Yesterday, I told you about willing to give God my husband.
Fast forward two years. I’m now in a Bible program that has a no-dating policy. But I’m talking with this guy online. Talking with him a lot. Like hours and hours every day.
And God got jealous. I experienced His pursuit especially during times of worship when I sang songs like “All I want is to know You, Jesus” and “And I…I’m desperate for You.”
“Really?” God would question. “Do you really want Me? Are you really desperate for Me? Do you love Me more than him?” He started convicting me about my response to Him versus my response to this guy. “Why don’t you spend hours talking to Me like you spend hours talking to him? Why don’t you read My letters over and over again like you read his?”
So when my parents approached me about my relationship with this guy, I wasn’t surprised. And when they told me they didn’t want me chatting online with him, I knew I needed to obey.
But that didn’t mean that this experience hadn’t reawakened all sorts of desires within me. I enjoyed the companionship, the camaraderie, the emotional intimacy with this guy.
Add to this that I was making college plans, organizing my life, dreaming my dreams for the future.
It was in the midst of this time of reevaluation that I went on a retreat with the others in my Bible program. We took one afternoon as a personal time with God–and I took off into the woods for my quiet time.
I was discussing all the plans and desires of my heart with God, and whining a bit over the unpredictability of things. Then God spoke directly to my heart. “You have tame dreams.” He told me. “Tame dreams of a husband and children and trips to Europe and a nice little house.” And then He started revealing Himself to me. He told me that He’s not a tame God–and that His dreams aren’t tame dreams. Isaiah 55:8–“‘For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are our ways My ways,’ says the Lord.”
I had been dreaming my little dreams, building fantasy castles in the sky–but God was inviting me to become a part of His great dreams. My heart had become intent again on pursuing my tame dreams, the familiar, the comfortable.
And now God was inviting me into something different.
A tree branch curved down, forming a door that reminded me of Aslan’s door in Prince Caspian.
“At one end of the glade Aslan had caused to be set up two stakes of wood, higher than a man’s head and about three feet apart. A third, and lighter, piece of wood was bound across them at the top, uniting them, so the whole thing looked like a doorway from nowhere into nowhere….Everyone’s eyes were fixed on [the Telmarine]. They saw the three pieces of wood, and through them the trees and grass of Narnia. They saw the man between the doorposts: then, in one second, he had vanished utterly…”
When the Telmarine stepped through that door, he disappeared from the land of Narnia and entered into the world of Earth–a completely different world, for a completely different life.
I felt the Word of the Lord drawing me. Drawing me to a different life. On this side of the door lay my comfortable dreams–a nice tame husband, nice tame children, a nice tame home, and an uneventful life. Through the door, there was only the unknown, the wild.
The God who had jealously pursued me while I chased after my own desires now invited me into the wild, to chase after Him. The wild was not comfortable, it was far from tame. The little glimpse I saw scared me half to death.
But through the door, a wild-man beckoned. A wild-man who loved me and had pursued me. Now He begged me to join with Him in the wild.
I looked at my comfortable dreams. I looked through the door into the wild. I saw the face of my Wild-Man Lover, and I stepped through the door.
I chose to chase after my wild-man Lover.