Hide and Seek...never gets old!

“Love can work such wonders in a sensitive heart and what heart is more sensitive than Mine? Suppose someone were to ask you, ‘What are you doing at this moment?’, and you could answer, ‘I’m loving my God.’ Even if the whole universe were to stand still, it would be a fact of little importance compared with a soul striving to charm Me.” - He and I

Do you remember the game “Hide-and-Seek”? The one where everyone would hide, and one person got stuck being “it”, then the “it” person had to search and search for everyone else? Well, back in the day when I used to play that, I always got stuck being “it” because I was slow enough that almost everyone could make it to the base in time. So I would keep looking, and looking, and looking...

Fast forward 10 or 12 years, and here I am, still looking, and looking, and looking. Except that this time I’m searching for something a little bit more substantial, and a little bit more important. You see, over the years, I’ve discovered that God is not someone Who will just pop into your life and take over completely. You have to invite Him to come in and take over, and so we must begin by seeking Him out.

In order to really know God, we are responsible for searching for Him. Because, even though we are told time and time again that He will come to us in the silence of our hearts, we are the ones responsible for opening up that silence to allow Him inside. God desires nothing more than to love and love and love us, He is eternally giving of Himself more and more just so that we might say “yes, Lord...come into my heart, teach me to love You, fashion my heart to be more like Yours.” But we have to make that invitation of our free will before He can actually come in. Until then, He’ll sit right next you waiting for you to open yourself up to Him.

God has a specific way of finding you, of entering into your heart. It’s up to you to figure out how He speaks to you, and how He moves you. You see, some people hear His voice speaking within their hearts in real words. Others hear God through what other people say to them. Then there are people like me, who let God romance them through things like sparkly snow, sunsets, and beautiful flowers. I’m not saying that God can’t pursue us through different means, but each of us is different, and each of us will find Him in different ways.

To recognize growth in a life of faith is to recognize the way in which God communicates with us. He ROMANCES us, we just have to find it.

I choose You...or you...or You!!!

“We cannot love what we do not know.” - St. Augustine

When I was in grade school, I had to memorize bits of the St. Joseph Baltimore Catechism. “To gain the happiness of heaven we must know, love, and serve God in this world.” Recognize that? Now, through the years, I’ve always had that little sentence burned into my brain, and I’ve always been aware of the fact that you have to know, love and serve God, but to actually get it is a whole different thing.

We always talk about “being in a relationship with Jesus”, or discuss how He’s our perfect man, but He shouldn’t be something that simply replaces a boyfriend...He should be MORE IMPORTANT than any boyfriend you could ever have. He should ALWAYS be your ultimate Lover.

There is a huge difference between accepting Christ as “your Man” for a short term because you have to, and accepting Him forever through it all. I think that sometimes we don’t remember that Jesus is ALWAYS number one. He’s just the one who is there to fill that void until someone better comes along. He’s like a rebound man, where there’s no interest in commitment, but you want someone to listen to you cry about how much it hurts.

The thing is, that shouldn’t happen. Sometimes we get so caught up in the monotony that we let our faith become, that we allow ourselves to be swept away by all the wrong people. Romance with Jesus isn’t a one time deal, it’s forever! No matter what else, or who else, comes along, our hearts should be so wrapped up in God that we’re breath taken by Him continually, first and foremost. It’s like that saying “A woman should be so lost in God that it takes a man seeking God to find her.”...except if that man finds us, we have to CONTINUE to be lost and wrapped up in God’s amazing love.