What is it?

What is the desire that God has for people?

Does he want us to go to church?

Does he want people to thank him at award ceremonies? Does he want you to take communion? Does he want you to pray at night?

Does he want you to be happy or be prosperous? Does he want you to be good? Does he want you to fix yourself so that he can be near you? Does he want you to be a good boy? Does he want you to memorize verses in the name of Jesus?

Does he want your obedience? 

Yes he may like some of these. But no. This isn’t His desire for you.

Have you ever had a friend do things for you but solely out of loyalty to your friendship? that kid who only goes over to your house for your food but takes no joy in you?

I think that we’ve made prayer a stick and God a pinata. -Mark Driscoll

Here’s the point; if God really wanted obedience, He could ask the mountains to throw themselves into the sea. Or the sun to stop shining or the stars to sing His praise. Or the stones could cry out.

The desire God has for us is that we love Him. To have the same affection for Him that we have for that person we love. 

Have you ever been to a college football game? There are kids screaming and dancing and fist pumping and talking about the stats and mesmerized by every moment. They scream at cameras, they paint their chest, they pregame for the entire morning. They even despair if their team doesn’t win. The whole day is about football.

If we truly believed in a supreme being who transcended time and humbled himself to take on our wicked filthiness in order to cover us with His own perfection just so that we could LOVE Him; then where is our passion??? How come church worship looks like the most unexciting concert on the planet? Shouldn’t it be more lively than a football stadium if we TRULY loved this God? Shouldn’t we drop to the floor and dance for days for Christ who gave HIS INFINITE UNFAILING LOVE of JOY and PEACE that SAVED us from an ETERNAL PAIN? 

We have this God who calls and yearns for us. And loves every person with an aching, unconditional, aggressive pursuing love. Love that drove God to death and wrath upon a portion of Himself.

“Come and know me! Come and grow in confidence with me! Let me love you! Let me deliver you, I am an inexhaustible fountain of joy! Press in to me and grow close to me! Love me!….But we say, no thanks i’m just tryin not to cuss when I drive…” - Matt Chandler

You aren’t the point.

Life isn’t about you.

Yet, you’re an object of affection of a powerful God and a loving Savior.

The most important question is “why is this His desire? Why does He want us to love Him?”

For His name sake. To bring Him pleasure and glory in a different way.

If you’re one to call yourself a Christian. I beg and plead for you to examine and check your heart. What does it beat for? Yourself or Jesus?

If it’s your desire to cast aside the things in your life that try to compete for your affection; then humble yourself and ask God to change your heart. He definitely wants to! You just aren’t letting Him perhaps!

For my friends who are unbelievers and happen to follow me. I merely offer these posts as messages of points of thought. Also my hope is that you may have a willingness to be open-minded. Above all, I offer this as an invitation into an everlasting life, hope and love. We fall short of His perfection. Jesus comes and dies to give you perfection so that if you believe in Him you won’t perish but have everlasting life. And we must respond by asking Him to change our hearts to love and follow Him at all costs.

Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue. My late grandmother’s pearls around her neck, jewelry and shoes newly fashioned, my mother’s handkerchief and blue underpinnings draped my sister on her wedding night this last Saturday. I’m always reminded of her independent personality, so its no surprise to me that she’s married with a job in a law office to a husband of noble character who shepherds God’s youth; and she pays her bills. She got her own (cue Jamie Foxx).

I drove what used to be her banged-up red neon to her apartment the morning of the “Big Day”. You see, my favorite hairdresser was in town from Florida and I needed a fresh haircut for the special occasion; so my mother was delighted to help her son look smashing and trimmed the poof. Thanks mom.

Wedding details were few and taken care of. (I wasn’t kidding when I said my sister was on top of things). So I had the delight of sharing donuts and coffee with my mother, aunt and grandmother before I got in the hair follicle murder chair. The whole morning reminded me of Christmas. We all know and love that feeling.

