The kind of intimacy that Christ longs to have with me is best represented in the marriage relationship. What God commands wives to do – respect and submit to their husbands – is what He desires all of us as believers in Christ to do for Him. And the part of Ephesians 5:22-33 that describes a husband’s love is a little taste of the way that Jesus loves, leads, sacrifices for, and serves us as His people. In fact, one of the main purposes of marriage is to point us all to the intimate relationship between Christ and His Church.
Marriage is to be a living parable or symbol of the REAL THING – our relationship with Jesus.
It is possible to take this analogy too far, to make too much of Jesus being our “Husband” to the point that it gets kind of creepy. But when we keep this analogy in balance with the rest of Scripture, I think we can see God’s heart for us in a beautiful way. God also describes that He is the Shepherd and His people are His sheep. Or that we are His soldiers and He is our Commander. We are His temple and He is building us as living stones to become His beautiful building. His heart’s cry is:
“This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel after that time,” declares the Lord. “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.” Jeremiah 31:33 (later quoted in Hebrews 8:10 – because it applies to believers in Christ, as well)
I found some “traditional wedding vows” at www.weddings.about.com and modified them a bit for this post. I would love for you to think about these vows in terms of your covenant relationship with Christ if you are a Christian. And if you are not yet a believer in Christ, I long for you to see the unfathomable love God has for you, my friend, and to receive the gift Jesus has to offer you – new Life, forgiveness, and life forever with Him in heaven!
I, _____, take you, Jesus, to be my Savior and Lord, my God, my constant Friend, my faithful Partner, my Source, my Ultimate Authority, and my Love from this day forward… I offer you my solemn vow to be Your faithful follower in sickness and in health, in good times and in bad, and in joy as well as in sorrow. I promise to love You unconditionally, to support You in Your goals, to honor and respect You, to laugh with You and cry with You, and to cherish You for the rest of my earthly life and for every moment of eternity in heaven with You.
GIVING UP OUR DREAMS SEEMS AWFUL
At first, when we see that Jesus wants us to yield control of our lives and our dearest desires to Himself, it is scary. Terrifying, even. But what we don’t realize at first, is that God is not asking us to give up anything without promising to replace our desires and our will with something much better – His will and His desires.
Now, I look at things so very differently, because I have tasted the goodness of God and experienced the provision, sufficiency, leadership, love, sovereignty, wisdom, and perfection of God’s will. Instead of thinking, “Oh no! How could You ask me to surrender this desire?” I think things like:
Lord,
You alone are God. You alone are Real Love and Real Life. You are truly the Pearl of Greatest Price. I know now that if I have You, I have everything that matters – and if I have everything this world has to offer, but I don’t have You – I have nothing. I joyfully lay all of my dreams, my desires, and my will on the altar before You. I know that You will give me things that are so much higher and better in the grand scheme of things than what I could ever ask for or imagine. I know that if I had my way about everything, I would make a big mess. I will be content with You no matter what my circumstances and no matter what Your will for me is. I know that Your will is good, pleasing, and perfect.
I want all of Your will, even if it is painful at times – I praise and thank You that You promise to never leave me or forsake me and to give me the strength I need in those difficult, dark times. I don’t want anything apart from Your desires for me. I know that any pain You lovingly allow into my life will prune me, refine me, and cause me to grow into greater maturity in my faith. Help me to receive problems, challenges, obstacles, and painful circumstances with joy as I trust myself to Your sovereignty (James 1). I thank You that any suffering I may have to endure in this lifetime will accomplish Your purposes in the lives of many other people, as well as in my own life. I trust You completely.
I acknowledge that You know infinitely better than I do what is best in every circumstance. You know the needs of the 7 billion other people on the planet. You know the plans You have for Your kingdom and the spread of Your gospel. You have good plans for me in light of eternity, and I know that You promise to use even bad and painful things for Your ultimate glory and my ultimate good (Romans 8:28-29). This life is so very short. I want to keep my eyes on what will matter when this life is over.
I trust You to keep Your promises to me. I thank and praise You for Your promises and for the Treasure of Your Word. No matter what happens, please let me have Your Spirit, Your Word, prayer, and Your will. Whatever will bring You the most glory, I know will ultimately bring me the most joy and fulfillment. I am up for whatever adventure You have in store for me and I can’t wait to draw closer and closer to You on the journey. Only empower me to be faithful!
