Acoustic version of my favorite song <3


"Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak.  We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by an offer of a holiday at the sea.  We are far too easily pleased."- C.S. Lewis

I love the worship song, "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing," especially the part of the Song that says, "Let Thy goodness, like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to Thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it,
Seal it for Thy courts above."

From Oswald Chambers:
"The real test of spiritual focus is being able to bring your mind and thoughts under control. Is your mind focused on the face of an idol? Is the idol yourself? Is it your work? Is it your idea of what a servant should be, or maybe your experience of salvation and sanctification? If so, then your ability to see God is blinded. You will be powerless when faced with difficulties and will be forced to endure in darkness. If your power to see has been blinded, don’t look back on your own experiences, but look to God. It is God you need. Go beyond yourself and away from the faces of your idols and away from everything else that has been blinding your thinking. Wake up and accept the ridicule that Isaiah gave to his people, and deliberately turn your thoughts and your eyes to God."

"Lift up your eyes on high, and see who has created these things . . ." —Isaiah 40:26

Tears of the Saints - I love this song!

What an unbeliever taught me about God

“What is man that You are mindful of Him, And the Son of man that You visit him? For you have made him a little lower than the angels, And You have crowned him with glory and honor”- Psalm 8:3-5.

Every person was created in the image of God. This gives each human an inherit value and worth. God crafted every human in perfect love. Each person is a sacred image created by God. Man is crowned with honor and glory. Though we are perishable and formed out of dust, we are deeply precious in God’s sight. Though finite, we were given value and dignity by the Creator God.  God’s love is not like human love, but it is infinitely deeper and surpasses our understanding. God loves His creation, and He is not a God of waste. He would not create a person that He did not plan to passionately love.

Is it possible to deeply and passionately love someone who will never love you back? Is it possible to love them so much that you would give your life for them though they do not care for you at all? Is a human capable of loving someone without them ever loving back? I think there is a capacity in us for this.

In High school I experienced my only “love at first sight.” I was in 9^th grade, and I remember exactly where I was. I fell in love with this person, just head over heels. There was an instant and almost automatic attraction and care. Obviously, I experienced infatuation, but I genuinely believe that I started to love this boy. I liked him almost all of High School. I also prayed for him every day for 7 years. I don’t know why; I was just compelled to pray for him. In college we became better friends. I almost thought he might begin to like me. I still prayed for him. Then he broke my heart a second time by dating another perfect and more exciting girl. Surely, I must not be good enough I thought. I am not enough for him to like me.

All I ever did was care for him and want to bless him. I sincerely prayed for him to have a walk with God. I always thought about his best. Though I was infatuated, I can honestly say that I had a genuine love for this person. After my heart was broken, I began to see that he would never love me back. The more God drew me to Himself, the more I saw how impossible such a relationship would be anyway. The more I drew closer to the light, the more he drifted deeper into darkness.  “Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? … What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols?”- 2 Corinthians 6:14-16.

My love for God was growing more and more; and God is a jealous God. This boy I loved had become an idol, and God removed this idol from my heart. I counted the cost of discipleship and let him go forever. Yet, a love remained and so now I only pray. This love is not a marital kind of love at all, only a genuine love for a lost soul. All I hope to know one day is to hear that he was saved somehow, and that is enough.

I can look back and think how ridiculous of me to have loved such an unworthy person. I really cannot find any good reasons that love should have remained. Truly he did nothing to deserve my care. But God taught me something of great value from this experience of heartbreak.

God allowed my experience, because He wanted me to understand, in a sense, what it is like to love someone who will never love you back. He wanted me to feel what it is like to desire someone who will never choose you, to care for a person who does not even think about you.  God gave me a small taste of what He must feel like to love His humans, some of whom will never love Him back. He died for people, some of whom will never give a rip, yet He still gave His life for them. God was able to give without having to receive. Humans are not as able to do this. God can give without getting any returns. God gave His Son for the human race, though some will never receive the love and free gift of salvation. It isn’t a cold business for God when a person rejects Him, but heartbreak. I am glad my heart was broken, so that I could have a sense of the deep love God has for His creation.  

God does not love us depending upon our faithfulness or loveablity.  We are as unworthy of being loved as that boy I liked.

“The Lord did not set his love upon you, nor choose you, because ye were more in number than any people; for ye were the fewest of all people:

But because the Lord loved you, and because he would keep the oath which he had sworn unto your fathers, hath the Lord brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you out of the house of bondmen, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.”- Deut. 7:7-9

Hosea was told to love a girl who would only break his heart and cheat on him. Yet he loved her, though she was undeserving. He loved, just like God still loves every human and gives them a chance until they die; until the very last second He would take them in.

This unbeliever, the boy I loved, did give me something in the end. From this experience, I gained more of God and count all else as loss for the sake of Christ, Who is the greatest Reward and Husband.

