Relentless

“…You won’t relent until You have it all, my heart is Yours…”
- Misty Edwards
(You Won’t Relent)

This was a line from a song that was sung at Seven24. Something about it really stuck out to me. At first I figured it was just the catchy tune that came along with it, but I found the more I contemplated the words of this beautiful song, the more of an emotional pull it began to have on me. 

“…You won’t relent until You have it all…”

To me that is such a big concept to grasp. God is fighting for me to give Him my ALL. I guess maybe the reason I find this so big is because I’m not really sure what my all is yet…but my Creator does. He knows what I can give Him and pushes me to do so. He challenges me on a daily basis to  give Him everything I have, granted I often fail, and I’m so glad that there is grace, but at the same time I’ve come to notice that the more I am challenged the more I realize what God has given me. but I think what gets me most with that line is God wants me, not so that I can just be one more subject under His rule, but because He genuinely loves and cares about me. My Jesus knows that only He can truley give me what I need and He will fight to have me. Man, talk about feeling loved! this is going to sound incredibly cheesy, lame, Corney, whatever, but realizing this makes me feel like the damsel in distress, who is captured by some enemy, then all of the sudden this prince comes in to fight dragons, cut through dark forests and climb the highest tower to save me just so He can love me. Now to me, that’s love. So in response, 

“…my heart is Yours…”

and that’s all there is to it, this thing beating in my chest is His. I feel that the music worship leader of Seven24, Brett Caudill, put it best when he placed this line in one of the songs he wrote and shared with us: 

“…what do you do with a love like that, but answer back with all you have…”

So there is my struggle, answering God’s love with all I have. Like I said, I’m not entirely sure what that is yet, but because I gave this life to Him I know He’ll reveal more and more things about myself that I didn’t even realize I had to offer.

Solitude.

        Solitude is hard for me. I never realized to what extent until just recently. About a week ago at Seven24 (the college group at New Song Community Church) Sandy Flores spoke about how to connect with God, and more specifically, spiritual discipline. Now I’m not going to lie, that particular word doesn’t rest well with me so, sorry to say, I was tempted to tune her out at that very moment. But, for some reason, I resisted the opportunity to slip into a slight comatose state of mind, sit up in my seat and listen. 
        In Sandy’s message she went on about the spiritual disciplines that might help us in connecting with God such as, reading scripture (lexio divina), fasting, secrecy etc. but the one that hit me was solitude….the very word sends a shiver down my spine.
        Anyway, back tracking a little bit, for the past month or so I’ve been struggling with this question of “why can’t I hear God? what exactly is this voice everyone around me seems to hear? is it something you really “hear” or is it more of a feeling, a hunch, a pull? or is it that its just different for everybody?” and so because I felt that I was somehow being deprived of God’s voice, I found it very hard to connect with Him. 
        Okay, now back to my point, solitude. Sandy went on to say something to the extent that when we practice solitude it forces us to face off with ourselves, to face the things that are so easily ignored when surrounded by various noises we fill our lives with. It also forces us to find value in God and God alone. Without the affirmation that our loved ones give us we feel like nothing, insignificant, expendable, easily replaced, so on and so on … well at least for me that’s what it feels like. So as a consequence of ALWAYS filling the silence in my life with some kind of noise, I realized, with the help of  Sandy’s message of course, that it’s I that has cheated myself out of hearing God. I’m the one who hasn’t even given God the chance to tell me how much He loves me, how precious I am to Him etc, thus leading me to find my value in Him and only Him.
Here is a quote from Sandy that really hit me:

        “I don’t think God yells very much to get our attention. I think God tends to be a whisperer. I think He whispers because He isn’t trying to compete. He doesn’t want to bring Himself down to the level of t.v, video games, or movies. He doesn’t want to feed into our already busy lives or just be another thing to add on to our busyness. He wants to meet us in the rest, the quite, a place outside of the world we live in, because He knows for our well being we need to slow down. He’s not going to try and yell  over our noise. Maybe the noise is something we need to sacrifice in order to hear Him…” 

       So  for the past week or so I’ve been fasting myspace and facebook, because, and I hang my head in shame and slight embarrassment as I type this, that those things have been taking up so much of my time, time that I could be spending with God. So in the mornig I’ve been going to the beach, after dropping my step-brother off at summer school, to  just sit and be with God, by myself. Now I’m not going to say that all of the sudden I began to hear God and that I no longer feel disconnected in the least bit, because to be quite frank that would be a lie. However I do feel somewhat closer, because at least now I’m in pursuit of God again, and I am learning how to sit and appreciate alone time with my Savior. I understand that discipline takes time and effort, and the fruits of it aren’t going to appear overnight. so with that said, I’ll continue to chase after God and pray that when He see fit, I’ll hear His voice.

 Oh, and I feel compelled to share with you something my friend Matt B. reminded me about at small group while discussing all of this:
God’s voice wasn’t found in the roar of the earthquake or the thunder of the storm or in the fury of a fire … but in the whisper.
(reference 1 Kings 19:12)