ROOTED RENEGADE

I was reading and praying when I was reminded about the times in my life where I had desperately searched for love.  Through books, games, people, relationships, TV, social media, and the list goes on.  I always came up empty.  Emotionally void of the love I was seeking.  I had this inherent desire to be loved and to love, yet I simply couldn’t find it in the things around me.  I would deeply fall into the characters of a book as I read different things during that time period.  I would imagine myself as the main character who found love and despite all the odds and regardless of the circumstances, would do anything to keep it.  

I specifically  remember being enamored by the Twilight  series and this overwhelming sense of love that defied the odds and that pursued regardless of what others thought.  At the time there was a part of me that knew that what I was reading was fake.  Yet there was another that wanted it to be real.  I fell in love with fantasy and fiction because in my real life there was brokenness that I couldn’t connect too.  I didn’t feel loved and the time in my life where I was seeking approval of man and family, I came up empty again and again.  There was a huge void that I was trying to fill with anything I could.  So it was easy to get trapped in the stories on the pages.  It was easy to get sucked in to the movies that portrayed, albeit demonic or twisted, a form of pure, authentic love.

We all search for it.  No matter how long you have been a Christian or not, you search for love every day.  Why?  Because God who created us in love, created us to love. Many of us don’t connect the dots. We don’t understand that what we are searching for every day, is already there.  The void that exists is nothing more than a separation from the love of God.  Even if it is a little crack or a large chasm, it still exists.  It’s because we are no longer in His presence in heaven physically only spiritually.  We live in a broken world that sees love as objective, sexual, permissive, crude, and twisted.  You can’t look outside in the world and see love that is pure, free, real, and authentic.  It is because everyone is in search of it in some form or fashion….yet it is freely given through Jesus Christ.  Love put Him on the cross.  Love brought Him to be born in a womb as a man.  Love makes Him run after the lost sheep who has gone astray.  It is all about LOVE.

I am emotional writing this as I now see through the lens of my experience just how much I longed for something that I didn’t have to keep trying to find…it was already mine.  It was mine the day God spoke my name.  It was mine as I was being formed in my mother’s womb. It was mine before my birth and to this day it still is.  The purest love of a Father who has pursued me my entire life.  And I don’t have to work for it.  I don’t have to search for it.  I don’t have to find it in the things that don’t matter.  I don’t have to strive for it.  I just have to be in it.  

The same is true for each of us.  We work so hard at trying to love and trying to fill this void that has been left in our hearts with stuff.  All kinds of stuff.  Yet nothing can ever satisfy like Jesus.  Nothing can ever fill the void completely but a relationship with Abba Father.  The One who created us knows what we need and how we need to receive it.  He knows the tenderness of our pliable hearts.  He knows when we close them off to people so we don’t get hurt again.  He knows how big or small that void is in it. He knows and His love can bust through any wall if we will let Him.

I challenge you to sit with your own experience today.  Allow Holy Spirit to minister to your heart and heal those places that have been tucked away behind walls.  And don’t be afraid to let go and just be.  Walk with Holy Spirit and let Him show you the areas that need to be filled with Abba’s love.  It won’t be easy for some, but the healing that flows through your heart will be worth it.  It hasn’t been easy for me, but I know that through all the patience and kindness and tenderness my Abba has shown, the sweetness of His presence makes the hard work seem not so hard in the end.

Let go of the reins today that you have been holding onto so tightly and allow your heart to be free in Christ Jesus.  Allow yourself to walk in the love story that God is inviting you into and has been since the dawn of time.  A love story so pure and undefiled it will change you forever.  

Love, Faythe