I could live a lifetime with you and then do it all again
and like I can't force the sun to rise or hasten summer's start,
neither should I rush my way into your heart."
-Brooke Fraser
Sitting in the prayer chapel this week, I chose to flip to Song of Solomon.
A year or so ago my small group leader, Melissa, read a passage from this book of the Bible and lately the words have gained a lot more meaning with me since coming to college at Hope. You see such powerful and vivid descriptions of the love we're meant to have with one other person one day in God's timing.
In college, it's hard to look at love this way.
As I sat there in prayer, it hit me how much our society has fallen away from dating only those we see a real future with. After all, in college relationships both romantically and in friendship, things are sped up. You get to know someone for a matter of days and soon you're close and on the fast track to being in a serious relationship. A girl and a guy are seen alone together and automatically they're an "item"even if they're simply friends getting to know each other.
Every five seconds people are spinning around in circles looking for someone to cling to, looking for "the shine"in someone else's eyes so that they feel worthy of love.
Matt Wertz sings, "Everybody's digging for gold, looking for shine in somebody's eyes. I thought I saw a shimmer in yours so I pulled you close and held on tight."
To be honest, I feel like this sums up the college dating scene in a nutshell.
A nice long string of little "things" with people and we think we'll come out unscathed. In the end, we just end up getting tangled up and plain distracted. Even in so many teen relationships we enter into them with the wrong mindset and come to lean so heavily on the other person that they simply suffocate and walk out the door, leaving us with bruised and weary hearts. Shifting our focus from God's purpose for us, we gaze into the eyes of the first person who gives us a second glance and then if they disappoint us, we lose faith that love is even real.
Losing hope in the love God has written in our hearts with somebody since the very beginning, our resolve to wait is pushed to the side because we want it NOW. Not later, but NOW.
After all, our lives are instant.
Instant text messages, instant Facebook notifications, instant emails in our inbox...
So, does that mean it applies to dating too? Instant dating?
Doesn't really add up to me.
I am a firm believer in God's timing.
I used to be a believer in my own timing, snatching the pen from God to write my own plot line in the margins of my story. Now, I can see so clearly how wrong that was.
When God plants someone in my path and they become a part of my life, I know that He put them there for a reason. Some things are too big of coincidences to simply be chance.
God gives us people for certain reasons in different seasons of our life.
English, Communications, FYS, Spanish...
I have met people in every single one of those classes who has impacted me this past semester.
Fall bash ;), volunteer groups, Nykerk, simply being in Dykstra...
I have met people within these events and places who have touched my life.
In the past, there have been people who I build up in my mind. I make them into something that fits my life and my own timing. I write them farther into God's plan for my life than they were meant to be and then I end up disappointed. I get frustrated that my ways are overruled when it has come to love..and that's when God's word reminds me.
"As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts."
[Isaiah 55:9]
My prayer for all of you is that you realize how amazing you are in God's sight. My prayer is that you wait for the person who is only for you and you aren't one of their "options" but you are THE choice. Wait for the one who inspires you to run this race harder and faster.
Wait for the love that inspires you to love more deeply and live life more fully.
Wait for the person who you would do anything for and would do the same for you.
This world tells you to settle but I'm here to tell you they're wrong.
Your person is out there and the day that you meet them, you'll know why you waited.
Wait for the guy who sings "When She Comes Around" by Ben Rector to you every time you're feeling low...okay maybe not totally realistic but still a dream :)
I'm not sitting here right now on Saturday night at 11:58 P.M. telling you not to date in high school or college. That is pretty unrealistic.
What I am saying is to approach dating with a patient heart, ready to receive something that God leads you to instead of anxiously fighting the tide and clinging to a guy or girl who "gives you the time of day".
You deserve MORE.
I'm telling you to guard your heart for many things threaten to harm it and God tells us the same.
"Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life." [Proverbs 4:23]
Love is a precious gift God gives us to be treasured and it must be approached with the utmost care to have any chance of surviving the attacks this world will try and have on it.
Wait for your love, because they're waiting for you. Don't rush it.
When they come around, you'll be ready :)
Sitting in the prayer chapel this week, I chose to flip to Song of Solomon.
A year or so ago my small group leader, Melissa, read a passage from this book of the Bible and lately the words have gained a lot more meaning with me since coming to college at Hope. You see such powerful and vivid descriptions of the love we're meant to have with one other person one day in God's timing.
