The One Thing God Can't Do.

So, this past weekend I drove up to Bryan College with my roommate and spent a few days there. It was great to see friends that I miss dearly, to catch up with professors that I love so much. I was able to see some old friends from college perform again on Friday night, and also had some time to spare for myself…which is rare on these weekend getaways. Usually, I am running around like crazy, trying to make sure I see everyone and have adequate time with each person that is on my "list."

However, on Sunday morning, I woke up and made a random decision to drive to Hixson, where I knew there would be a Starbucks. It was about 25 minutes away, and when I got there, I sat down with my hot chocolate (I know, I'm a sad excuse for a coffee drinker) and a scone…and opened my Bible. My current plan for Bible reading involves selecting a book to read for a month. I read it over and over again, hoping that eventually the words will sink deep into my memory and pop up when I need them most. The book for this month has been 2 Timothy, and every time I read it I am absolutely blown away. It's just crazy.

So today, in this blog, I want to simply share with the few people who actually read this what I've been reading lately, and what I'm taking away from it. Hopefully it will encourage some of you. :)

***

As I stated before, the entire book is amazing, but I'm finding that chapter 2 is becoming one of my all-time favorite passages of Scripture. It is insanely filled with amazing thoughts. For example:

"This is a trustworthy saying:

If we die with Him,

we will also live with Him.

If we endure hardship,

we will reign with Him.

If we deny Him,

He will deny us,

If we are unfaithful,

He remains faithful,

for He cannot deny who He is."

(2 Timothy 2:11-13)

Think about it. If we are unfaithful…He remains faithful. He cannot deny who He is.

God is LITERALLY incapable of abandoning us…no matter how far from Him we may run. To turn His back for one instant on our pitiful, sin-filled existence would go against the very nature of who He is. Despite constant rebellion, our daily wanderings from Him and His love…He never stops pursuing us and being the most faithful, committed Lover of our souls. 

Is that not the most beautiful thought?

However, there's another twist to this.

I'm also reading, as part of my daily growth plan, the book "The Jesus I Never Knew" by Philip Yancey. The book is completely focused on digging into the life and personality of Jesus, exposing Him in a way that most Christians never allow themselves to consider. In one particular chapter, Yancey delves into the idea of God's miraculous restraint; that is, why God chose (and continues to choose) to hold back His power and influence throughout history, allowing people to come to Him of their own accord instead of simply demanding all of creation's worship and adoration. He says, 

"The more I get to know Jesus, the more impressed I am by what…[is] called 'the miracle of restraint.' The miracles Satan suggested, the signs and wonders the Pharisees demanded, the final proofs I yearn for--these would offer no serious obstacle to an omnipotent God. More amazing is His refusal to perform and to overwhelm. God's terrible insistence of human freedom is so absolute that He granted us the power to live as though He did not exist, to spit in His face, to crucify Him."

Even though God is unable to desert us as we desert Him…even though He cannot ever stop loving us despite our almost continuous betrayal…He will never force us to change our minds or "prove" His way into our lives. But why? Why does He let us leave Him for the world's fleeting temptations on a nearly daily basis? To this question, Yancey replies,

"I believe God insists on such restraint because no pyrotechnic displays of omnipotence will achieve the response He desires. Although power can force obedience, only love can summon a response of love, which is the one thing God wants from us and the reason He created us."

God doesn't need our love to survive. But He craves it…just as we do. Think: We are created in the image of God. It blows my mind to think that our hearts' desperate need to be loved and desired by someone else is also a reflection of His heart, overflowing with longing for our love and desire for Him.

Go read that last sentence again. Make sure you grasp that idea. 

I mean, whoa.

*** 

Here's another verse.

"In a wealthy home some utensils are made of gold and silver, and some are made of wood and clay. The expensive utensils are used for special occasions, and the cheap ones are for everyday use. If you keep yourself pure, you will be a special utensil for honorable use. Your life will be clean, and you will be ready for the Master to use you for every good work."

(2 Timothy 2: 20-21)

Oh, to be clean. I freely admit that I haven't felt truly clean, truly pure in a long, long time. So many things from my past…decisions made by myself, actions taken by others; all of it produces an unsightly mess and a jagged scar around my soul. Most days, I feel heavy with remorse and crippled by regret. And yet, despite these yearnings to be better, to be different…I still find myself struggling daily with wanting the exact opposite. When will the battle be over? When will I truly be pure and be a clean slate for God to use the way He wants to? My heart wants to be ready…if only I could scrub and sanitize the rest of me. 

In "The Jesus I Never Knew," Yancey briefly addresses the issue of purity, and the fallacies with common Christian "stay pure" statements. Examples:

-"Marriage will cure lust." (It won't.)

-"With self-discipline you can master lust. (…with maybe a 3% success rate.)

-"True fulfillment can only be found in monogamy." (Tell that to every single person out there.)

He goes on to quote Francois Mauriac, a French Catholic writer who published a book entitled "What I Believe." Mauriac spent a great deal of time poring over these "statements" and came to the conclusion that there was, in actuality, only one reason to stay pure. He said, 

"Impurity separates us from God. The spiritual life obeys laws as verifiable as those of the physical world…Purity is the condition for a higher love--for a possession superior to all possessions: that of God. Yes, this is what is at stake, and nothing less."

Isn't it infuriating how the questions we struggle with the most always seem to boil down to the simplest answer? To conclude his thoughts on the subject, Yancey states,

"The love God holds out to us requires that our faculties be cleansed and purified before we can receive a higher love, one attainable in no other way. That is the motive to stay pure. By harboring lust, I limit my own intimacy with God."

So there it is.

If you, like me, desire to be a clean life for God to use as He sees fit; if you, like me, find yourself constantly being unfaithful to Him, take comfort in these two simple facts:

God wants our lives to be clean and pure just as much, if not more, than we do.

