Pursuit

I feel like I’m in an experiment of sorts where I am both supervisor and subject. Even though I may still struggle to overcome the subsequent thoughts and emotions of tough situations, I think I’ve learned a good bit about the male heart and what it needs to be free from fear and free to love; to be more alive. But knowing the heart of a woman? Sadly, it is a new and sweet burden to me. I say sadly because, after some years of marriage, I am only now beginning to see the depth of a woman’s desire for love, and how it is very different from my own. There is new incentive because I have two additional women in my life, the girls that now live with my wife and me. I have raised, and have some comfort, with sons. These girls expose a new fear; that I lack understanding to speak truth and life into their lives, leading me to prayerfully seek wisdom and strategy. A fresh desire to love my wife better has begun within this new reality. And so it is a sweet burden as God is taking me deeper into my own heart into fresh understanding that is both wonderful and difficult.

Love is the energy and economy of life. We all desire to be loved and our heart is the gauge which reflects the lack or satisfaction of this desire met. There are many facets to explore on this subject but the purpose here is to reveal one that I find most illuminating. It’s this; the heart of a woman wants to be pursued. This is clearly a reflection of God’s heart as revealed in scripture. This hits me deep. You can hear the heart of God, His desire for us to long for Him the way He longs for us. He is continually extending Himself to me and it is shameful how often I miss this. For me to be whole, I need to pursue Him. For me to rescue the heart of a woman, I must pursue her. For me to be as Christ I must not stop.

There is this. She will not trust me. This makes it hard to give her the very thing she wants from me. She wants to be seen as beautiful but doubts me if I say so. She wants to be valued but feels insignificant. She wants to be loved but in choosing to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil she is wounded. Henceforth accused of what she has done, she will, in her own strength, forever doubt. I have pursued my girls, each of them, watching this mixture of pleasure and discomfort. Often, my love is unreturned or given as lip service. It is from this vantage point that I have best learned the heart of God. I pray for healing to pursue Him better and to extend that healing to all those I love that I might point them to the One who is our worthy, perfect love.

God says
That He loves me.
That He wants to talk to me.
That He wants to walk with me.
That He is desperately chasing me.
That He is not embarrassed by His love for me.
He wants me to love Him the same.
To not be embarrassed by my love for Him.
To pursue Him, to be desperate for Him.
To walk with Him.
To talk to Him.
To love Him.
To say so.


Christ has come to return us to the Father and to restore our broken hearts. I pray that we would see ourselves as redeemed and receive the freedom that healing brings. I pray that we would pursue Him.

Better Love

I have been walking something out with the Holy Spirit. This steady pursuit of my heart and my constant resisting has left me drained. I am exhausted and struggling to see truth. I welcome my Friend and my Savior, doing the will of the Father to see me changed but I sense my emotions are in the way. I know I need to change. I need to see my condition as wrong, as it is contrary to God’s character. It’s that simple. God has sent His Son and His Spirit to change my perspective to His. That will not happen until I am willing to lose mine.

I am called to love like Christ. He tells me to Love the Lord, my God, with all my heart, with all my soul, with my entire mind and all my strength. He tells me to love my neighbor as myself. Jesus did this. He loved God. He loved me. Lord, You have shown me how I love you when I receive Your love, your instruction and your correction. You have shown me how I love myself when I find You in me and I enjoy the weight of your Glory in me. You have shown me how I love others when I reflect your character to them, considering them as greater than myself and lay my life down for them. For me this has not meant my very breath but simply all that matters to me; my time, my talent my gifts, my emotions.

One of my gifts is a great capacity to love, or more specifically, to align my heart with God’s heart for His creation. This helps to explain why I fall so hard for strangers, family and friends and specifically goes to why I ache for them even though they are likely unaware of it as I continue to pursue them even when I feel rejected. It is so much easier to love those that return love, and I do not even consistently love these.

I know that the deeper we love, the deeper we can be hurt. I am not interested in hurting. I have found so many ways to be vulnerable and only one way to avoid it. Many times, I would rather retreat than risk getting hurt. It seems simple enough to withdraw rather than to say something stupid or do something pointless. My primary fear is rejection.

I am designed with an innate need to be loved. I have a deep fear I am unlovable and therein stems my insecurity. Most of the time I get my primary sense of value directly from God but additionally, there is also an element, I believe by design, where He is counting on the body to make fully known His love for me. The fruit of the Spirit if you will. But we are selfish. Moreover, I am selfish. We withhold what precious little we have rather than give it away.

I am called to change, to be transformed, to be as Christ in character and deed. To be rejected and to love even more. There is only one way for me to receive His directive. Ask for forgiveness. The point of this (or any) time of reflection is to drop my agenda and pick up His. I pray for the humility to know my need and serve His. I ask to be forgiven and restored. I ask for a changed heart to be as you Lord. Not behavior modification, but healing.

Better love is selfless love.

Php 2:5-8
Have this mind in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: who, existing in the form of God, counted not the being on an equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men; and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, becoming obedient even unto death, yea, the death of the cross.

Rev 12:11
And they overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb, and because of the word of their testimony; and they loved not their life even unto death.

Looking for You

When I called my friend
Early in the morning
To see how we would spend
Time together,
I was looking for you.

When I didn’t want to lose
The warmth of intimacy
The look of pleasure
Or the touch of desire,
I was looking for you.

When I realized the sickness
Had done all it could
I learned what death does
And I cried a whole in my heart,
I was looking for you.

You were looking for me,
To be my friend
To be my love
To heal my heart.
To open my eyes and allow me to see
what I didn’t know;
I was looking for you.

