Love
Our hearts have lost their way, like sheep that have gone astray. A good shepherd named Jesus comes after our hearts to free them and to love them back to life. He never gives up and pursues us no matter how far we run from Him.
Like the prodigal son who went to a distant country and squandered everything, our Father scans the horizon anticipating our return so he can run to us and restore us as sons and daughters, welcomed back into the family. But we have to take the road home, stop running, and using and return to the Father’s house.
God doesn’t run an orphanage. He runs a Kingdom based on redemption, adoption, and sonship. He did everything needing to be done, including sending His own Son, Jesus, who died on a cross to pay the price for every broken thing that could ever happen to us. This includes any sin, neglect, trauma, or abuse you could name.
Jesus Himself said He came to seek and save the lost. He sent the Holy Spirit to pursue the hearts of these lost ones, and call them back to the Father’s Kingdom. Jesus is made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption.
Marriage Will Bring Me Home
This is the belief or expectation that,
“they will complete me,” or “they will meet my needs.”
We probably wouldn’t say that out loud, but subconsciously we carry a lot of expectations into the marriage that says,
“They will bring me home, I will finally find happiness and fulfillment for my loneliness.”
“The ache in my heart will go away because they will always be there for me.”
Marriage will bring you home in the sense of starting a home, perhaps a family, but it won’t bring your heart “home” in the sense of your heart finding its resting place.
Our hearts will always be restless until they find their rest in Him. St. Augustine.
Only God can love our hearts the way they need to be loved for us to be “complete in Him.”
Coming Down is the Hardest Thing
Marriage can ease your aloneness, but won’t fill your soul the way only God can. Even after the closest intimacy with another, even blissful communion and oneness fall short of the filling that only intimacy and union with God can bring. This is what we were created for. We will always come “down,” and there will be an empty place, a hunger only God can fill.
Jesus said, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.” Mt. 5:6
Psalm 107:9 declares a wonderful promise,
“For He satisfies the longing soul, and the hungry soul He fills with goodness.”
Other people just aren’t designed to do that, it’s His job. When we look to people for what only God can give us, we make them our idols, then we try to control them, and we give them way too much power over us.
We are giving them God’s job description, one they can never fulfill. I think in our immaturity a lot of us can do that until God shows us what we are doing and why. Then He draws us back to Himself and heals our hearts with His love, adjusting our expectations to reality and puts our focus back on Him, the true fountain of life.
The Honeymoon Marriage
Let’s imagine for a moment you’re in the honeymoon stage of marriage. God bless you, may it last as long as possible. Things are going great, you are connecting in every way and feel very much in love. No real issues or problems have presented themselves to spoil things. It’s intoxicating and blissful.
Imagine again that the honeymoon never ends, there is no disenchantment stage, or need to press into a committed love stage of marriage.
What would happen to our hearts? What would happen to our relationship with God?
We wouldn’t need Him because we would have Eden, we would be back in the garden, and we know this isn’t real life. It is a fairy-tale because we have fallen, there is sin, and our marriage is set on the stage of powerful spiritual warfare between good and evil and light and darkness.
The honeymoon has to end so that redemption can begin. Marriage is for the redemption of our hearts and souls as we get exposed to one another. Again, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, this is by design. God orchestrates our exposure in marriage so we can be freed from ourselves.
Love is our rescue but we will find and face some hard things about ourselves first. These things are barriers to intimacy in our marriages.
Homesick For Eden
Gary Moon in his book Homesick For Eden 1. talks about,
Defense Mechanisms
“A defense mechanism is. . .a means by which an individual protects himself or herself from unwanted emotions or impulses. A common but effective defense mechanism is denial. With denial, an individual actively, (albeit subconsciously) refuses to admit the reality of an unwanted emotion or impulse.”
I, Dan, was very much in denial about a lot of things when I married Linda 34 years ago. You don’t know you’re in denial because you’re in denial. That’s like you don’t know when you’re deceived because you’re deceived. Someone has to knock on your door to show you. That someone happens to be God in the form of your spouse and you can’t get away from them.
In marriage all our defense mechanisms get exposed, and things we’ve gotten away with for a long time are exposed in public. It’s scary and disconcerting as our broken operating systems and things we’ve hidden behind come into the light to be reckoned with.
This doesn’t make us bad, it makes us exposed, hurting, and needing healing, acceptance, understanding, and love. We are called to walk out of hiding into the light of God’s love as He begins lovingly dismantling our broken operating systems.
This transformation is for our freedom to enable us to love from a pure heart this one we’ve said “Yes” to for the rest of our lives. It’s also designed to free us from the bondage of narcissism, self-protection, control, and hiding.
We will look at some more of Gary’s insights next time as we examine “Compassion deficits” and the “behavioral narcotics” we use to ease our pain of “the love we never got.”
May the Lord bless you and keep you and make His face shine upon you and be merciful unto you and bring you peace. Till next time. . . Dan XO
- Gary Moon. Homesick for Eden. P. 75 Life Springs-Vine Books 1997