[Song of Solomon 2:7]
"Daughters of Jerusalem, I charge you by the gazelles and by the does of the field: Do not arouse or awaken love until it so desires."
In college, it's hard to look at love this way.
As I sat there in prayer, it hit me how much our society has fallen away from dating only those we see a real future with. After all, in college relationships both romantically and in friendship, things are sped up. You get to know someone for a matter of days and soon you're close and on the fast track to being in a serious relationship. A girl and a guy are seen alone together and automatically they're an "item"even if they're simply friends getting to know each other.
Every five seconds people are spinning around in circles looking for someone to cling to, looking for "the shine"in someone else's eyes so that they feel worthy of love.
Matt Wertz sings, "Everybody's digging for gold, looking for shine in somebody's eyes. I thought I saw a shimmer in yours so I pulled you close and held on tight."
To be honest, I feel like this sums up the college dating scene in a nutshell.
A nice long string of little "things" with people and we think we'll come out unscathed. In the end, we just end up getting tangled up and plain distracted. Even in so many teen relationships we enter into them with the wrong mindset and come to lean so heavily on the other person that they simply suffocate and walk out the door, leaving us with bruised and weary hearts. Shifting our focus from God's purpose for us, we gaze into the eyes of the first person who gives us a second glance and then if they disappoint us, we lose faith that love is even real.
Losing hope in the love God has written in our hearts with somebody since the very beginning, our resolve to wait is pushed to the side because we want it NOW. Not later, but NOW.
After all, our lives are instant.
Instant text messages, instant Facebook notifications, instant emails in our inbox...
So, does that mean it applies to dating too? Instant dating?
Doesn't really add up to me.
I am a firm believer in God's timing.
I used to be a believer in my own timing, snatching the pen from God to write my own plot line in the margins of my story. Now, I can see so clearly how wrong that was.
When God plants someone in my path and they become a part of my life, I know that He put them there for a reason. Some things are too big of coincidences to simply be chance.
Whether I come out hurt, frustrated, sad, enlightened, inspired, or encouraged, I know there is a reason and looking back at the last 18 years of my life, I would be who I am without all the influences both positive and negative, the happy times and the terrible ones. So thanks to all of you, even the ones who have hurt me deeply because you are the reason I have become stronger :).
God has given me people
to convict me of my own morals,
to remind me of the reason I live the way that I do,
to teach me to love more,
to remind me to find my identity in Christ,
to shape me into a more loving follower of Christ,
these people have played a role in God's plan for me.
God gives us people for certain reasons in different seasons of our life.
English, Communications, FYS, Spanish...
I have met people in every single one of those classes who has impacted me this past semester.
Fall bash ;), volunteer groups, Nykerk, simply being in Dykstra...
I have met people within these events and places who have touched my life.
In the past, there have been people who I build up in my mind. I make them into something that fits my life and my own timing. I write them farther into God's plan for my life than they were meant to be and then I end up disappointed. I get frustrated that my ways are overruled when it has come to love..and that's when God's word reminds me.
"As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts."
[Isaiah 55:9]
My prayer for all of you is that you realize how amazing you are in God's sight. My prayer is that you wait for the person who is only for you and you aren't one of their "options" but you are THE choice. Wait for the one who inspires you to run this race harder and faster.
Wait for the love that inspires you to love more deeply and live life more fully.
Wait for the person who you would do anything for and would do the same for you.
This world tells you to settle but I'm here to tell you they're wrong.
Your person is out there and the day that you meet them, you'll know why you waited.
Wait for the guy who sings "When She Comes Around" by Ben Rector to you every time you're feeling low...okay maybe not totally realistic but still a dream :)
I'm not sitting here right now on Saturday night at 11:58 P.M. telling you not to date in high school or college. That is pretty unrealistic.
What I am saying is to approach dating with a patient heart, ready to receive something that God leads you to instead of anxiously fighting the tide and clinging to a guy or girl who "gives you the time of day".
You deserve MORE.
I'm telling you to guard your heart for many things threaten to harm it and God tells us the same.
"Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life." [Proverbs 4:23]
Love is a precious gift God gives us to be treasured and it must be approached with the utmost care to have any chance of surviving the attacks this world will try and have on it.
Wait for your love, because they're waiting for you. Don't rush it.
When they come around, you'll be ready :)
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