This poem is dedicated to all the students at Harvest Baptist Church that I have grown to really love and appreciate over the last few months. This is a result of my journey with the Lord and learning who I really am in His eye as opposed to who I see myself as. So often, we are tempted to think little of ourselves because of how messed up we are, but if we really see ourselves as God sees us, we will realize that there is greatness and worth tucked inside this fragile frame. No matter what the world tells us, or what we tell ourselves, we are wanted by the Eternal Creator.

--- --- ---

 

You.

Yeah, you.

I'm speaking to the real you.

 

The you that only you see

When you're hiding from His mercy.

The you that you cover up

When ashamed of that other love.

I'm talking to you.

Y. O. U.

Do I know you?

I don't think that I do.

I know a facade.

I see a mask.

I know there's something more.

I know there's something past

The happy face that you wear,

That pretty lace in your hair,

The cozy space that you share,

Your high school days - like you cared.

There's someone inside of you

   You'd rather not meet - 

      Mysterious and hidden - 

         You don't know what you'd see.

You've been hiding so long

You don't remember yourself - 

Your real self, the true you - 

Not the pictures on the shelf.

Are you a monster or a prince?

The question makes you wince.

Are you the drop-out or the dancer?

You don't know how to answer.

But I'm talking to you.

Y. O. U.

Do any know you?

My God knows you through.

 

"You have scoped me

And You have known me.

You know when I'm down,

And when I'm in town;

You discern my thoughts for days

And are well-acquainted with my ways.

Before I speak a word,

You might as well have heard." (adapted from Psalm 139:1-4)

 

But the story won't stop here.

You don't need to live in fear.

He knows you every night

Because He made you very right.

"Your craftsmanship is awesome.

You made me with wonder.

I know I'm tailor-made.

I am never going under." (adapted from Psalm 139:13-14)

 

I'm calling out to you.

Your heaven-made self - 

Come out of that shellf;

Get off of that shelf.

 

Come alive and meet Him - 

The One who knows you - 

Stop hiding from your past;

Find a love that is true.

 

Stop faking you.

You're not too far.

He'll take you in

Just as you are.

 

He's calling to you.

Y. O. U.

Don't fear to be true.

He loves the real you.



My heart often wanders from
the One I love





Wanderer...

 I am a wanderer.


As I was praying this morning, I began to get frustrated with how quickly my heart wanders from a desire for my God. I am in his presence, but my mind and heart are elsewhere. And then I realize it, and regain my focus. And then, before I know it, I am a-wandering again. And I wonder why this is the case, that my heart is so prone to wander and desire other things. But I think it only points to a deeper issue. Often I find my heart flirting with and longing for other things. My desires are not too strong. They are too weak. As C.S. Lewis aptly quipped,

It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

This is the state I find my heart in.

I have been reading through the book of Hosea. I am struck, not with an indignation for Gomer, but with an extremely uncomfortable connection with her. I see me in her. This story is spelled out as a true story that resembles God's relationship with his people. So I easily find myself understanding Gomer more than I would care to admit. When I am honest with myself, I must admit that my heart is exactly like hers. It is an idol factory. As John Calvin is known for saying,

The human heart is a factory of idols…Everyone of us is, from his mother’s womb, expert in inventing idols.

My heart is an idol factory, and I commit spiritual adultery with my idols incessantly - like Gomer with her lovers. YET...God loves me passionately. He knows me completely (cf. Psalm 139:1-4). And as J.I. Packer said in Knowing God,

What matters supremely is not, in the last analysis, the fact that I know God, but the larger fact which underlies it — the fact that he knows me. I am graven on the palms of his hands. I am never out of his mind. All my knowledge of him depends on his sustained initiative in knowing me. I know him because he first knew me, and continues to know me. He knows me as a friend, one who loves me; and there is not a moment when his eye is off me, or his attention distracted from me, and no moment, therefore, when his care falters. This is momentous knowledge. There is unspeakable comfort — the sort of comfort that energizes, be it said, not enervates — in knowing that God is constantly taking knowledge of me in love and watching over me for my good. There is tremendous relief in knowing that his love to me is utterly realistic, based at every point on prior knowledge of the worst about me, so that no discovery now can disillusion him about me, in the way I am so often disillusioned about myself, and quench his determination to bless me.

His love for me is "utterly realistic." This is amazingly crazy!!! As as we see in the book of Hosea, his love is never half-hearted.

I challenge you to let yourself grasp this today. God knows you completely and realistically. But he loves you passionately. His love for you is never half-hearted.