December 18, 2003
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oops, I missed one love lesson.
(excerpt below from journal entry this past year)
In God’s Kingdom, we walk step by step, one step at a time, in faith. We never really know where the Lord will lead us, but we have chosen from some beginning point that we will follow His leading no matter what. Even if it does not coincide with our wishes or dreams, plans or desires. I don’t really understand the story God wants to write with my life. I don’t understand His intention or His vision for me. I don’t know where He wants to place me, with whom and to do what. My life, to me, is like a play that keeps unfolding day by day. And I have learned that I can’t put my hope in what I think will happen. I can’t put my happiness on a possible relationship (or marriage); I can’t put my hope in what I suspect my crush’s feelings are for me nor on his actions which betray those feelings. Even if I knew with verbal certainty from his own mouth that he has set his affections on me, I still cannot place my hope on that. The course of my life and the subsequent happiness is not based upon his wishes and desires (nor is it based on mine); it is based on God’s. So even if he was completely in love with me, that doesn’t make a farthing of a difference if he’s not the one the Lord has chosen for me. Because God will make His desire and will known to us. Our feelings are merely feelings – here today, gone tomorrow – just as our very own transient lives. What is God’s plan? That’s where I want to place my hope.
A natural person would say: since this and this are true, then therefore this will happen, so I can hope for that! But a Christian doesn’t look to the clues and circumstances and place their hope in what it might mean, he/she looks to God alone. A Christian knows that what matters is not what everything looks like, but what God has planned.
Therefore, Lesson #7:
In matters of the heart, I need to live as a Christian, not as a natural person. I need to not place my hope on what all the clues lead up to but instead, place my hope in the certainty of my God.
