Loving God

I started this blog at the beginning to document our family life, but I've been adding more and more of my own story into it. I want to look back and realize how God has changed me and taught me. So, my blog is a mix of us all.

Now I want to share what I'm learning. God works in such amazing ways, and I'm seriously dense sometimes!

Let me just start with my story (and if you're still reading, good luck, this is a long post). I am so lonely. I have an amazing husband who I dearly love and am so blessed to share my life with. But, my dearest friends live so far from me. My best friend lives in Idaho, my other best friend lives in Spokane, my other two dearest friends live in Eugene and Tennessee! Yikes!

Anyway, a few weeks ago, I can home after a Bible study, and I was DISCOURAGED! I seriously just broke down and cried. But I didn't run to God. I ran home to my husband and told him my sob story about not having any friends. I told him that I felt I was obeying God, but He wasn't holding up His end. I felt that God should be dropping a friend in my lap! After that breakdown, I was about to call my friend, Krista, to continue my pity party, but then realized it was midnight in Tennessee. So, I emailed her.

Krista is who God spoke through (and Krista, if you're reading this, you were an instrument to changing my life). Krista reminded me that instead of turning my focus to finding a friend, God was just asking me to give him my focus. She encouraged me to find refuge and solitude in the Lord and to seek Him with my entire being.

The thing is, I know this stuff. I've known the Lord for years, but as I looked back on everything I had done lately, none of it was to seek God. It was to find a friend. I have been so self centered. I couldn't get my eyes off my loneliness long enough to realize that I have an amazing God standing right here waiting for me to respond.

Krista gave me the most amazing passage to meditate on, and encourage me to use it to change my thinking. Here it is:

Psalm 63:1-8

O God, you are my God,

earnestly I seek you;

my soul thirsts for you,

my body longs for you,

in a dry and wearly land

where there is no water.

I have seen you in the sanctuary

and beheld your power and your glory.

Because your love is better than life,

my lips will glorify you.

I will praise you as long as I live,

and in your name I will lift up my hands.

My soul will be satisfied as with the richest of foods;

with singing lips my mouth will praise you.

On my bed I remember you;

I think of you through the watches of the night.

Because you are my help.

I sing in the shadow of your wings.

My soul clings to you;

your right hand upholds me.

I underlined everything that I underlined in my Bible. I love these verses. I don't know how I've been missing it, but I've not been loving God. I have been serving and obeying out of pure obligation and because I know that it is what I'm supposed to do. I haven't been doing it out of love.

It sounds like such a simple concept, but it's one I've been missing for years. I want to be so in love with God that it just spills into every part of my life.