My sister, Denille, came back from running errands and walked through with a calm greeting. She sported black yoga pants and a sweatshirt from our vacation to Mammoth Caves one summer, in which I encountered the Daniels Cemetery in Tennessee that carried the bones of my heritage including twin brothers born on my birthday a hundred years prior, but died a few quick years later; but that’s another story…

Denille walked up to our table and after talking to us for a few minutes looked down and said, “I love Bacon”, and snatched a couple strips before going to her room to organize and plan.

It’s interesting how a single day can make halves become whole. The day that builds up of what seems like an eternity to the young newly engaged Christian couple. That last joke was clever, thanks Hersh.

But really, how many little girls do you think fantasize about wearing white while picturing their knight?

After my sister had left to get ready, I stood alone with my grandmother in the kitchen. One of my first posts earlier in my tumbling journey I spoke of my grandparents seventy one year love story and my grandfather’s slow decline in health. Needless to say it’s been ten months since new year’s day, the day I awoke in my grandparents condo to see my Grandmother with her hand on her face looking out the window, in a loss at the fact that in the room ten feet away, her beloved Robert had breathed his last breath.

In that same way, as she stood with me, she looked out the window in the kitchen of the bride and fumbled with whatever was in front of her. Her eyes as green as youth. “It’s so final. Life comes to an end.” She said to me. “Whenever I’m in the department store, or buying groceries I’ll stop and talk to the couples I see. I just tell them that when they get home just to hug and kiss each other for no reason.”

On that sunny Florida day in January, Dolores Clarke got up from her couch and looked at the body of her husband lying in the bed where he had spent his last days in delusion. The colors draining from his fingertips. My grandmother lay another blanket on top of him. “Bob you’re so cold.” Taking off his wedding ring. “I’ll never see another green sweater without thinking of the boy from Jersey who couldn’t ever tie his shoes.”

The best man and maid of honor had taken their place, and the little girl I knew as my sister walked elegantly down the aisle with my father. The little flower girls stood in amazement, the parents with tears of pride, the groom with calm anxiety, and my grandmother with a gaze at the cross behind the couple and an open mouthed deep breath. 

What God has brought together let no man separate. The woman was made of a rib out of the side of Adam; not made out of his head to rule over him, nor out of his feet to be trampled upon by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected, and near his heart to be loved.

The best part is that Marriage is merely representative of God’s love for humanity. Laying His Majesty aside as God in the flesh, Jesus laid down his life for His bride. He is the perfect groom as we, His Church, are His bride. We experience a greater magic than one could ever imagine as creator God adored his rebellious creation and endured the ultimate pain and suffering so that His small and powerless image bearers could see His love and an spend eternity in the overflowing fountain of joy, love and happiness that make the heavenly hosts proclaim day and night His Holiness and Goodness.

To Benjamin & Denille Maier I give my best, with Joy and Love.

So I stood in the secretary of state’s office, and I was waiting in the massive line that always comes with going to s.o.s. I was zoning out, being a true astronaut and space cadet when I noticed the thirty-something year old mom in line in front of me. She had her what looked like 2 year old son with her in line and he still seemed to have had some baby fat. A little pug. In a good healthy way strangely enough. He was in that exploratory stage but because he hadn’t fully developed his legs yet, he would just crumble without batting an eye. I watched this little fella as he wandered around in the madness of people shouting numbers, people rambling about their reasons as to being there. Then I saw the kid start to walk away from his mom. He had found a friend behind me toward a man and his son. This man seemed to have a native african accent, and the whole time I was there, he was loving on his own 2 year old son, playing with him, smiling, and laughing under his breath while he waited for someone he had come with. Then the two kids started interacting. They followed each other for a moment or two as they calmly said broken sentences and smiled at each other and looked at their reflections in the glass door. And as I gazed at the man, who gave me a simple but content smile, and then back to the adoring eyes of the mom in front of me, when I thought to myself…this is alllright. Everything will be alright. This is what the kingdom looks like. And it was wierd, because without saying anything, I knew the mom and father were thinking the same thing in the midst of this chaotic hustle and bustle environment. Nothing special happened, but the world happened. It truly warmed the soul. Wish you could have been there.