Keep me close to Your heart! Teach me more of Your ways. Let me feast on Your Word and on times of fervent prayer and total spiritual oneness with You. Let me gaze upon Your beauty and worship You with ever increasing faith, trust, and godliness. Make me holy as You are holy. Let me love what You love and hate what You hate. Change my desires to match Your own. I yield all of myself, all of my resources, all of my time, and all of my future completely to You. Thank You for loving me so much that You were willing to die for me! Thank You for making a way for me to have access to You and to be right with You.
I want to soak in Your presence and rest in Your love and peace no matter what my circumstances are today. I love You with all my heart, strength, mind, and soul!
In the Name and power of Christ,
Amen!
Mz. Keshia
April 6, 2015
Amen!
What God said to the prophet Jeremiah, He’s telling us the same thing to all of us:
“For I know the plans I have for you, Plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and hope.” – Jeremiah 29:11
Peacefulwife
April 6, 2015
Mz. Keshia,
YES! Exactly! 🙂 So exciting!!!!!
Jen Myr
April 7, 2015
Amen🙏😊
I thank God for using you as an instrument to spread his word and love to others.
May you continue to share his love and joy and his wisdom to inspire other people on their faith😊
God bless you😊
Peacefulwife
April 9, 2015
Jen Myr,
It is wonderful to hear from you, my precious sister! Thank you for the encouragement, I pray that God might richly bless your faith and walk with Christ for His glory! 🙂
Jen Myr
April 9, 2015
Am so blessed to read ur blog, and will be sharing ur blogs to others too😊
Jen Myr
April 7, 2015
Reblogged this on thebeautitudes.
Katelin
April 11, 2015
I’m struggling really hard in my relationship with the Lord. I’ve been going through a lot of trials mentally especially. I’ve been held back a lot by fear for a long time. And it has kept me from going on and doing things that I feel God has called/purposed me to do. I feel like I haven’t accomplished anything for the kingdom in the 2 years I’ve been saved and that God is just so disappointed with me.
I’ve been struggling with trusting Him fully and walking by the Spirit as well. I have never trusted anyone really, not to this magnitude anyhow, and so trusting God completely is so new for me.
I’m so used to trusting my own self, and trying to protect myself from the hurt that is out there, whereas God wants me to do just the opposite and go do His will even if it really hurts. Surrendering the fear and everything else to God is just so hard.
I’ve relied on my feelings and such has been the norm for so long. And after 2 years I feel like God is just so tired of me and my fear always getting in the way. I feel broken and just beyond repair, as fear is not my only issue.
When I read your post I just feel like I’m so far from there in my walk with God and I don’t know how to even get to that level of trust. Even when it comes to loving God as I should. I don’t know how to love God with all my mind, soul, and strength yet. I desire to of course, but I don’t think I am there yet.
Please give advice and prayers if you can. It is greatly needed and appreciated.
Peacefulwife
April 12, 2015
Katelin,
Fear holds many, many of us back. It sure did for me for decades! 😦
Let’s talk about what you are telling yourself, my beautiful sister in Christ. I believe that what you are wrestling with is a very normal struggle that we as believers have. And I believe that it is totally overcome-able, as you allow Christ to have full control. But it will be a process of deciding not to believe your fears and to trust Jesus and His Word instead.
I hope you might search my home page at http://www.peacefulwife.com for “fear”
It IS hard to surrender fully to Christ. YES! It is the most terrifying thing ever when you have been trusting yourself. I have definitely been there. I am really encouraged that you see what is going on. That is an important first step. Unless God shows you these things, you can’t even see the problem. So, I know God is already at work in your life. That is awesome!
None of us, myself included, can accomplish anything for the Kingdom of God in our own power and strength. When I was trusting self, not God, I didn’t see prayers answered often, I wasn’t out sharing Christ and seeing people saved, I didn’t have much ministry at all. Now, God is using me – but it is all Him. I know every moment that I am completely and desperately dependent on His power and Spirit to fill me up and that I can do NOTHING without Him. There is an apple tree in our neighborhood that has never been pruned. One branch is hanging precariously by a thread right now. It does have leaves and a few little apples starting to grow. But as soon as the weight of the apples gets to be too heavy, or a big wind comes by, that branch will snap off of the tree and be on the ground. Once it no longer receives the sap from the tree, it will die and will produce no fruit.
