- meggles
Dating 101: "The One"
I had an epiphany (along with the help from some friends): we have choices.
This may seem like a "duh" moment to you, but in my struggle with legalism, this has not always been my mentality.
My mind is pretty black and white, wrong or right, good or bad. I have been stuck in this mentality that there are two choices - God's choice or the wrong choice. That He's hovering over us, watching to see which choice we make and how we mess it up this time. So harsh. And inacurate. When it comes to dating, it's almost as if I'm just waiting for this "arranged marriage" God has worked out for me. Ew. That takes all of the relational out of falling in love - the relational with God and with the guy. It actually takes all of falling in love away. I'm just kind of stuck with someone and he's stuck with me.
There is no love without choice.
God set it up from the beginning that we get to choose love, because there is no love without choice. If He had forced us to "love" Him by only creating ways that honored Him, there would be no love, just robotic gestures. Sure the world would be perfect, but we would have no clue about the love our God and Father has for us. Not knowing that love seems emptier than our current world. When He created the tree of good and evil, He created the first choice. It gave us the chance to choose: Him or ourselves. We chose ourselves. We are still choosing ourselves, yet He chooses us.
I equate this in romantic love. We hear the vows people take on their wedding days, "to have and to hold, in richer or poorer, 'til death do us part." Those vows are not an incantation, magically binding us together forever. It is in that ceremony that we are committing to getting up and choosing each other every day.
This is the same way when we ask God into our lives, we are committing to getting up each day and choosing Him over ourselves. We may not be able to fix the choice that was made to bring evil into the world, but we don't have to. God fixed that thousands of years ago, when He sent His one Son to die and take on all the bad choices we have and are and will continue to make as long as we are human. That is love. We are loved.
We love, because He first loved us.
So circling back around to "the one." God walked with me through that thought process. We get to choose, each day, to love each other. It's a choice. Not to be confused with trying to play God's part or be God, which has gotten in my head since reading the first few pages of Life's Healing Choices, a book about "freedom from [our] hurts, hang-ups, and habits (Baker, 2017)." Even in trying to turn it around, the enemy does all he can to distort the truth. It would be one thing if I were not going to God about decisions. However, bringing them to Him and making a decision out of the best wisdom I have gathered from His Word, experiences, and sitting still with Him - that is what He honors. Even if it isn't the best decision, He doesn't fault us for trying and walking it with Him.
This is the first time that I am realistically accepting that we have freedom in life choices.
God's sense of humor is GREAT. He talks to me in songs in my mind. When the enemy started whispering his lies, "Get Back" by Ludacris started playing.
Yeet, yeet
Whoop, whoop
Why you all in my ear
Talking a whole bunch of shhh
That I ain't trying to hear
Get back, get back, you don't me like that