Blown Away By Love

Too, too often I let myself forget how incredibly rewarding studying the Bible is.  When I do allow God's gentle yet persistent call to penetrate my heart, however, I am filled with so much conviction and joy and love for our Creator and all He has faithfully done and has promised to do yet!  The Spirit has encouraged me in a most unrelenting way (He can be kind of disrupting to your day when He wants can't He?? :)) to share what He showed me in these passages.

To begin, these past few months have been very life-changing-- moving to different cities twice, moving in with strangers who have become family, getting engaged, beginning wedding planning, searching for houses-- and I became kind of exhausted.  I wasn't sleeping as well and so things started to grow big and scary in my mind.

In typical human fashion I convinced myself "I've got this" and barreled through the days with a feeling of un-fulfillment that frightened me. I began to over-think the state if the world and all its problems. I was so wrapped up in myself and my mind that it took God quite awhile to remind me that I while I might be crossing items off my check list (LOVE doing that!), I wasn't leaving time for my relationship with Him.

So God kept knocking.  I finally opened the door.

Anyone else know the feeling?

I decided to randomly open the Bible and go from there.  2 Thessalonians 2:1-17 couldn't have been more perfect!!  These verses reminded me to reset my focus on the BIG picture, to keep fighting the good fight.  They renewed my faith that the state of the world should have no effect on my peace of heart and devotion to the Truth.  I wrote in my prayer journal that these verses reinforced my knowledge that worrying is not only useless, but is not of God.

Well if its not of God, it has no place in my life!  What a weight off my shoulders!  Worrying not only isn't necessary, its like a poison to my soul?  Problem #1: solved.  (Now just to keep remembering!)

I read over the verses again. What else was He trying to say here?  I read verses 10-11: "...They persish because they refuse to love the truth and so be saved. For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so they will believe the lie."
Whoa, whoa now.  God wants people to be deluded?  This sounds a little vindictive to me. "Wait, wait... you don't like my gift?!"

A vindictive spirit doesn't exactly fall in line with the all-loving, all-merciful God we adore, does it?  I decided that while my history major didn't prepare me to solve this by myself, it did give me a deep love for research and compiling other people's studies.  So I looked up commentary on the verses as done by people who have a bit more Scriptural experience than myself.  Here is where I found the very enlightening words of Barnes, Clark, and Gill that I will return to often with questions such as this.

Barnes says that "If a man strongly prefers error to truth, it is not wrong to allow him to evince his own preference."  In other words, you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink.  Or something like that.

This explanation made perfect sense to me and was such an encouragement to read!  Too often I find myself unwilling to take an opportunity to spread my faith because I am afraid of how a person will react.  What if I end up turning someone further away from God?  How can I make them believe?

1) You can't MAKE someone believe anything.  Free will anyone?
2)  My joyful life lived for Jesus should be a witness to why it is the Truth!  It is our duty as Christians to gently point out an error of ways in case someone is acting without knowledge that their action is harmful to their souls; beyond that all we can do is pray and NOT WORRY!

How freeing it is to just LOVE my neighbor and share what makes my life fulfilled instead of carrying the weight of their soul on my heart!  It is a joy and comfort beyond words to know that our God is a loving God who cares so deeply for my well-being that He would patiently wait out my ignoring Him and still share with me words that are a salve to my very soul.

My hope and prayer today is that whoever might read this will answer that soft call in their hearts and experience that joy and comfort.

"...for the world is loud and God whispers."

How has God shared His love for you lately?