"Why do I run from You as if You desire harm towards me?"
Below is a personal journal entry written a few days ago:
It's become very clear . . . more so it seems every day that You want me to give myself away.
Constantly . . . giving my time . . . giving my emotions, my listening ear . . . my empathy and compassion towards hearts around me . . . constantly giving of myself.
The hard part is the emptiness I often times feel.
The hard part is not having much returned back to me . . . at least not in the same capacity or amount given.
I so often look to others to fulfill what only You can give me . . . what could at any possibility replenish even close to what I give . . . only You can do that.
It's funny to me how that works.
I've got a need You've given me for companionship, for relationship with other brothers and sisters in You, yet they cannot offer me what it would take to refill what I've given away.
How does that work?
Does it keep me dependent on You?
Surely that cannot be the only reason.
The fact is this:
I was created to be refilled and replenished to full capacity by You.
I was created to be refreshed and renewed by only You.
So many times that is not what I desire sadly.
So many times I want it to be people . . . a relationship to be that thing that replenishes me back to health . . . back to capacity.
That may look different depending on where our journey together has taken us, You and me, Father.
Sometimes that's taking a long walk together in the quiet darkness of an evening alone with You.
Other times You provide me with a companion to get away with and You refresh me through that experience.
Other times it can be a simple 30minutes of my day where me and You have a conversation on a page in my journal where You listen to me rant and respond by speaking truth and life into me.
Regardless of what it looks like, I am left with a decision to make.
Do I run to You for what I need before I direct my heart to anything or anyone else?
That decision is always something I have to choose.
You never make me or force me to run to You.
You simply make it known what You desire of me and You allow me to hunger and thirst for the life only You can offer me.
I so wish sometimes that I could indeed find my life in other things or others . . . but it will never be enough. Relationships will never be enough. Time spent doing things even I enjoy could never be enough.
My soul is too desirous and much too ravenous to be truly satisfied by anything or anyone else but You.
To admit this means to accept this truth for what it is and submit to its order and way.
What is it in me that fights this?
Why do I run from You as if You desire harm towards me?
Surely all the pain I have ever felt couldn't possibly have closed me off to running to You first.
But that is the depravity of my sinful nature in which I have now been redeemed because of Jesus and me receiving His sacrifice on my behalf.
What's amazing to me after re-reading this passage I wrote days ago, I can see that deep down there is an unsettling pain that God allows to burrow deep within us as it brings us to inevitably face a reality we often times run from.
That reality being that we live a life of pain.
"I have told you all this so that you may have peace in me. Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart because I have overcome the world."
- Jesus
We were not given a way out of the pain. We were given a trump card with an inevitable reality because of the fallen world we live in. We were given a victory . . . a solution . . . and it is only found in God through the relationship now available to us because of the greatest and most extravagant gift by payment of blood.
As an unfaithful wife would act towards the one she betrays, we deserved no better than any man who would react to her unfaithfulness.
Yet, we know no other love that would look passed our adultery and find the deepest love towards us God pasionately portrays.
As much as we run from our pain, I think we many times run from God as well.
We know that He is after our hearts . . . and if we don't like what is currently in our hearts, we will most assuredly want to run from Him even though we so desire Him and desperately need Him.
This is the pain that sticks.
It will not just go away. It is meant to not, for it is meant to point us to a reality that we can never escape.
Sure, there are plenty of ways we can look the other way or temporality pacify the emptiness or loneliness or discomfort found in pain, but there is only one remedy.
He is the very creator of our every detailed make-up of who we are.
He is the best friend we would ever know.
He is the greatest protector we would ever see in our every-day lives.
He is the most passionate lover of our being we will ever know.
He is every part of anything we would have ever desired and dreamed of and so much more.
The pain that sticks is sometimes the very thing that leads us to Him. Through humble abandonment to ourselves, it sometimes is the thing that prods us to finally reaching for a hand that was always there all along . . . the one of our loving Savior.