The things I pursue
And all I’ve collected
To remedy the heartache and want
I offer them up to total destruction
To clear my path
That You alone would be mine.

Rom 2:4, Mat 5:6, Pro 6:25, Psa 119:36, Psa 37:4
Or is it nothing to you that God had pity on you, waiting and putting up with you for so long, not seeing that in his pity God's desire is to give you a change of heart?
Happy are those whose heart's desire is for righteousness: for they will have their desire.
Let not your heart's desire go after her fair body; let not her eyes take you prisoner.
Let my heart be turned to your unchanging word, and not to evil desire.
So will your delight be in the Lord, and he will give you your heart's desires.

Authority

I’m not free to fully say how my brother entered into bondage. My brother had made some sorrowful choices. Later, he lived with me for a short time when I was in college. He experienced some hope and made choices for change but did not walk out the promise as he did not fully accept the truth of it, which is fairly typical. If you live an existence contrary to a new way of thinking, it can take some time for the mind to overthrow what experience says is true. He resigned to his former condition, in fact, walking into deeper bondage. I was talking with him some years later and received an open revelation which I shared with him.

A dark night in the fall, nearly winter
The wind blows cold but I have no chill.
The scene is perfect for any R rated horror flick.
Large dark trees, stretching far into the night
Heavy limbs resist the wind but the leaves are giving up.
A small light burns a pale cream unto the porch.
A wooden door, ancient; I raise my hand to knock

I can see, as a panoramic view, through the wall
down the hall, a doorway to the stairs that take lead down
The basement is dark as a cave, dirt for the floor
My brother is sitting in a chair beneath just enough light
to make out the wounds he has received.
A tormentor is just out of sight.

I’m at the door again
I’ve seen what I’m up against
My knuckles rap the splintered wood
I’m only now aware of the blood that covers my hand
Some of it deposited on the door.

I push the door open
I move down the hall
I enter the doorway down to the basement
I reach out to my brother and bid him to follow
I tell him the chains on his hands and his feet
Are attached only to him and not this location
He rises to follow me, swiftly we move
Up the stairs down the hall and out of this place.
His captor unwilling, unable to chase
As we pass by the One who stands guard
And I know it is His blood on my hand
Which gives me access here.

I went in
My brother followed
Blood secured us.

Isa 61:1-2
The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because the Lord hath anointed me: he hath sent me to preach to the meek, to heal the contrite of heart, and to preach a release to the captives, and deliverance to them that are shut up.
To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of vengeance of our God: to comfort all that mourn:

Not Normal

My first memory is looking out the window at a thunder storm when I was almost two. As a kid I played outside a lot. I created elaborate tunnels to drive my cars through. I sang out loud. Unusual. Weird. Strange. Odd. Bizarre. Peculiar. These are antonyms for normal in the thesaurus. I think there was five years of mostly normal. People like normal. Lord, why am I not normal?

My older brother got sick and died when I was seven. My folks had no medical insurance and lost everything. I attended private school on a hardship scholarship. For my uniform I wore designer labels like Kmart and Goodwill. The rich kids were not impressed. When I was twelve I was almost big enough to play on the junior high football team but the guys whose value was diminished by my presence didn’t smack the coach around for it.

I’ve had two best friends (thank you Jim Shaw and John William Gordinier) but two friends in twenty years did not help to form my social grace or sense of value. I did not fit. I had many questions but very few answers. I was smart, sensitive, curious and introspective. Eventually, girls liked me and I found normal.

I am normal in my sin. I fail as others fail. I even like the same sin as others. In pride and lust I’m normal. In desiring what is not mine I am normal. In all the ways I have sought to supplant Your beauty, your acceptance, your favor and love I am normal. In all these terrible ways am I normal.

Where is the end of this? I’m not the same man I used to be. You continue to change me always. You have removed my heart of stone and given me a heart of flesh. I am too vulnerable. I love ‘til I ache. I give love that is consumed, given to others that don’t seek me out for it’s return. Will You prepare me to rightly receive love? Your love is life in me. Apart from you I am dead. Teach me to love as you love. Teach me Christ first.

1Jn 4:9-14
Herein was the love of God manifested in us, that God hath sent his only begotten Son into the world that we might live through him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No man hath beheld God at any time: if we love one another, God abideth in us, and his love is perfected in us: hereby we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit. And we have beheld and bear witness that the Father hath sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world.

First Off

I hear it, this continual calling from the Lead. A series of maneuvers with one purpose; to advance. How is it the battle is so much more intense here than in the rear? It is the same war, the same cause. I realize I have the same option always; to press on or sit out. The decision is mine. The battle will go on while someone else takes my place, if I refuse; if I just wait this one task out.
I get tired of it to be sure. I move with obvious strength to those around me. I have the battle scars and knowledge of their lesson to correct me but it is not always enough. I lose heart. I remember my lack. I don’t want to hurt.
Then it happens, as it has often happened. One with enthusiasm deeper than my own jumps into my foxhole. His eyes are always both warm and excited all at the same time. My wounds do not compare. His wounds defy life.
He asks me if I’m ready and gives me encouragement, defines value. I think of my wife, my sons and my girls.

Phillipians 3:12-16
Not that I have already obtained, or am already made perfect: but I press on, if so be that I may lay hold on that for which also I was laid hold on by Christ Jesus. Brethren, I count not myself yet to have laid hold: but one thing I do, forgetting the things which are behind, and stretching forward to the things which are before, I press on toward the goal unto the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. Let us therefore, as many as are perfect, be thus minded: and if in anything ye are otherwise minded, this also shall God reveal unto you: only, whereunto we have attained, by that same rule let us walk.