Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.

Above all else,
guard your heart,
for everything you
do flows from it.
(Prov. 4:23, TNIV)

i do this thing where i assume that
anything i am feeling deep in my heart is either
wrong, or worldly,or weak of me to feel.

i assume--because i spent 18 years of my life
chasing after the world, and leaving my heart
with its guard down--that the things most embedded
inside of me are warped, or wrong, or leftovers from
before.

and then i picked up Captivating.
Now, if you're a girl,
and we are friends at home,
and you are reading this
(and i know that 3 of the perhaps
10 people who read this fall into that category),
LET'S READ THIS TOGETHER THIS SUMMER.
but the very beginning touches on three
desires that God put deep in the hearts of women,
three things that reflect back on Him, on His own heart.

1. to be romanced

think about it. God is such a romantic.
the fact of the matter is, He created humans
with the capacity to choose to love Him,
or to choose not to love Him.

He didn't decide, "you know what? they're my creation.
they won't have a choice but to love me."
because that isn't love!
love can't be forced on people.
love isn't an emotion, or reflected
in a singular, quantifiable way,
love is a choice.

and more than that, God wants to be desired by us...
He has infinite power! and instead of using that to force
us to "love" Him, He's waiting on us to want him,
He desires to be longed for, and sought after,
and romanced....and i know that feeling too.

and what's better is that God is actually the best
romancer ever. once we let Him in our hearts, He'll
pursue us more diligently than anyone on earth ever could...
let Him do that.

and for the past two years, i've been telling myself,
"romance is bad. nothing good comes from romance.
it's not real. it's constructed and fake and why am i
crying when i watch "you've got mail" anyway?"
but romance is something from God...
not something to be ashamed of,
or scared of, or even avoided.
it's just a matter of romance in the right context,
of listening to God through it,
and ultimately realizing that though
much romance has been twisted by the world,
it is still a gift God gave us,
and a echo of his own heart.

check out switchfoot's "enough to let me go,"
and i'll post parts 2 and 3 of what God put on our hearts
in the next couple of days.