{"id":1333,"date":"2010-02-08T06:00:16","date_gmt":"2010-02-08T12:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/?p=1333"},"modified":"2010-02-08T06:00:16","modified_gmt":"2010-02-08T12:00:16","slug":"chasing-after-my-wild-man-lover","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/2010\/20100208-1333.htm","title":{"rendered":"Chasing After My Wild-Man Lover"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/category\/relationships\/love-month\"><img loading=\"lazy\" alt=\"Love Month Banner\" src=\"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/images\/2010lovemonth.jpg\" title=\"Love Month Banner\" class=\"alignnone\" width=\"400\" height=\"133\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Yesterday, I told you about <i>willing<\/i> to give God my husband.<\/p>\n<p>Fast forward two years.  I&#8217;m now in a Bible program that has a no-dating policy.  But I&#8217;m talking with this guy online.  Talking with him a lot.  Like hours and hours every day.<\/p>\n<p>And God got jealous.  I experienced His pursuit especially during times of worship when I sang songs like &#8220;All I want is to know You, Jesus&#8221; and &#8220;And I&#8230;I&#8217;m desperate for You.&#8221;  <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Really?&#8221; God would question.  &#8220;Do you really want Me?  Are you really desperate for Me?  Do you love Me more than <i>him<\/i>?&#8221;  He started convicting me about my response to Him versus my response to this guy.  &#8220;Why don&#8217;t you spend hours talking to Me like you spend hours talking to him?  Why don&#8217;t you read My letters over and over again like you read his?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>So when my parents approached me about my relationship with this guy, I wasn&#8217;t surprised.  And when they told me they didn&#8217;t want me chatting online with him, I knew I needed to obey.<\/p>\n<p>But that didn&#8217;t mean that this experience hadn&#8217;t reawakened all sorts of desires within me.  I enjoyed the companionship, the camaraderie, the emotional intimacy with this guy.<\/p>\n<p>Add to this that I was making college plans, organizing my life, dreaming my dreams for the future.<\/p>\n<p>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&#8211;and I took off into the woods for my quiet time.<\/p>\n<p>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.  &#8220;You have tame dreams.&#8221;  He told me.  &#8220;Tame dreams of a husband and children and trips to Europe and a nice little house.&#8221;  And then He started revealing Himself to me.  He told me that He&#8217;s not a tame God&#8211;and that His dreams aren&#8217;t tame dreams.  Isaiah 55:8&#8211;&#8220;&#8216;For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are our ways My ways,&#8217; says the Lord.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I had been dreaming my little dreams, building fantasy castles in the sky&#8211;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.<\/p>\n<p>And now God was inviting me into something different.<\/p>\n<p>A tree branch curved down, forming a door that reminded me of Aslan&#8217;s door in <i>Prince Caspian<\/i>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;At one end of the glade Aslan had caused to be set up two stakes of wood, higher than a man&#8217;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&#8230;.Everyone&#8217;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&#8230;&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>When the Telmarine stepped through that door, he disappeared from the land of Narnia and entered into the world of Earth&#8211;a completely different world, for a completely different life.<\/p>\n<p>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&#8211;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. <\/p>\n<p>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.  <\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>I chose to chase after my wild-man Lover.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday, I told you about willing to give God my husband. Fast forward two years. I&#8217;m now in a Bible program that has a no-dating policy. But I&#8217;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 &#8230; <a title=\"Chasing After My Wild-Man Lover\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/2010\/20100208-1333.htm\">Read more <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Chasing After My Wild-Man Lover<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[38],"tags":[227,280,1481,1009],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1333"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1333"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1333\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}