This past week, I have fallen in love with the concept of
God being the Ultimate Romancer. I’ve heard people talk about this before, but
today it became reality. Everyone, male or female, whether they want to admit
it or not, wants to have an intimate relationship with someone. Someone they
can confide in; someone with whom they know without a shadow of a doubt loves
them unconditionally, knows the worst parts of their inner being, and
experiences the greatest joys in life with them. Something innate in us wants
this.
Everything that is created has stemmed from God. Romance,
was created by God. Since it was his idea, it is safe to assume he is the best
at it. We are always talking about falling in love, from every movie in
Hollywood, to every book on the shelf. Falling in love seems to be at the
forefront of our minds. Falling meant that something or someone was descending downward,
typically rapidly and freely, without control. So in other words to fall in
love meant that once you fell, there was no stopping it.
For the longest time, I could not figure out what my love
language was. I had done the 5 Love Languages test multiple times and never
really came to a satisfactory answer to what mine really was. It was mildly
frustrating. But then after a conversation with a friend, I realized my love
language was quality time. When I spent time with someone, I didn’t have to be
doing anything with them, I didn’t have to say anything to them, heck they
didn’t even need to acknowledge my presence. I realized I feel loved just by
sitting by them and being around them.
When I came to that realization, I felt like I heard God
asking: “well then why don’t you spend
quality time with me”? I was cut to the heart when I heard that. I realized
I had always wanted to do that, but I always found other things to do. I wasn’t
really that desperate for God. I wasn’t really that hungry. Sure, I was
studying the bible 8 to 10 hours a day and having worship on Mondays and
Wednesdays but I wasn’t going out of my way to spend time with God. People have
given the excuse that it’s okay, I had dedicated 9 months to study the Bible, which
should be good enough. But if I loved someone, I would do anything I could to
go out of my way to spend time with them. I realized I didn’t treat God in that
way. I gave him a little bit of time here and there, but not in the same way I
would treat someone I was falling in love with.
I wanted an intimate relationship with God, but I wasn’t
willing to put in the time to invest in that relationship. So one day, I
decided it was time. Time to stop saying I wanted to and actually do it. I kept
telling myself I’d do it in the future, when I got home, when I’ve finished the
SBS and my schedule calms down. But those were just excuses. No more games. The
past is gone, it will never come back. The future is unattainable, I can’t do
anything to make it come closer. All I have is the present. All I have is right
now. So I sat down, put on some soft music and just lay down and asked God to
join me. I didn’t need to pray, I didn’t need to sing. I just hung out with God
in His presence.
During that time spent soaking in God’s presence, I began
praying to God to make me become hungrier, more desperate for his presence. To
need it. To not be able to go a day without it. And all of a sudden, I began to
crave it. I became intimate with the Lord, the Creator of the universe. Grace
Williams has a song called Lost and in the lyrics she says, “I want to be lost
in your presence, I want to be found in your presence.” The only way to get
lost in God’s presence, is to spend time in it.
God tells us to wait on him; it’s mentioned 92 times in the
Bible.
“The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who
seeks him.” – Lamentations 3:25
“Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him.” –
Psalm 37:7
“But as for me, I will look to the Lord, I will wait for the
God of my salvation, my God will hear me.” – Micah 7:7
The first commandment is to love the Lord your God with all
your heart, soul and mind. How can he captivate our hearts if we don’t spend
time with him? The bible wouldn’t mention waiting on the Lord that many times
unless it was important. I never really realized it, until I began to spend
large chunks of time with God, just waiting on him. Just spending time in his
presence.
God is waiting on us,
to start waiting on him. He is looking at me saying, “Is he going to spend time with me now? What about now? Now? Yes! He
decided to! Oh wait, he got distracted. When is he going to spend time with
me?”
Don’t we do the same thing when we want spend time with the
one we love? We count down the hours until we get to be with them next? If God
loves us as much as He says he does, why would He be any different? He’s no
different. How much more do you think He wants to spend time with us? He
created us just for that purpose. When you spend time with someone you love
with all your heart, spending even just a few minutes with him or her can
absolutely change your day. But after a while, just spending a few minutes here
and there isn’t good enough. We long and crave to spend hours and hours with
that person.
God longs to be intimate with us just as much as we long to
be intimate with him, we just don’t realize it until we begin to invest our
time into spending it with Him. I never really wanted to do it because I
honestly thought it would be the most boring thing ever; having to sit there
and do nothing. But when I started doing it, I realized how wrong I was. God is
the least boring person in the world. There is nothing like spending time with
God. It gets to the point where you dislike having to do other things. You just
want to spend all day in his presence doing absolutely nothing, just soaking.
That’s where fruit comes from. It doesn’t come from
ministries or evangelism, preaching, teaching, praying, reading our bible or
jamming our schedule full of activities and projects that we do for the
kingdom. Fruit in ministry comes from spending time in God’s presence. The
fruit begins to become apparent in our character and life because we spend so much
time in God’s presence. We begin to reflect Him. Then fruit begins to pour out
of our lives because our hearts begin to beat with His heart, our breath
becomes in sync with His breath and our footsteps begin to aligned with His
footsteps.
The more time we spend in God’s presence, the more we fall
in love with him. The more we fall in love with him, the more time we will want
to spend in him. It’s an endless cycle. But since God’s presence is infinite
there is no opportunity to get bored with him. He longs to speak with us, so
how much more will he speak to those who spend as much time with Him as that
they can.
The best part is, it doesn’t end there. When I get ready to
leave my soaking time with God, I get to invite God to come along with me and
spend the day with me in everything I do. It makes our relationship with God
real. It is no longer an abstract, hyper spiritual idea, instead it becomes
something that can be understood and grasped. All God wants is to captivate
your heart. So let him. This is just the beginning. We get a lifetime to fall
in love with the greatest romancer of all time.
