I'm In Pieces...

But He is not.  I suppose this is a spin-off of a post I already made on facebook just a little bit ago.  I was doing mindless activity (watching television, something I rarely do), When all of a sudden, I realized that I was longing for something more than that.

I began my day in, what has become a routine.  The first words or thoughts out of my mouth are directed to God.  I wake up with a sense of anticipation, of expectation.  I usually begin my day with a conversation...the most important conversation of the day.  I talk with Jesus.  This morning was no different.  I woke up feeling different.  I woke up feeling older.  Not like, in my bones...but in my mind, in my heart and in my spirit.  Like God had done something in me overnight while i was asleep.  Like He had cleansed my heart, my brokenness, with the power of a fierce rainstorm.  That's how I began my day.  He left me wanting more.

So much more that I had to turn off the tv about 6 hours after that encounter to get something I desperately needed from Him.  When this song came to mind... Pieces.  It's a song that talks of the wholeness of God's love.  How it doesn't come to us in pieces.  He doesn't give us His love in pieces. It comes to us, it beckons us, from a place of wholeness.  When wholeness calls out to brokenness...there is a joyous reunion when one receives what the other is offering.

God, in His wholeness, called out to me, in my brokenness.  My fractured heart, my anxious heart.  My heart in pieces was beckoned by the wholeness and fullness of God's heart.

**At the end of this post, I encourage you to listen to this song I am talking about, "Pieces" by Amanda Cook and Bethel Music.

I just turned 29 on Friday.  And up until about a month before that, I was wondering how in the world God could love a broken, messed up person like me.  Someone who has hurt, been hurt, is hurting.  Someone who turned away from the most perfect love that anyone could ever know.  Jesus ran to the cross, I ran away from His love.  He turned toward me in my brokenness, I turned away in shame.  But this last season, I have turned toward Him, fully.

It's one thing to be sorry for what you have done, it's one thing to apologize.  But it is an entirely different thing when you have a repentant heart.  When you live with a repentant heart, the best is ALWAYS yet to come.

In a season where I felt completely left alone, in the silence, He met me.  In a season where I looked around and saw everything broken, He gave me His love in wholeness, not in pieces.  In a season where I was reduced to a relationship with only Him, He showed me how to love, when He was the only one I felt I could love.  When He felt like my only friend, He taught me how to be a friend.  When the darkness swallowed me up, His glory broke through my night.  When i felt abandoned, He redeemed my life from the pit.  He was everything I was trying so desperately to be on my own.

I was trying to love people from an empty tank.  I was trying to be a friend when I was ditching my best friend, Jesus.  Now, I know it might sound elementary to say, "yea! Jesus is my best friend!!"
I used to think that.  But it's true.  He gives me what I need, He's there ALL the time.  There's no one on earth, not even a best friend or spouse who is with us...everywhere, all the time, with all the attention we need.  And I can tell you (whoever "you" are) life gets messy and broken when you don't make Him first.  I wish I would have learned this a whole lot sooner.  It would have saved me some heartache.  And what's more...it would have saved others some heartache too.  I wasn't giving them my best...I was giving them leftovers.  I was giving them leftover Jesus from a few days ago when I spent 15 minutes with Him.  I gave them leftovers...from the week before on Sunday morning.

I gave Jesus in pieces.  But He gives me Himself in wholeness.


---> "Pieces" by Bethel Music   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0FW--zidYA