn't really hit home until recently, when some changes were announced to our youth group, _TAG. First, we are no longer going to be called _TAG, we will now be called _DSM (short for Desperation Student Ministries). Next, we will be splitting _DSM into two groups, one for high school students and one for junior high students (instead of having everyone all together). _TAG has been around for decades. And it has always been called _TAG. So when everyone heard about the name change, many students were pretty peeved, me being one of them. But before long I noticed God convicting my heart.

You are a leader, and you need to be a champion for what God is doing in this place, He said.

So, though some of the changes are still hard for me to understand, I realize that every one of them is coming about through lots of thought and prayer. God has great plans for our city, and I don't want to hinder them by arguing over minute details.

Perkins also made the point that readers are leaders. I've heard this said before and I've even said it before, but I was challenged all over again when Perkins voiced it that day. Over this forty day fast that I'm participating in, my eyes are being opened to how often we fill up our time and consciousness with media. Reading is so readily shoved to the wayside when music, facebook, texting, etc. are available. I want to be someone who is constantly challenging my brain and expanding my knowledge through reading.

Though the other parts of David's talk were awesome, there is only one more idea that I want to talk about today. The fourth quality of an effective leader that I am being specifically challenged in, is time management.

In Perkins' words, "Squandering your time is squandering your destiny." The time that we waste is time we could be spending with God or doing something else that holds eternal value. When a friend asked my accountability leader how best to fill her free time, she was told to think about who/where she wanted to be in ten years, and spend some of her time doing things that would propel her toward that goal.

In response to a challenge that David left us with, I recently created an Excel document and filled the first column with times of the day, starting with 12:00am and going half hour by half hour until I made it down to 11:59:pm. Then on the top row, I typed out Sunday through Saturday, and began filling in the columns beneath each day with what I want to do during that time. It truly is amazing how much wasted time we have when we actually sit down and write out how we spend our day. I spent a couple hours on the schedule, and now know how I am (planning on) spending every half hour of every week of my summer.

All of this is really just one more way I am trying to break out of my comfortable Christian life and challenge myself to do something harder. I've started to recognize times that I am offered a chance to serve, and am learning to accept them joyfully. I am realizing the necessity for me to champion what God is doing in _DSM, even it doesn't always make sense from my perspective. I am spending more time reading and less time finding other ways to fill my free time. And lastly, I am striving to spend my time intentionally.

This is going to be a good summer.