Bioluminescence.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about radical singledom.

Everything tells us that we shouldn’t be alone. That you are not whole unless you are in a relationship.

Well, I dare to be radical. Right now, I am single. And I’m not going to challenge that unless God says that it’s okay. I am whole without another person. I am whole in myself, and I am whole in God.

I am radically single.

Jeremiah 8-10

I have listened attentively,
but they do not say what is right.
None of them repent of their wickedness,
saying, “What have I done?”
Each pursues their own course
like a horse charging into battle. (Jeremiah 8:6 NIV)

It’s kind of interesting that Jeremiah doesn’t say ‘a horse and its rider’. A horse charging into battle without its rider is confused, uncertain. It doesn’t know where it’s going, what it’s purpose is, and is easily felled. It also gets in the way of other riders, startles their horses and unseats them.

We are like the horses. Without a guide we are lost, confused. We have to choose to allow God to be our guide. Without him we go our own course, and often we distract others from their cause, and cause them to falter and ditch God to do their own thing. But without God, we are fools. We don’t know what we’re doing and it’s easy for the enemy to destroy us.

Jeremiah 4-5

“Your own conduct and actions
have brought this on you.
This is your punishment.
How bitter it is!
How it pierces to the heart!” (Jeremiah 4:18 NIV)

And when the people ask, ‘Why has the Lord our God done all this to us?’ you will tell them, ‘As you have forsaken me and served foreign gods in your own land, so now you will serve foreigners in a land not your own.’

They do not say to themselves, ‘Let us fear the Lord our God, who gives autumn and spring rains in season, who assures us of the regular weeks of harvest.’ Your wrongdoings have kept these away; your sins have deprived you of good. (Jeremiah 5:19, 24, 25 NIV)

Our punishment is a direct, imminent force against us that comes about as a result of our actions. These punishments have been set in place and outlined to Israel, yet they do it anyway. And it hurts God. It “pierces to the heart”. He doesn’t want us to suffer, but it’s the wages of sin. So God

…gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:16 NIV)

So that we have a way out.

Something I’ve been struggling with lately is loneliness. Since I came back from Taiwan, I’ve found it impossible to return to the way things were. My friendships have changed. I’ve changed. And I found myself lonely.

Now, if you know me at all, you know that I’m kind of a people person. As in, if there aren’t people around the majority of the time that I can love who love me, well, I turn into a bit of a basket case. I can’t deal if I don’t have people around. And I was actually really annoyed because I couldn’t understand why God wouldn’t just fill that need in me- after all, all we need is God, right?

Well I realised tonight that that’s not true. God MADE me to need people the way I do. Of course, this needs to be healthy and not codependent, but I do need lots of relationship in my life, and He made me that way for a reason. And tonight, after being able to hang out with quite a few of my close friends in the last few days, I realised that it was the easiest it has been in a long time to feel joyous and able to worship God in that joy. And I realised it was because there was no crazy loneliness to screw with my joy. And worshiping tonight as I drove home was a joyous experience, rather than a time of realising just what I wasn’t getting and needed.

I am an extrovert, and I need meaningful relationships where I can give and receive love to function normally. God made me that way, to need people as well as Him. It’s okay to need people- appropriately. If I try to turn to God to fill that part of me He could, but I know he would prefer me to do the work myself because that’s how He designed me to work.

:)

Jeremiah 1-3

“My people have committed two sins:
They have forsaken me,
the spring of living water,
and have dug their own cisterns,
broken cisterns that cannot hold water….

Your wickedness will punish you;
your backsliding will rebuke you.
Consider then and realize
how evil and bitter it is for you
when you forsake the Lord your God
and have no awe of me,”
declares the Lord, the Lord Almighty. (Jeremiah 2:13, 19 NIV)

We punish ourselves when we sin by removing ourselves from the presence of God. God doesn’t say here that HE will punish us but that our own wicked deeds will.

There’s a song by Chris Tomlin that I’ve been listening to lately called Enough. It’s a great song, I highly recommend it. However, for a while there I was a bit confused by some of the lyrics. here they are:

More than all I want
More than all I need
You are more than enough for me
More than all I know
More than all I can see
You are more than enough for me

Now these lyrics confused me a little because it could be taken that I don’t want or need all of God but instead picking the parts I do want. But I was listening to it in the car on the way home tonight and I realised that that isn’t it at all!

The fact is that we can’t understand God because He is just so much more than us! So he is more than our UNDERSTANDING of Him. We can never possibly understand just how much God has for us, so He really is more than we could ever want.

Just thought that was pretty cool…

Joshua 7-8

That is why the Israelites cannot stand against their enemies; they turn their backs and run because they have been made liable to destruction. I will not be with you anymore unless you destroy whatever among you is devoted to destruction. (Joshua 7:12 NIV)

The things that the Israelites took from their enemies against God’s command made them vulnerable. God couldn’t protect them because they had chosen to be disobedient to him and had therefore stepped out from under his protection.

This verse has a lot of relevance for us today, or at least for me. For at certain parts of my journey with God, there have been times where I have had to be obedient to God even if it was scary and could result in something bad. But I’ve also known that to be disobedient to his will would be to stagnate my relationship with him. So I’ve had to do things that terrify me in order to maintain my relationship with God and move forward.

Sometimes there are things that we have done to make ourselves liable to destruction. We’ve done something that has caused a rift between us and God, and we have to destroy the thing that is causing it. This can take the form of many things, and often things that start out as good and beautiful. But beautiful things can lead us astray. God needs to be our guiding star always. But if we’re wearing a blindfold, how can we see it?

Ecclesiastes 11-12

Now all has been heard;
here is the conclusion of the matter:
Fear God and keep his commandments,
for this is the duty of all mankind. For God will bring every deed into judgment,
including every hidden thing,
whether it is good or evil. (Ecclesiastes 12:13, 14 NIV)