Letting Go pt1: Scalpel

Relationships scare me sometimes. I find myself questioning whether or not I am doing things properly. How is our communication? Am I giving you enough space? Am I pursuing you enough? How is my encouragement and openness? How are you? Am I serving you in the right ways? What am I doing wrong? I feel like I have flash floods of this type of questioning throughout the day which Satan quickly uses to fill my heart with feelings of fear and ultimately worry.

It is especially difficult because relationships are like a scalpel in that they are unique tools by which God is able to operate on two people's hearts in order to reveal, remove, and ultimately heal many of their innate insecurities and sins that deter the couple away from a more intimate relationship with Him. Relationships allow for further sanctification of the two members through which we, as His children, are molded and refined more into imitations of Christ.

But just like a scalpel, relationships are also very dangerous in that, when misused can leave deep wounds that pierce our hearts and tarnish them with calloused scar tissue. This hurt manifests outwardly as we seek to keep people at a comfortable distance and not let them any closer for fear of being hurt again. We displace any emotions and feelings of intimacy and instead remain in the realm of shallow convenience further limiting ourselves from opportunities to be loved by people as an extension of God's unfailing love for us.

Knowing the magnitude, importance, gravity, consequence, seriousness (thesaurus.com ftw) of relationships, I question myself a lot because the seeming responsibility sometimes feels overwhelming. Thoughts float around in my head saying, "God invited you into this, so don't mess it up. If you do, God will take it all away and you'll be alone again." It's crazy because in essence (at least the first part of) these thoughts are true, but Satan is so disgustingly clever in twisting these phrases to center around ME, not God, and paint a picture of Him as an enforcer, not a shepherd to the point where I subconsciously seek to take control of the scalpel myself. I look inward instead of upward for guidance. The danger in this shrewd distortion of the truth is that I don't know what I am doing. I could have been in hundreds of relationships before but it wouldn't matter because in the end taking control for myself would only lead to heartbreak as I seek to operate without any qualifications and with a heart fearful of a seeming god of pure wrath. And Satan wants this because the last thing he wants is our relationship to flourish and grow and be more and more like an imitation of God's love that is used to illuminate the often dark relationships around us.

And to this I say nope. I don't want to control this relationship and seek to direct it myself, rather submit to the authority of our loving God in guiding us by deeming what is truly good for the both of us. I don't want to go about blindly slicing through random crap thinking I'm fixing anything, rather offer up the scalpel to the one person who fully knows how to use it.


jbieb agrees.

thank you for reminding me not to worry through it all

BlackBerry Journey (6) // "Gentleman"

This has been sitting in my blackberry for a while and I couldn't seem to finish it till recently.

"A quality that I have been growing in is gentleness which is awesome because it is God developing me more and more into the biblical image of what it means to be a man. The big thing that has arisen from this quality of gentleness is my ever maturing perception of women. No longer (finally) do I see them as guys with longer hair and differently proportioned bodies, rather I understand that they are daughters of the most high God and that he has blessed me with the privilege of having them as my sisters.

But I've also been realizing that it is a privilege that many of us men fail to understand or accept leading us on the dangerous path of inevitable sin where we seek to glorify ourselves through a relationship with a woman. We play games with their hearts because we long for their attention. We base their worth on their physical appeal. We treat them as tools for our pleasure. And I am sorry for that. But as we grow closer to Christ and learn more of his character and how he interacts with people, especially women, we find ourselves diverging from what society deems as manly to what the bible depicts. We are slowly transformed as we leave behind our innate childish desires for validation and cowardice and instead learn to value leadership and expressing a heart of service.

As I write all this good stuff, though, I know that I will still make a lot of mistakes and fail. And to be honest I'm scared for that, but through it all I am still excited to for the opportunity to grow in understanding of God's grace and love for us since from that stems everything that is good."

"But you, man of God, flee from all this, and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, and gentleness. Fight the good fight of faith." 1st Timothy 6:11-12


every breath is a second chance