More Than the In-Betweens

The search for love and acceptance is the intense backstory and motivation for our life stories. Most everything we do, in striving for a love that will adore us, accept us, and keep us safe yet wild. So we search for it, we fight for it with everything in us. We look for it in so many things: wealth, career, success, fame, acceptance, drugs, alcohol, beauty, strength, statues, even healthy relationships. In my head it kind of looks like the Hunger Games. Everyone running around crazy, killing anything and anyone that gets in the way of receiving the prize. We fight to the death for a love stronger than death. When there is already a Love Who defeated death, put death in its' grave, to create an opportunity for us to receive this perfect love we so relentlessly strive for.

Here's the thing... I've done this and I'm sure I'm not the only one to have done this for what feels like the thousandth time. Someone will come into my life, offering a love that I desire and while with that person I tend to neglect God. Maybe not fully ignore Him, but I'm sure if I took a look closer I would see a big gap in my relationship with Him after getting in a relationship with this person or being pursued by that person... and once they are gone? Right back running to the Lord. Wow. We've made God a bandaid when He offers us infinite, complete healing, heart surgery that mends wounds too deep for us to see and often too deep for us to even feel or recognize is even there.

Maybe it's not relationships for you. Maybe it's reaching goals, another job, getting another degree, any of these things that are not even bad for you... whatever it is you skip around on to avoid the "in-between" places of life... if you were to lose it all right now, if sickness overtook you, you lost all money, family and friends, when all hope is lost-- what, or who will you cling to? Where will your hope lie? In a God you merely claim as a religion and treat like a sugar daddy you only go to when you need something? Or the God who is your constant, your rock through the highs and lows? Truth is, He is there either way you treat Him, but relationships aren't really true relationships if they are always one-way.

He wants us. Even when we come running just when we need something. But He desires our all. He gives, has given all, and we give Him the scraps off the tables of our hearts. He doesn't need us- absolutely He does not, He is God He doesn't need anyone-- but oh how He wants us so.

I don't want my relationship with God to be shallow. I don't want to run to Him only when I think I am in need (though I am always in need even when I don't recognize it). I don't want to run to Him only when there is not a man in my life pursuing me. I don't want to keep trying to cram people, success, career, ministry, education, self-love, whatever else into the hole in my heart that only God can fill.

Isn't it interesting, too? We, the needy, only choose God when we feel like it, but God? Infinite, Almighty God? He doesn't need us, yet He chooses us over and over and over again. That puts things into perspective.

He is more than an in-between God. He is God-- whether we accept Him or not-- but He wants you to accept Him as God over ALL your life. In and through and over every season, relationship, sickness, struggle, success, every good and bad thing in your life, He doesn't want to be your in-between God, He wants to be your everything. Isn't that the way a covenant relationship works?

He is omnipresent. He is always there, always standing in front of us with arms wide open awaiting our return home to Him. He is not a genie in a bottle. He cannot be contained nor is He here to grant you all your wishes. Often our wishes and desires will destroy us. He hears your prayers and true heart-desires and wants to fulfill those things in you and your life... but first, He has to make you healthy and whole again. He has to give you the only thing that can satisfy-- His unconditional loving heart.

So if you are searching today, looking for something to put your whole heart into, something that won't leave you, something permanent, something that won't fail you, fade away, or crumble before your eyes-- please join me in looking to the One who I once only looked to when I recognized my emptiness. There is a Creator God who wants to be the Love of your life in more than the in-betweens.

"Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet My unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor My covenant of peace be removed," says the Lord, who has compassion on you." Isaiah 54:10

"For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord." Romans 8:38-39

"In the beginning You laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of Your hands. They will perish, but You remain; they will all wear out like a garment. Like clothing You will change them and they will be discarded. But You remain the same, and Your years will never end." Psalm 102:25-27

"Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom." Isaiah 40:28

"If we are unfaithful, He remains faithful, for He cannot deny who He is." 2 Timothy 2:13

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CG