Jeremiah 29:11-14

I truly love being on the mountain top and this past weekend was one of those experiences.  First I took a huge faith step on Friday (well big for me anyway) and I learned how passionate and trustworthy God truly is.  Both of these have led me to a renewed love of my savior and a desire to know more about Him and what He wants for me.

On Friday, after being encouraged from several different directions, I signed up for E-Harmony.  Before I did this, I came to the realization, that it wasn’t necessarily God telling me no, but my fear of rejection that was holding me back.  So I jumped in and thankfully God caught me (like He ever doesn't!).  After taking this step, I unplugged from technology for 24 hours and went to my church’s women’s retreat. 

The theme was the Passion of the heart.  Not my heart but God’s heart, and the fact that He doesn’t just love me He passionately loves me.  Chris taught us what it means to love Him with all my Heart, Soul, Mind and Strength.  She explained that to love God with your heart is with all my emotions, including the ones I have locked away (scary right!).  To love Him with my soul is to put Him in the center of my desires, my personality, the very essence of me.  To love Him with my Mind is to love Him with all my thoughts (wow I fail here!!) and then with my strengths is to love Him with all my actions (ok another fail)! 

Of course I am a sinner and I fail miserably at all four.  But God is so amazing, He didn’t berate me He showed me instead that He is truly trustworthy and I can hold onto that promise.  During our quite time, I was reading Jeremiah 29:11-14 and I began to pray it back to him, this is what I came up with.

Lord, you will rescue me from captivity, for you are not hidden from me.  I will be found by you because I seek you with all my heart.  And you will hear me when I pray to you and call upon your name; for you have mapped out a future for that is full of hope.  I can trust you to protect me and to prosper me.  Because each day is designed by you and I am not an accident.

Through this God showed me that I was locking my emotions away from Him by not trusting Him enough to find me a husband.  I was instead relying on my defense mechanisms to continue to scare men away.  I am also hurting Him by trying to change who He has made me to be.  the funny thing about E-Harmony is it has allowed me to do that.  In the past I have been more than willing to overlook certain things in a man just because my options were so few.  But as I released this whole dating thing to God He began to show me how many passionate, God fearing SINGLE men there really are out there.  The most amazing thing as happened, I am now more secure in what I want and what I need from a mate!

God has shown me that He alone is the rock that I can stand on, the man that I can trust in, the true lover of my soul who knew me before I was conceived, and loves me completely because He has created everything in me!