Ready For Love: A Call to Action

"...Heart shattered lives, ready for love, don't for a moment escape God's notice." Psalm 51:17
I love the idea that the Lord loves us so much. What could be greater than knowing that there's nothing we could ever do to make Him love us any more or less than He already does? God created us to be intimate and in relationship with Him. He designed our hearts with a natural yearning to be loved. And He IS love. Why is it, then, so easy to go through the motions of our daily lives, completely forgetting our value to the most high God? Why do we turn to everything and everyone around us for attention? For acceptance? For love?

One thing I've been learing in my own life as I grow in relationship with Christ is that somewhere along the way we weill face hardships. There's no way around it (John 16:33). People will hurt us. Things we can't explain happen with no apparent reason. "Bad things happen to good people." Or maybe in some way life just hasn't turned out the way we expect it to or think that it should.  It's in these moments that God feels anywhere but near, let alone loving. Satan will try to place doubts in our minds, that if the Lord really loved us, He wouldn't allow these things to happen. Or maybe it's condemnation he uses to separate our hearts' from the Lord's heart.  Sin so easily entangles us, whether it be our own or someone else's, and satan uses every opportunity to convince us we're not deserving of the love that God so freely gives us. Maybe it's true that we don't deserve it... But He loved us enough to make a way for us anyway.

I've been stuck in these tough places, myself, and if I'm being completely honest, I'm still walking through the process of encountering freedom.  Not too long ago I found myself in desperate situations, looking constantly for love and acceptance in unhealthy places. I hated every moment of it. Instead of finding wholeness in the artificial love, I found only brokeness. Life hurt.

There is hope. Psalm 51:17. It's great knowing God loves us, but what about the times we don't feel it? What about the times that God feels anywhere but near? Well, let me just say this- it is a CHOICE. That verse doesn't just say that God loves us and it ends there. While there is nothing we can do or say that will make Him love us any more or less, we have a responsibility to accept it. He is a God of free will and will not force us to love Him back. The key words that stick out in this verse to me are "READY FOR LOVE."  If we're not ready to receive God's love, then of course we're not going to feel it. It is our duty to move forward in His love, laying all other "loves" behind and pursuing Him first.

Awhile back, after living in my own desperation, I was praying and asking the Lord why I was searching for a love that only brought despair. Or why His love just wasn't enough to fill the voids I had. To my surprise, He answered this, "Will you just trust me to love you?" And in that very moment I realized that His love actually was enough. In fact it was more than enough. I just hadn't been doing my part. I wasn't trusting God to love me, or in any other area actually. I expected Him to "love" me like others had loved me, but as I began pressing into the Lord I realize those other ways of "love" weren't really love at all. They were temporary fixes to a deep brokeness I had experienced years earlier.

Will you begin to ready your hearts for the Lord? Search for Him. He sometimes needs to take us and break the things in us that are not of Him. Sometimes it's uncomfortable. Sometimes it even hurts a little, but He puts the broken pieces back together. When we freely allow His love in our hearts and lives, it begins transforming us. He is faithful to complete the good work He started in us. Our part is to ready ourselves for Him, surrendering our hearts and lives daily and go along for the ride.

So tell me, will you trust Him to love you?