I'm a feeler, if that makes sense. Sure, we all feel things but I really feel them. If something good happens I feel it deeply and if something bad happens I feel that deeply, too. This, like a lot of things, has both it's advantages and disadvantages. It's good for when you are wanting to show people that you truly care about them and it's bad whenever you're crying in the middle of Barnes and Noble because you just read the back cover of a Christian fiction novel... what, that doesn't happen to you?
Anyway, you get the point.
I have been learning a lot lately about how my tendency to feel things in such a deep way effects my walk and journey with Jesus. While it can be something that I choose to use for good, it more times than not has become a tool that I use for bad. If I am not careful my deep feelings or my deep desires become so overwhelming that I cannot see past myself... I can't see past what I want, when I want it, how I want it, and why in the world am I not getting what I want?! I have desires, passions, and dreams that I so often forget to surrender to my perfect Heavenly Father.
This past semester I found myself caught up in a more than a little bit disgusting cycle of seeing what I want, seeing that I wasn't getting it, seeing that someone else was, and then throwing myself a pity party and demanding that God would either:
1. Give me what I wanted
2. Take away my desire for such thing; or
3. Explain to me why I wasn't getting it and why (whoever it was that week) was getting it.
By the end of the semester I started getting extremely tired of simply wanting. I didn't want to want anymore. I just wanted Jesus.
That was the answer to my problem(s).
Yes, I desire earthly things. Many of these things aren't bad things to want BUT, I am not the author of my life and I don't get to decide when or even what gets to fill the pages of the book that is "my" life.
Over the past month I have come to realize that there comes a point when I have to yield my wanting... and that is hard for this "feeler, adventurer, and dreamer" kind of gal.
Elisabeth Elliot puts it way more eloquently than I ever could when she says;
"A life lived in God is not lived on the plane of feelings, but of the will. In Scripture the heart is the will-- it is the man himself, the spring of all action, the ruling power bestowed on him by his Creator, capable of choosing and acting."
Yes, we all have desires and wants. Trust me, I am a wanter. However I am a follower of Jesus before anything else and that requires faith which can be better defined by saying "complete trust".
I have a perfect Father who I get to choose to trust. I have a Shepherd who I get to choose to believe is watching over me and guiding me down the path of righteousness for His namesake. I have a Savior who came to save me from the things I think that I "want". He came to save me from my lesser loves, and I, this little college girl get the grandest opportunity to choose Him. To choose life. To will myself to do His will, despite all wanting.
I recognize that these wants and these emotions might always remain but I also recognize that they are not to rule the action. They have no authority.
So, here's to a summer of learning more about what He wills and less about what I want.
By the grace of God, we can will to do His will. Forget the past. Press toward the goal.
"Your debt has been paid. Go daughters and sons, and sin no more."
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