The Exceeding, Great Reward

We are like grass that withers, and all we have is God. All we have to keep is the eternal King, the greatest gift imaginable. Actually, we cannot even image or understand what we truly hold in our bodies, the risen life of Christ, who is King of Kings and Lord of Lords. He has made our feeble tents, His Holy of Holies.  Oh that we could more deeply grasp the greatest treasure we already have. If we could only grasp that we already have the greatest thing possible; and that nothing we desire could ever compare to what we already have.

This knowledge is too high for us, overwhelmingly good. All of Heaven’s love and resources are gifted to us by inheritance through Christ. Every spiritual comfort and strength is offered to us if we should desire it. The life of Christ in us is vivid and powerful. Lord, grant us Your wisdom to wield this beauty and eternal power that you have granted us, your soldiers. What an ally; surely the Christian is undefeatable. God has won our every battle already. If we should only stick with Christ, we walk in constant victories and in His security. “…I am your shield, your exceedingly great reward.”- Genesis 15:1

Today, during devotions at Bible College Germany, we were speaking about the greatest things God has revealed to us. We also talked about the ways satan distorts the image of God to us, so that we may believe wrong things about Him and get discouraged. Truly satan is the master at deception and totally a liar. One person shared about how satan always likes to attack the idea that God is good. He wants us to believe that God is not always good and to doubt the incredible truth that God is always great and good to us. God does want to bless us, and He can only do what is the best for us. We can always trust in God’s perfect goodness, exceeding kindness, and love for our lives.

Once, after a crushing blow that I experienced, Satan asked me this infamous doubt, “Is God still good?”  By God’s amazing grace, I said yes.  I just believed that God was still was good though I didn’t understand in that moment.  I have doubted God’s goodness other times however, but God set out to reveal to me the steady truth again and again, ever more lovingly and gloriously than before.

The greatest revelation that God has given me is that He is good.  It seems totally paradoxical and even I am surprised that it turned out this way, because from no earthly stand point would anyone say that God is good, having seen my life the last three years.  Perhaps they would say that God was good before three years ago happened, when I was still somebody, when I was smart,  had a great “future,” and great in the eyes of others. And then God made me nothing, yet now I am free to know that He is good more than I could ever have understood before.

We often think of God as being good when good things happen to us: like “blessings.” We people get married and have babies, when there is lots of work and sunny skies. Then people say, God is very good to us. But how many people would say that God is very good when all has gone the opposite. What about when you are like Job. Not that I know anyone personally who has suffered like Job, but I have heard similar stories of past characters, and I have suffered enough myself to get a glimpse and scarring taste of what it is like.

Job lost earthly things. He lost basically everything, except his wife. We just read about his losses all grouped together and almost casually pass over them. But, if you really thought about how he had a relationship with each precious child lost, and a life with them filled with years of memories that won’t ever go away… the losses he experienced could have literally killed any other person of grief. And satan of course comes around to question God’s goodness in Job’s life.

But what if God is actually the best to you when you lose everything… What if He actually shows you favor in allowing suffering….

Bear with me in this and see for yourself if it makes sense to you. We are made really for eternity and not for this life alone. We will not keep any earthly thing forever whether we lose it now or when we die. And the highest, best thing for our lives is Jesus. So what if God is being the best “good” to you when you suffer the loss of earthly things?  And here is what I believe has been God’s greatest revelation to me.

“But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ”- Philippians 3:8.

 I used to stand on many things to give me purpose, value, and confidence. Some of those things were idols, including myself. One, by one, the Lord stripped these false foundations from under me. It was painful and sometimes embarrassing (I just embarrassed myself though, not God). It would be easy to think that God is not good during the loss earthly things, because sometimes you will lose very good earthly things that are not necessarily evil at all, but that may be keeping you from the best thing. God is the all-consuming fire. He was faithful and exceeding good to keep this promise to me, and to consume with fire anything in the way of Him completely being master of my life. 

This was the theme verse of my last semester of Bible College: “…Do not be afraid Abram. I am your shield, your exceedingly great reward.”- Genesis 15:1.

When everything else is a reward to you (such as your intelligence, fame, accomplishments, glory in good works, being seen and appreciated…), it is hard for Jesus, just Himself, to be your exceeding, great reward. But when earthly idols and foundations are removed, you are free to experience the greatest gift that you had all along. I always had Jesus since being saved, I just didn’t know Him or experience Him fully as truly being my exceeding, great reward. Jesus was always added to things.  He supplemented my life; or I was in it, honestly, for mostly His good gifts to me and His plan for my life. But would I be in it just for Jesus?

Would you still be in it, just for Jesus? If all was removed and there was no promise of future earthly goods and comforts in this life, would you still be in this race just because you loved God? 

God is the best gift you could ever have. He is the greatest treasure and friend in the universe. He is the ultimate good thing. So whenever the devil tempts you to question if God is still good after you have suffered a loss or a disappointment, you can say, yes. God is even more  good to me now, because I will always have Jesus. He is the best good, and now I will experience even more of Him and all His precious life in me.It is the best good to experience how sufficient and eternally satisfying God himself is. God is enough for us. And though we wither away like grass and our life passes like a vapor, we get to keep and to know Jesus forever.