After God's Heart

   So I should be working on my homework... but I am procrastinating. On a professional level. I've convinced myself that my soul needs to write about Jesus and all He's done in my life and other profound things like that. Yeah Jesus takes precedence over homework, right? Right.

   I'm at work right now, listening to a song called Love is All Around. My cynical heart immediately throws up from the cheese and disgust and hatred toward anything mushy, but secretly my heart wants all of that. My heart has been conditioned to think that if I don't have something, then I have to hate everyone else who does. Maybe that's why I hate romantic comedies so much... No I just hate them because they are so cheesy and predictable and they always star Kate Hudson and Matthew Macono- I don't even care how you spell his last name. I'm just sick of them. 

   

   So anyway... today I've been meditating on Psalm 136, the chapter in Psalm that repeats "His love endures forever." It got me wondering why David would repeat that 26 times? He states something about God and follows it in every single verse with "His love endures forever." I wonder at his motivation for writing that so much. It kind of reminds me of the junior high days when I had a crush on someone and I would write his name 1000+ times on my notebook. Not the cover where everyone could see, but on the very last page, where no one would ever think to look because I was a smart sneaky paranoid junior high student. 

   

   I would like to think that David had the same feeling I did when I wrote my crush's name all over my notebook. (Minus the unhealthy, stalker-y, obsession-y aspect of it.) I think David was just so enamored with God's love that every time he wrote "His love endures forever." It felt like the first time writing it, or he felt like he hadn't written it enough. It didn't do God justice to just say it once. I want a love like that.

 

  Or maybe David was going through a rough time. Maybe David needed to constantly remind himself that God's love endures forever. In that case, I totally get that. My own worst enemy is my faulty memory. I wish I could go throughout my day remembering everything God has done for me and feel all the love that He is constantly pouring on me, but then again, if that were the case, then I would always be focused on what's behind me. I would be focused on superficial things. 

   

   So my goal at the beginning of the semester was to love the lord my God with my heart, soul, and strength, but especially and specifically with my mind. I wanted to learn how to love God by doing well in school. The more school went on, the more I realized how hard it really is, especially being so distracted all the time. I started praying for God to help me get my homework done. The prayers stopped being about Him and others, and started becoming about managing my life. 

   In my Old Testament class, our teacher got on his soapbox like he usually does and preached about using God to manage your life. (Please don't get me wrong, I LOVE when my teachers preach. Especially Koerper.) That's when I realized how much I was using God as my personal assistant. 

   That's when my focus changed. Instead of asking God to solve all of my problems, I'm just going to focus on spending more time with Him. I'm done trying to fix myself. That's what I'm always about is fixing myself so that I can be a better person so that I don't need Jesus as much. My pride wants me to be able to stand on my own even if I'm like a newborn baby giraffe, but my heart says that apart from Christ I can do nothing. So I just want more Jesus. I always need more of Jesus, but now more than ever I want to be near Him. I want and need that constant reminder that His love endures forever. 

   I want the love that David had for God. I want the kind of love that makes me write all over my things about God's ridiculous love for me. I don't care if that sounds silly, cuz let's be honest. David stripped down to his undies because he was so excited about God. There are worse things I could do. I want to be the woman after God's own heart, and nothing else. Not personal gain, not good grades, not a boyfriend or husband, social status, friends, or applause. I just want God's own heart.