We are that way. Read John 15 about what Jesus says for us to do in order to be fruitful.
The only way to accomplish anything for Christ is to be filled to overflowing with Him. God gives us the “control knob” to how much Holy Spirit we allow in our lives. If you are consumed by fear, you don’t know God very well yet. The more you know God, the more His perfect love casts out all fear. The more you allow Him total access and control in your life, the more He will accomplish great things in your life for the Kingdom.
I personally had to write down every single fear I had and then write down whether I was going to trust God and His sovereignty and His Word or my fear. Would God be with me even if He allowed me to face my greatest fears? And would I trust Him even if that happened? It felt like jumping off of a spiritual cliff at first.
But I would NEVER want to go back to trusting myself. I don’t have power. I am not sovereign. I don’t have control over situations or people or events or the universe. Only God is sovereign. I suggest that you study about the attributes of God and the character of God – you can listen to Wayne Grudem’s podcasts (Systematic Theology) about that topic. You can go to http://www.desiringgod.org or http://www.radical.net and read or listen to John Piper or David Platt talk about the character of God and about fear.
The place to start is to say, “God, I want to be at that place where I have total faith in You and no more fear. I want to want You more than anything. Help me overcome my fear! Give me bigger and bigger faith! I need You! I can’t do anything good without You! I want You more than anything or anyone else in my life. I give You access to the darkest places of my soul. Show me any sin that needs to go. Show me my unbelief and lack of trust and faith. Show me who You are so I can understand and open my spiritual eyes so I can trust You. Change me, Lord! I need you so very desperately!”
Spend time writing out any sin and the fears and negative thoughts you say to yourself. Compare them to Scripture. Reject anything that is not of God and ask Him to rebuild your life on Christ and His Word alone and to help you trash all of the worldly or sinful ways of thinking.
Much love to you, my precious sister! I can’t wait to see all that God has in store for you!
I’m right here if you want to talk. 🙂
Katelin
April 12, 2015
Thanks for your encouragement 🙂 It is greatly appreciated. I must mention that I am the only saved person in my home so it’s a rare occasion that I can really talk to someone about this that understands. So thanks for taking the time to give advice. I appreciate it.
Peacefulwife
April 14, 2015
Katelin,
That would be so hard! Do you have a close, godly friend or mentor in your life? You are always most welcome to share here. That is what I want this place to be – a place where we can interact, pray for, bless, encourage, and exhort one another in our faith in Christ.
Much love, my beautiful sister!
Steffany .
April 18, 2015
Thank you for your blogs and thank you for your heart. and thank God.
I can totally relate with Katelin . I am often consumed with fear of failure, or fear of the future. But, I know with God, He can change all that. —It really spoke to me when you said, if we are consumed with fear, we don’t know God very well yet. I need more faith that He can fill me more and grow my faith. I guess because I can’t see how much deeper it could go, I am afraid I can’t. It sounds silly because. …….I have gone a lot deeper with God in the past few years, & yet everytime trouble comes, I have to ask for help in trusting him. I want to feel safe in his hands and trust him with everything, trusting that He is good, regardless of my circumstance. And also knowing I can live and walk in confidence and honour because of what He did on the cross.
Peacefulwife
April 20, 2015
Steffany,
We can NEVER go as deep as it is possible to go with God. 🙂 There is always room for our faith to grow and our trust in Him to grow. I have been begging God to take me MUCH, MUCH deeper this year. I want that to be my prayer for the rest of my life!
The troubles we have do test our faith and trust and force us to stretch our faith and to grow and mature. They are actually blessings!
I love that you want to trust God fully and have great faith in Him. That is awesome! Praying for God to continue to deepen your hunger, faith, and trust in Him!
Thank you very much for sharing.
JC
May 3, 2015
I love this stuff so much April! 😀
Yes, take everything I have Lord and make it your own! It all belongs to You!
It’s such a place of total joy!
Peacefulwife
May 4, 2015
JC,
I’m so glad this blessed you. 🙂 I pray for God to continue to fill you with Himself and to bring you to wholeness, completeness, and to thoroughly equip you for His kingdom’s work and that you might know God more and more deeply.