A Real Relationship

I currently find myself sitting in a coffee shop at the University I am attending. As I listen to Poor Rich Folk's I Do I look around & find myself observing those around me. I see cross necklaces & Bibles & lots of Macs as students study.

And I'm struck with the thought, 'How many of them really have a relationship with Christ?' Is He real to them...more than an idea & a way to a happy, pretty, nice, afterlife if such a thing exists?

Don't get me wrong, I question because I believe. And I am constantly striving to have a very real relationship with Him. I want that for others. I want them to know that He is real, to experience that. No, I don't think about Him all the time, not do I talk to Him all the time. I'm not perfect.

Then I think about what I am doing to help others see how real He is. Well, it's not much. I don't step out or speak up often. And I certainly don't speak of Christ to those I don't already know. Here recently I've found myself more & more often leaning into Christ during my conversations though.

When the opportunity to share how He has impacted my life, that's where I typically go. When I can share how He has appeared in the lives of my friends, I go there. When I can relate to an experience or a situation that someone is it & I have either had Christ there in my life personally or seen Him in the lives of those I know, I tell the person I'm speaking to about it. I want them to know. I want them to feel His love & see His works in my life & in the lives of my friends if it can help me relate.



What are you searching for?

Vulnerability and Trust

Vulnerable.

Adjective.

From the Latin vulnerare meaning to wound.

Date: 1605

1 : capable of being physically or emotionally wounded
2 : open to attack or damage : assailable

My first test was last night and it just so happened that I finished at the same time as a friend of mine. We were walking out to our cars when she started talking to me about what she's been going through...learning to really feel her emotions instead of recognizing them in an intellectual way and then moving on in life without processing through them. One of the things that we kept coming back to, either by her talking about it or by me connecting it with something she said, was vulnerability.

C.S. Lewis once wrote: "To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless--it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.”

So much can be seen in his words. We risk when we open ourselves to loving anything...anything at all. And I think that part of what plays into being willing to risk, is whether or not we are able to trust.

Do me a favor: Go to dictionary.com and look up the word trust.


I was astounded to find so many different definitions of the word when I did this.

Now go look at what I found when I searched for the biblical definition of the word trust: Biblical Word of the Month - Trust written by: Jeff A. Benner One of the things that struck me most was that the Hebrew language was as a concrete based language, meaning that each word can be sensed by one or more of our five senses. So trust takes on a whole new meaning: it's something concrete.

I had a revelation about two weeks ago. I realized that for a very long while now I've thought that finding the right man and getting married to him would help put an end to all my problems. I heard others say that marriage is hard, it compounds the difficulties you already face in life, and it is like looking into a mirror that reflects the areas you most need to work on in your life. While I heard what they were saying and recognized it as true in my head, I realized that I didn't really trust what they were saying was true in my heart.

In the same way, I realized that while I've thought in my head that finding and beginning a life with my husband would solve my problems, I knew all along in my heart that not only was this not true, but I knew already that God was the only one who could change that for me. And while I know that God is the answer, I don't really trust Him. And that's difficult for me to face.

So... At the end of the day, what can we do? We can trust love and we can make the commitment to being vulnerable.

Because we don't know what our future holds and it's not for us to know. But God does, so rest in that.