Happy Valentine's Day!

Ahhh, Valentine's Day. A day that some approach with great anticipation and others with dread. While our Twitter and Facebook feeds fill up with pictures of roses, plans of romance, and declarations of love there is a temptation before us to feel dissatisfaction with our circumstances. Whether we have a spouse or we do not, we can look at our own lives and compare them to the lives of others and come to the conclusion that we are lacking something that we need, something that we are entitled to. And we can respond in bitterness, discontentment, resentfulness toward others or towards our spouse who hasn't lived up to the "standard" for the day.

I personally am a recovering romance addict. My ideal and expectation from my husband (based predominately on the plethora of Christian romance novels I read) was so high, no matter what he would do, it wasn't quite enough. Valentine's Day (and other holidays) were often a source of deep disappointment to me. But guess what I eventually discovered? My husband was not the problem...I was! I was seeing through eyes that were self-centered and blind. My idealistic husband (which I can now identify as an idol) had blinded me to the wonderful husband God had been so gracious to give me.  I had been blind to the love that had been shown to me by my husband each and every day of the year. I was blind to his steady faithfulness to me, his  diligent provision for our family, his encouragement and compliments throughout the year, his willing service to me day in and day out, and even the thoughtful and romantic gestures he did on days that were not associated with Hallmark!

So what changed for me? I'm so glad you asked! What changed for me was God...The Trinitarian God stepped into my life...suddenly, miraculously, spectacularly! The Holy Spirit literally ripped the blinders from my eyes one day, and I truly saw myself with clarity for the very first time. I saw that I loved self above all else and even that the good that I did was motivated out of a love for self. The Spirit taught me to repent, and I began to pray that the Spirit would teach me to want God and to love God. And He began to answer my prayer and pointed me to Jesus. As I began to earnestly seek to know Jesus through the pages of Scripture, what before had been dead words suddenly came to life in my heart. I began to see and know Jesus and became completely enamored by Him and my heart began to change. And then Jesus began pointing me to the Father. I began to understand that Jesus was the exact representation of the Father and that through Him I was now reconciled to the Father. When my mind began to wrap itself around the understanding that the Holy Majestic One that I read about in the Old Testament, the one that I had feared my entire life, the One that I had tried to hide from my entire life because of His transcendent holiness, was actually the One who had pursued me...raised me from the dead and breathed new life into me, opened my blind eyes so that I could see, and took my heart of stone and made it a heart of flesh...well, there are just absolutely no words to describe the internal shift that happened. I found that the deepest ache of my soul has been satisfied in Him. He is spectacularly beautiful and my heart has swelled to overflowing with a love for this God...Father, Son, and Spirit. And my desire to grow in a knowledge of this God that leads to a heart melted by love has simply intensified.

The surprising effect that this had on me is that the eyes that I viewed others (especially my hsuband) with changed as well. Because my soul has been satisfied, I can let other people off the hook. They don't have to "be" anything other than themselves. I can enjoy them for who they are, the positives and the negatives, without demanding from them a performance that they cannot attain to. I don't need them to be my savior anymore, because I now have the perfect Savior! What a joy it is to celebrate and relish relationships and people for who they are and not what they can or cannot bring!

All this to say, that no matter where you find yourself today: in a fantastic marriage or a not-so fantastic marriage, single and loving it, or single and longing for someone...whether today fills all your expectations or you are filled with disappointment, I want  you to know that in spite of all that, there is only one love that matters. There is only one love that will last. There is only One who was willing to die for you when you were not even asking Him to. When you were quite content to live in your sins. There is only One who passionately pursues you at great cost to Himself. There is only One who will satisfy the deepest longings of your heart because your deepest longings are for Him.

On this Valentine's Day, I encourage you to look to Jesus. Hebrews 3:1 says this phrase: Fix your THOUGHTS on Jesus. Fix your thoughts on Jesus. Realize all that He has done on your behalf...from the beginning of Scripture in the opening verse of Genesis 1:1 all the way to the closing verses in Revelation...over and over we are told the great lengths that He has gone to to redeem and reconcile people to Himself. Now that's a love that cannot disappoint. That's a love that will not let go.

 Let these thoughts of Jesus fill your heart this Valentine's Day.