On the Throne of your Heart

THIS WEEK I have alot to talk about. It has been a very exciting week, and I have a relevant story to tell you.
So I was very excited this week because I was getting ready to have my first date ever, and teenage girls are really weird so you know we need some direction on how to handle excitement and such. So what does GOD do about this? He sets it up so that Youth Pastor Ryan had the perfect story to tell about himself and his fiance Shelby during the series "Dating in the Dark." I'm not sure why the series is called that. Anyway, Ryan was speaking about how Jesus is the only path to love, since GOD is love, and He made us so that we seek love. He also told us about the way the world makes substitutes for love and makes us want to seek out what we need everywhere but with GOD, who asks us to pursue holiness. The thing about holiness is that when we are holy, the happiness we have is much fuller than the happiness from any number of the world's idols. Holiness is wholeness, secure peace in GOD and from GOD. He wants us to be holy, as He is holy, so we can be with Him. Then He will bless us and provide the love and comfort we search for, even if not in the time or manner in which we expect. Even before He wants us to be happy, as He does, He wants us to be holy, and to trust Him to know what's best for us each, and to want what's best for us too. Trusting Him, we're not getting in the way and we're leaving our lives up to Him. Loving Him for than anything else, we do well, like in Matthew 22:36-40:
"[36]'Teacher, which is the greatest commandment of all?' [37]Jesus said to [the lawyer], ''You shall love the LORD your GOD with all your heart, with all your soul,and with all your mind.' [38] This is the first and greatest commandment. [39] And the second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' [40] On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.' "
So here's the story about Ryan and Shelby: Last year they had been engaged for 4 months, and Ryan was feeling out of peace about it. Something was wrong. He felt that GOD was calling him to break it off, so he did. He said it was the most painful thing he ever had to do. He was in bed crying one night, talking to GOD and asking about His plans for his happiness, and when he listened for His reply, the Holy Spirit spoke to him very clearly. He said:
"She is on the throne of your heart."
Ryan realized that he had made Shelby like a god to him, an idol, where only the real GOD belongs on his heart's throne. So in the night he tossed out all his letters and pictures and things from Shelby that made her like an idol, and he gave it all up. He said that his act of relinquishing this element of idolatry was almost a physical motion, but more real because it was spiritual. That's some powerful Spirit working.
So they stayed un-engaged, and Ryan took at trip to Mount Sinai (sp?), where he was praying for GOD's direction on this. That is where GOD told him for sure that Shelby was the one he was supposed to marry. He submitted his will to GOD's and put Him first, and then GOD showed him what he needed.
For me, this story is not about marriage. It is about priorities. As I'm blogging I'm hoping and praying that GOD will show me what my idols are, so I can give them up before they become my obsessions. I needed to hear this story this week because it reminded me that not only does GOD have a perfect plan for me and for everyone, and not only is it beautifully unexpected and dazzlingly well-designed, and not only is it much better than anything I could come up with, but it is HIS. It's all always been about GOD. There is no good reason for a little bitty person in this big grand universe to think he is superlative, nor is there a reason for him to feel aimless. All GOD is asking us to do is trust it all to Him, and put Him first. I needed this because I needed a reality check, and I needed GOD to tell me what to care about. I always need GOD more than anything. Look at this world: what does it need? It needs help, love, hope, healing, purpose and security. It's what we look for, and it's what the world can't seem to find. But we've always needed it, and it's exactly what GOD offers.
Being submitted to His will helps us become holy, and holiness helps us find full happiness.
So I went on my date on Saturday and I had a wonderful time. I'm glad GOD knows how to take care of teenage girls. We're nuts and we really don't know what we're doing. He keeps me in check and helps me figure stuff out.
Another thing happened! From Friday morning, 7:30 A.M., to Saturday afternoon, 1:30 P.M., was the 30-hour famine with my Youth groupies. Oh I love to be with them. We fasted for thirty hours as part of a fundraiser to feed hungry children (thirty dollars pays for them for a month) and at 6:00 in the afternoon we gathered at Southpoint Community Church, and we sang a little, and played some games, and them we bundled up and went outside in the FREEZING cold beautiful night (the sky looked bigger than I've almost ever seen it)and some of us got sprayed with water guns. We had a Nerf war with giant pieces of cardboard and PVC pipes in the church rotunda(my dart got stuck so I was out for most of the game). We kept hydrated with lots of water and Gatorade, and surprisingly few of us were terribly hungry. I had some on-and-off hunger, but most of the time I was just fine. We went to bed late and got up at a little past 8, and we went on a Jericho walk around the pond behind the church.
A Jericho walk is where we just go around the course and do not talk to each other, and we pray really hard for fiery boldness to reach the people around us. It was awesome. My mom says fasting makes your mind clearer. I find that this, along with the peacefulness and holiness that had fallen on this group, makes it easier to pray really hard, and to care about what we pray for. No texting, no jabbering, just walking and silent prayer. When we reached the end, we gathered and divided off into small groups and prayed for GOD to work in the lives of the people around us. We prayed hard, and then we got ready to go to our service project downtown, where we picked up trash in blue plastic bags.
I had a poncho made of a blue plastic bag, and I thank GOD that we had gloves, too, because we found some interesting stuff. I won't gross you out, but I'll just say I'm glad I haven't gotten an airborne mildew infection or anything. Still fasting (with very little appetite) we lugged a sofa we found out to the side of the road and went back to Lavilla, the headquarters of our project. From there we went back to the church and waited a little while for 1:30 (then we had an appetite). Before we ate we prayed for the food, and for the earthquake in Chile (we have a friend there too named Sofie) and for the tsunami threat in Hawaii. Then we ATE FOOD, and then we went home feeling a little ill :) .
Thanks to donations from Ellen Schmitt, Will Warden, my mom Tamatha Cain, and my grandma Sally Cain, I personally got to raise $270, enough to feed one child for 9 months. Total, my group got to raise over $2,000 dollars. win.
So thank GOD for that, and pray for Chile, and Haiti, and Hawaii, and the whole world I suppose.
I go into this week praying for fiery boldness again, in me and in all my sisters and brothers all over the world, to pay attention to the "nudging" of the Holy Spirit as He calls us and to have the boldness in the moment when it counts, to tell somebody the reason for the hope and joy we have. The Bible has something like that in it, "always be prepared to give a reason for the hope you have..." I cannot remember where. But it's a good one.
Peace. Amen.