Monday, December 3, 2007

He yearns for me - how can it be?

A couple days ago I listened to a John Piper sermon and in it he talked about the meaning of 'radical discipleship.' The main points he made was 1. our own personal ministry and the relationships God leads us in are a parable of Christ and His church 2. radical discipleship results in a life-on-life transmission of a God-centered worldview and 3. radical discipleship builds up the universal body of Christians as a living organism that nurtures the peace of Christ and the righteousness of God.
So he made those points, I was listening to them and taking notes of course and letting it sink into my personal relationship with God in hopes that it would bring me even a little bit closer to knowing who God is. Then, towards the end of Pastor Piper's sermon, something amazing happened - the Word became alive to me. Pastor Piper recited Matthew 7:13-14, and it was God was crying out straight to me through Pastor Piper - it was a cry of utter desperation, intense urgency, and profound hope:
Enter through the narrow gate!
For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it.
But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.

*Next entry on how God wants me to go through the narrow gate.

For the past 3 months I've felt like something outside of me was reaching out to me and crying out to me - this is love beyond compare, this is God. And I want to yearn for God just as much as He yearns for me, but my minute human heart would probably implode if it was actually able to experience the depth and intensity of love that God feels, so, to God, I just beg for more, and more, and more...just as He begs for me.

But even though, by the grace of God, I have been experiencing God's yearning for me and thus have been striving to yearn after Him, I still live like the Corinthians in relation to Paul.
We have spoken freely to you, Corinthians, and opened wide our hearts to you. We are not withholding our affection from you, but you are withholding yours from us. As a fair exchange - I speak as to my children - open wide your hearts also.
2 Corinthians 6: 11-13

God never speaks of unrequited love even though he opens his heart to me unceasingly and constantly on an infinite level while I open my heart to him conditionally and never truly with my whole heart. This doesn't make any logical sense for God not speak of unrequited love, because to me that is exactly what it is, and not only, it's the worst possible case of it. But it makes sense when I remember that I am to God His very own, his precious and flawless child in his eyes, and to a perfect Father the notion of unrequited love doesn't exist even in the faintest form.

Amazing love, how can it be?
Sometimes I really can't believe it.