You won't relent until You have it all. My heart is Yours.

This morning I went to something at First Assembly (my church here in Gainesville) called Encounter which is basically a prayer-type setting where you come and meet with God from 6-8am on Tuesdays and Thursday mornings (geared toward college students). Driving there, I was super excited. Two other friends decided to come with and for some reason, despite it being super dark and super early and super cold, I was really really excited to go encounter God! The night before I had gone to my first BigGroup, which is like a gathering of all the college small groups for worship and a message. Man, that was A-MA-ZING! I was still really on fire from the that night. A song played called "You Won't Relent"(by Misty Edwards...check it out if you can!) and that really touched my heart. It goes "You won't relent until You have it all; my heart is Yours" and basically what I got from this is that God will not stop pursuing us until He's got ALL of us. He doesn't just want 98% percent of our hearts and lives. He wants all of it! That means your future, including your future plans, spouse, where you're going to live, etc. But that also means your "right now," what you will do TODAY, who you will meet, where you will go, how you will speak, how you will act. I feel that recently I am constantly reminded of the verses "Give thanks in all circumstances" and "Do everything without arguing and complaining." Let me just tell you right now...easier said than done! In fact, when I met up with my boss yesterday, I think I complained to her for about 20 straight minutes about all that was going wrong in my life. All the while, my mind is reeling "Give thanks in all circumstances." And then it hits me today, THAT is God pursuing me! Instead of complaining about how sleepy and "unproductive" I've been these past few days, maybe I should give thanks for even having a bed to sleep in and a warm room and the fact that I'm at a university getting my education basically for free because by His grace, I've gotten scholarships!

Anyway, back to my initial point, God wants everything...He won't relent until He has it all. Isn't that just so comforting to think that even when we give Him 50, 10, or even 99%, He is still vying to reach that 100% mark with YOU, with US?! You may think, "Man, Lord, what have I done to deserve this?" And the answer is...nothing. You have, in fact, done nothing to deserve His love and never will be able to. It is only through Christ, through the blood He spilled on the cross, that we are even deemed worthy. I don't know about you, but it is so comforting to know that that burden did not fall on me, that God is not asking me to get myself right and clean and sin-free before I come to Him. And despite all my junk, despite my often times "half-hearted" faith, despite my attitude, despite my gross and mean and conniving thoughts, He still is pursuing me. Amen!?

One last thing: while I was at Encounter, while music played in the dimly lit santuary, with my journal out, I started writing and just asking God...what does it even look like to follow You!? What does a prayer life look like? What does worship mean? I was stumped and to tell you the truth, I was kinda freaking out because no answers were coming to mind. Then, I thought back to all I've been taught via sermons or other Christians speaking that I've heard and this came to mind..."Look in the Word." We all know the song "The B-I-B-L-E. Yes, that's the book for me! I stand upon the Word of God. The B-I-B-L-E. Bible!" But what does this song really mean!? Obviously, in this life, we need something to stand on, right!? And if it's not the Bible, then what is it...perhaps, on a degree, a GPA, a hope of getting married, a hope of being a mother someday, a relationship, or anything else? So, still stumped, I decided to look into the Word, the thing I claim to stand upon, but often do not because I get distracted by any and everything else in this world. I flipped to Deuteronomy. Old school, I know, but George had spoken from it the night before. I scanned down to chapter 30 and the word "circumcise" caught my eye. For some reason, my eyes like to rest on weird words like that. Lol. Anyway, what it said both hit me hard, yet left me enlightened, if that makes any sense at all. It said, "The LORD your God will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of your descendants, so that you may love him with all your heart and with all your soul, and live. " (That's verse 6 by the way if you ever want to check it out). Man, I had to let that marinate for a second. Then, I read it again. "You mean God will circumcise my heart!?" That's kind of weird to think about but to me, it meant that He'll trim the fat. That He will cut off the excess, the infatuation with being married or where I will be for grad school or even the details that I obsess about like my neverending "to-do" list. He will cut those things out of my heart...so that I will LOVE Him with ALL my HEART and with ALL my SOUL! WOW! Is that not great news!? In essence, He will give me the ability to love Him. Why do I sit and work myself into a frenzy of what I am supposed to be "doing"?! He said in His pure and holy and righteous Word that He will circumcise my heart, that He will set my heart in a place to where I can love Him with all my HEART AND SOUL! And what do I say to this? GREAT! 'Cuz I had no idea how I was going to do that!

So, with that said, let God circumcise your heart. Let Him cut out all the junk that's hindering you from loving Him fully. He won't relent until He has it all; our hearts are HIS!

Amen!?