"Your daughter is hurting for you"

"Your daughter is hurting for you." The words struck my heart as if an audible voice in the room had spoken them to me. I had just been telling my mom a few days before of my heart to adopt older children. I had never stopped to think previous to these words God had just breathed into my ear that my children may very well have already taken their first breath. 

In my previous post I talked about sacrificial love. A huge part of the reason why sacrificial love is healing is because of the person's willingness in their sacrifice not only to love the person when it isn't easy, but to also enter into their pain with them. It is saying, "I WANT to feel and experience your pain because I don't want you to go through this alone." If we dare to enter into someone's pain with them, God never fails to reveal the path to healing whether the road is short or long. Through the pain we are moved to a place of intercession. My daughter is a living example of this concept to me every day. Loving her has caused me much pain and heartache. I worry about her and cry over her and worst of all, know absolutely nothing about where she is or if she’s okay or not. I don’t know if she is safe, or if she’s healthy. I don’t know if she is loved by the people around her, I don’t know if she has a family yet. I would cross an ocean for her, I would give up my life for her, I would do anything in my power to ensure that she hurt less. She is my daughter; a piece of my heart belongs to her that I will never retrieve. Yet it is a joy to bear the brunt of this pain because it means that my prayers barrage heaven more often than they would if God had not given her to me. He entrusted me with a very important job. Although I am unable to care for her, unable to kiss her good night or snuggle with her and tell her how much I love her, how much her heavenly father loves her, I know that the prayers placed in my heart for her are that of a mother’s. And though I cannot see any fruit coming from the place of prayer I find myself in for her daily, I understand that He honors the steadfast heart. 

Maybe those words that God spoke to me shouldn't have shocked me so much. I already have a daughter that I am constantly hurting and praying over. But that is the beauty of God's heart. He moves in our hearts in ways that we never would have imagined because we assumed we already understood them. I have never physically given birth to a child, but the children he is preparing me for, (and has already given to me) He is asking me to pray for. Prayer may seem like such a small and insignificant part of life. It may seem like the prayers we pray often go unanswered. It is so frustrating to be human; to be too small to see the entire beautiful tapestry God weaves together with our lives every day. But I know that even when things seem to never change, prayers seem to go unanswered, there is ALWAYS something going on that we are currently unable to see because as children of God we were given the power through our prayers to shift paradigms and break strongholds we are unaware of.  I look forward to the day when I can look back on my life and see the many different ways in which God was using intercession to bring about changes we didn't even know about during our time on Earth. 

Ask the Lord to show you today what areas He desires for you to pour yourself out in prayer. 

The Love We Are Made For

The love we are made for is not fuzzy.  It is not an emotional 'feel-good' high. The conviction hits me like a swift punch to the stomach. How far out of context have I and the rest of the world taken love?The question has been asked a million times; "What does love, TRUE. LOVE. look like?" Yes, it looks like showing those around you how much you care. Yes, it looks like enjoying a quiet evening alone with your spouse. But the love we were made for, the empty spot in the heart of every man that will never be filled for all eternity by anything or anyone else other than God the Father Himself, is not quiet. It is not sensible, it doesn't hang on the contingency of reciprocations nor is it only called into action when the recipient of the love is welcoming it with open arms.

I often evaluate a situation and ask, "Am I going to get hurt? Is there a chance that I may fail?" If the answer is yes, my instinct is to turn and run. I don't want to see the mess, much less do I want to walk right into the middle of it. Sometimes I am so afraid of failure and pain that I forget how costly REAL love is. How costly it was and IS to the One I owe my whole existence to. He has never shied away from me. He has never hesitated to pick me up off the floor in my lowest hour, knowing full well that I would break His heart over and over and over again. I ask myself why. "Why Lord? Why do you never leave me when I'm so broken in my sin, that I can barely lift my eyes to you? Why is it that I long for your love and yet continue to run from you?" and most important of all, "Why do I run from doing the same for someone else, when my desire is to be like you? When I pray every day, for you to break my heart for what breaks yours?" I ask Him to give me wisdom, my request is granted. I ask for grace, He overwhelms me with it. I ask forgiveness, and He forgets what I have done. I RUN from His love, and He whispers in my ear of how it is never failing. He shows me how HE sees me. He does not see me as broken. He sees me as beautiful, I am made new in Him! He does not tiptoe around my feelings afraid to hurt me further, He lays out truth with a promise that His presence is unconditional. He reminds me about the TRUTH of who I am BECAUSE I am His. And as my fickle heart falls in love with Him, and the Devil wages a deadly war for my soul, I am assured that if I allow Him, (and most of all when I won't) He will fight for me because He knows that He is victorious in love and I am victorious over my sin and my pain in Him. When we have experienced this kind of love that brings SO MUCH healing to our broken hearts, how could we NOT share it? We are incapable on our own of ever measuring up to the standards of God's holiness and love. We will most certainly fail if we dare to love dangerously, and we will most certainly fail still if we don't, but God doesn't push us into things without equipping us for them in His exact and perfect timing.

God's plan for the world was quite simple, really. He loves us unconditionally, provides a way for us to be with Him, and allows us all free will. Each of these things have come to us as His greatest gifts in the form of His greatest sacrifice. As ones who claim and accept the truth God has spoken over our lives of beauty and wholeness, we must be willing and ready to turn and allow He who is in us to overcome our lowly human definition of love, and transform our heart into one that desires and seeks to love like He loves. His love knows no boundaries, it knows no impossibilities, it knows of no hurt too great to turn into a victory, so when I see those around me as dirty and broken and evil and my automatic reaction is to think they are just too far gone, I am forgetting the heart of God.

Of course it is a task too great for a human to do alone! The ability to love is truly a supernatural gift given to us by our creator. It was something that was meant to be understood as other-worldly, something we can only give to our fullest extent by leaning totally and completely on something much greater than ourselves. Our broken human lives can only give so much love all on our own. Apart from God, the places we will fall short in loving one another are far from few. A friend used to tell me all the time, "People can only give as much love to others as they have experienced in their own lives." Each person MUST HAVE an experience with the eternal love of their creator before they are capable of even relying on God to love through them. So on our faces we must ask God to show His love to us in ways we weren't aware were possible previously. With a revelation of a love so eternal and holy and tender and BEAUTIFUL, it is impossible to NOT involve ourselves in the business of costly love. We must bend and break under the weight of the hard places in order for Him to show us the depths of His heart.