Unworthy

Warning, folks: this is a long entry.

Andy loaned me the book Crazy Love before I came back from St Louis, and I finished it a few days ago. It was such an honest, open and matter-of-fact book that put things into really harsh perspective for me. Particularly poignant was the chapter entitled 'Profile of the Lukewarm'.

When I moved to Tucson for college, I made a conscious decision to take a bit of a break from church. At the time, my father was an Elder, my mom was working in the church office and earning her Master's degree from Fuller Seminary, and both my brothers and my future sister-in-law were going to Bible college... and then there was me: pretty sure I wouldn't be going into ministry and attending a public school. Needless to say, I felt a little out of place, and a bit like I didn't belong. None of them ever did anything to make me feel that way; my mind came up with all of it.

I did search for churches to go to (found a few crazy ones) when I got to Tucson, but my heart wasn't in it. I thought it would be much better to try life without church for a bit, then go back to that life knowing that it was a conscious decision, and not because it was a habit (which at the time is what it had become). I figured that I didn't need 'church' to keep up my spiritual life; I could still study the Bible and live the way I should. Little did I know that this is much harder than it seemed.

Sure enough, I wasn't spending time with other Christians, and it got easier and easier to skip a Bible study or two, or three. Then it became easier to let a few other things slip. Before I knew it, that short break didn't have a time limit. The problem was that it wasn't too much of a problem. I still knew that someday I would break out of this funk, so I continued on the way I was living. I got in a few tricky situations, made a few mistakes, and look back on them with regret. Even then, I knew things could be a lot worse, and that God was protecting me, despite my rebellion. But it still wasn't enough for me to change my life.

Right before I moved to England, I started to get back on track. I did a quiet time every morning, spent more time in prayer, and felt a lot better about things. That void I had been feeling ever since I made this decision was starting to fill. When I came to England, life started moving pretty fast. My course left me with little free time, and I wasn't really sure what church to go to anyway. I went to Hillsong a couple times because I had heard of it before and knew that the music would be good, but God still wasn't a priority, so I didn't really try very hard to go every week. Pretty soon, I was back in the same type of life that I had started living.

At this point, I convinced myself that I was okay because I knew the main things I'd never let slip (mainly saving myself for marriage) and thought I could be a bit more relaxed about the rest. I wasn't too bothered that I didn't go to church or spend time reading the Bible; as long as I was still living a pretty good life compared to everyone else, praying sometimes and not having sex, I was probably in good shape, right?

Wrong.

This way of living still landed me in a few situations that I never thought would happen, and I came closer than I ever thought I would to losing the one thing that meant most to me.

And now, after that long history, here's why it's relevant to the blog.

One thing I've always wanted since I can remember is to get married. Every time someone quoted Psalms 37:4 ('Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart') I thought about being married; that was my desire. Having never been in a serious relationship, I was starting to feel a bit lonely. I kept wondering when God was going to put that someone in my life. Every time I prayed about it, though, I immediately thought of the state of my spiritual life. How could I be asking God for something like this when I was like this? I had definitely been looking in the wrong places, and didn't have a group of Christian friends in which I could meet someone who fit the bill. I could hear God trying to get me out of the funk, but I felt like I didn't know where to start.

Every so often, my beautiful, wonderful sister-in-law Sarah would tell me about a new guy she met that would be perfect for me, and that I should move back home to meet him and get married. So when she started talking about Andy, I was definitely interested to see what he was like. Plus, Eric and Sarah's approval of whoever I marry is really important to me, so the fact that he came recommended was definitely a good sign. But when I heard that he was a pastor, I got really nervous.

I was pretty sure that pastor's wives had to be some kind of superhero. And I don't mean that as a joke: I thought it must be really difficult at times, and that being an amazing woman of God must be a prerequisite. At this point, I instantly felt that I was not good enough for him. Here I was, a very mediocre and lukewarm Christian who had made a lot of mistakes after her deliberate break from God. How could I possibly be what he had in mind for someone to date or marry?

When I told Andy about this, he quickly assured me that it wasn't true. I started feeling a bit better, but still that I had such a long way to go before I was at the level he would need me to be. During our Skype dates, he started encouraging us to pray together, sharing Scripture and a lot of other things that I had not done on my own in a long time. When we spoke about it later, Andy told me that he could sense that I needed a bit of spiritual leadership, and this was about the time when I started feeling less hopeless. Yes, I had made mistakes and my relationship with God was not where it should be, but I could change that.

Then Andy made a comment about how meeting me had changed the way he prayed, and at first I wasn't sure what he meant. Then one day, I was just walking down the street and started thinking about everything God had done for me. When I look back on it all, He had His hand in everything. Not just getting me where I am today (academically, professionally, geographically) but the fact that He never left me, even when I was intentionally misbehaving. And now, I have Andy. The one prayer I have had my whole life has been answered, and in such an amazing way.

The penny dropped: this is yet another blessing of which I am completely unworthy. As Francis Chan says, "This is the God we serve, the God who knew us before He made us. The God who promises to remain with us and rescue us. The God who loves us and longs for us to love Him back. So why, when we constantly offend Him and are so unlovable and unloving, does God persist in loving us?"

So when I read the 'profile of the lukewarm', I found myself reading a description of my life for the past few years. I felt totally convicted. At the end of the chapter, Francis writes, "We are all messed-up human beings, and no one is totally immune to the behaviors described in the previous examples. However, there is a difference between a life that is characterized by these sorts of mentalities and habits and a life that is in the process of being radically transformed."

I don't want my life to be characterised by those mentalities any longer. I'm going to stop waiting for myself to snap out of it and think that it will somehow happen itself and take the initiative.

Matthew 7:7-8 says "Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will be find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened."

Each of those instructions require action on my part. Time to get moving.