And no matter how many times we fail on this incredibly uphill journey…

He will never-I repeat, NEVER-stop loving us for one solitary moment.

Because, to put it even more simply, He can't.

And that is the most comforting fact of all.

The Husband Journal. (Warning: Extremely Personal & Explicitly Revealing. Read at Your Own Risk.)

I realize that my last blog post caused a lot of "controversy" amongst my friends and peers, and that this is the last thing anyone really wants to read.

But for the last few weeks, I've been sitting at home alone for a majority of most days, and therefore I have little to do but think.

Tonight, I was not tired, so I sat in my beanbag chair in the corner of my bedroom and started going through old journals. Yeah, I'm sentimental like that. It's both an endearing quality and an inevitable step to heartache. Tonight was far from endearing. In fact, tonight's discovery has led me into a mixture of depression, embarrassment and total feelings of failure.

Tonight, I found, perused and consequently despised The Husband Journal.

You see, when I was 15 years old, I went to a girls retreat with my youth group. Our leader informed us that we were going to be making "husband boxes." Which meant that we would cover shoeboxes with wedding wrapping paper and fill it with things that we could eventually present to our husbands when we married. Items such as letters, pictures, quotes, etc. Things that would show our husbands how faithfully we had waited for them.

Most of you who will read this blog didn't know me at 15. I was quite different. I was happy, positive, spiritually balanced, pure, content, and basically normal. Yes, this is a far cry from the woman I find myself embodying today. But more about that later.

15 year old Alexis was incredibly excited for this amazing project. I wrote my first letter on a piece of notebook paper and after folding it 20 times, placed it in the box. This was going to be awesome! A few days later, I ended up buying a leather journal so I could write as many letters to my future husband as I wanted. I was going to fill up this book with words of adoration, of hope, and of waiting for him.

The reason I'm telling you all of this is so you will understand what I'm feeling right now. And at the risk of overexposing my teenage years to the critical public eye, I want to show you a few excerpts from this book. I started writing in it when I was 15. I am now 23. I will give you a quote from each year.

2006 (15 years old)
"It's funny-I get so excited when I write these letters because I think about what you will say when you read this and how they will affect you. My prayer is that no matter how silly and unimportant they seem, you will realize how much thought and love was put into each one and will truly appreciate their value."

2007 (16 years old)
"I want you to know something. I am still waiting for you. No matter how hard it becomes, you are the only man I will ever date, ever kiss, and ever marry."

2008 (17 years old)
"It's so hard to wait. I could very easily give my heart away to many guys, but I'm trying to save it for you. God has convicted me of not trusting Him enough. I say that I believe His plan is perfect, but then I don't live like it. Must try harder…"

2009 (18 years old)
"I LOVE COLLEGE. So very much. I know I'm exactly where God wants me. Bryan is such a wonderful place….Sometimes I wonder if I've met you here at Bryan by now. Are we friends? Do we talk? Maybe we have classes together. Wouldn't that be cool…stay strong for me. Wait for me."

2010
(I didn't write anything in this journal from December 3, 2009 to May 10, 2011.)

2011 (20 years old)
"It's been almost 18 months since I wrote in here. I just finished my sophomore year at Bryan College. My 20th birthday was 2 days ago…Honestly, I don't really have a reason why. I think I have been struggling spiritually for a long time, and that has also made me struggle with you. I've lost my faith in the fact that you will come for me and sweep me off my feet. Part of me still yearns to hope, longs to dream…but most of me is tired of being hurt and rejected and lied to…I don't want it anymore."

2012 (21 years old)
"I've been writing in here since I was 15. Five years of my life, bits and pieces, are in this book. And it is sad how much I've changed since then. At 15, I had this perfect dream of finding a guy who was completely pure and had never even considered another girl, and we would know right away that we were meant to be, and it would be perfect, and our first kiss would be with each other…but I don't have my first kiss to give you. I've given my heart away. I've already said 'I love you' to someone else. I am so broken and scarred. How can I dream for something that I'm not anymore?"

2013 (22 years old)
"This journal has almost turned into a joke…First, it's a 15 year old writing stupid nonsense with old fashioned expectations. Now, it's a 22 year old that's been hurt too many times by too many guys, and this girl has very different expectations. I've changed so much in 7 years, and some of it's not pretty."

2014 (23 years old)
"I'm beginning to realize that the reason I don't write in this journal for a year in between each entry is because whenever I open it and read what I've written over the years…I hate myself. So much….I was young, no idea of what was ahead. No idea at all. And the thing is, I can't even remember what it felt like to be so full of hope and excitement--to be pure and expectant of all my dreams coming true. And even worse: I don't want to be her. It's not me. Now I'm the girl who has kissed multiple guys, almost all of which weren't even dating me. I'm the girl who has been touched and undressed without feeling guilty or remorseful. I'm the girl who shared a bed with a man because I was lonely and afraid. And now I'm the girl who has been abandoned and rejected by every man I've ever given my heart to. I feel like there's nothing left. And I've stopped believing that you exist."

***

I'm perfectly sure that most of you will think this was highly inappropriate to share on a public blog. But I honestly don't even care. Yeah, it's personal. It's REALLY personal. I haven't shared most of that stuff with more than 5 people…ever. But right now, I'm just so overwhelmed by the fragments of who I used to be and the reflection of who I am today. The differences are astounding, and I can't believe how much has changed. How many steps I took down this path. How vastly different my life was from what I imagined and dreamed it would be.

I don't think I'll be giving this journal to anyone, ever. But maybe I'll keep it for me; a sobering reminder of the choices I made, the people I used, the lessons I learned, and the heartache I lived through.

Maybe one day I'll discover something worthwhile that came from all of this mess.