Planes..Trains...and Automobiles....What?!

 Okay, so I am going to try to do a quick and brief update of something that actually really happened back in the middle of November.  Yeah…I know I’m quite behind.  I should just forget about it and not post about it, but I will go crazy knowing that I never posted anything about it.  So well, here it is.  So what is this thing that I did that I just have to update you on?  Well, we went to Germany!  Exciting right?!  So, here’s the thing.  You all may or may not know that well, I guess you could say that I have a slight problem with over packing.  Why am I telling you this?  Well, the airline that we flew with has an extremely small weight limit and size limit for luggage for flying with them.  We are only allowed one small carry-on bag with a small personal item.  So, you remember those old school backpacks that we thought were the cool thing to have back in late elementary school…like the rolly ones?  Yeah those backpacks are pushing the size limit.  We were going for a week… An entire week, and I had to fit all of my clothing in that size of bag!  Winter clothing!  Don’t stress too much.  I will tell you now instead of worrying you.  I was able to do it, and did not have to take anything out when I got to the airport.  Impressive, I know! :)

Becca, how did you get there?  Very good question!  I am glad you asked!  Well, the journey started off leaving our houses in Arbury (Cambridge) in a rush, as always.  We all hurried along to the bus stop a short distance from our house.  We caught the city bus to the train station, where we all boarded a train to head to the Stansted Airport.  After we all arrived at the airport, we went through security and hurried on to our plane.  Let me take a quick side note and tell you about this plane.  We flew with Ryan Air.  It was quite the adventure.  It almost reminded me of a toy plane.  Like a plastic plane that kids play with.  It was quite humorous!  But it was great because it was cheap! 

After a short plane ride over to Germany, we landed in Berlin. (The small Berlin airport) When I say small, I mean really small!  This started our 12-13 hour layover.  (I forget how long it was if it was 12 or 13 hours to be honest)  Fortunately, it was an overnight layover, so after hanging out in the airport for a bit, then going on an adventure outside the streets surrounding the airport at like 1:00 in the morning, we settled down on some comfortable tile, airport floor, and “slept”. 

 Photo by Sarah Wickstrom

 The next morning, we were off for the next leg of our adventure.  We got a bus to Dresden where we had a few hour layover, so we were able to quickly explore the beautiful city there, and grab some delicious baked goods/food, then grab a train to Herrnhut!  When we got there, we were met by some of the YWAMers from the base there to drive us to where we would be staying.  Let me say, it was quite a relief to throw our stuff down in the flat that we were staying in.  (They had us girls, Connie, and Mike and Jane in one of that base’s flats in town, the guys bunked in the “side house”, where the guys of the base live, which is right next to the main building, then Peter, Taryn, and Isaac stayed in one of the apartments in the main building.)  They have lots of space at that base.

After throwing our stuff in our flat, and quickly getting our bearings, we started our walk over to the main base.  It was a beautiful walk through town, then down “Slow Death” (That is seriously the name of the path, its funny!) into the woods and through the woods then around to the beautiful building!  It is an amazing base!  So yeah.  Enough about the boring details.  That week in Germany was amazing.  Oh, I guess I should tell you that we were there to join in with that base with their week’s teaching.  We had an awesome speaker, Dan Baumann.  He is a YWAMer who has a crazy life story.  He was arrested in Iran, and spent 9 weeks in prison having two death sentences on his life.  During that time, he kept his faith and continued to turn to the Lord.  Seriously, you should read his book!  I cannot do his story justice here, so I am not even going to try.  But, I’ll but a link to his site at the end so you can look it up for yourself. 

Anyway, he taught on friendship with God.  He really challenged us to stop trying so hard to make our relationship with God something more difficult than it has to be.  God wants to spend time with us and He wants to talk to us.  We make it out to be something so hard to attain that since we are looking so hard for the crazy miraculousness (yes that is now a word) of God, we miss the everyday miraculousness of Him.  We miss the simple ways that He is trying to communicate with us.  We need to stop striving to hear God in the way that we believe we should hear God.  He is with us always, so we will hear from Him always.

 Something he encouraged us to do is to every morning just start of by saying, “Hey God!  Good morning!”  He also shared with us that God uses ordinary people in ordinary situations on ordinary days.  He started off most stories by saying, “It was just an ordinary day…”  This reminds us that this is still real life.  Even though we are setting out to live the “different” life of being missionaries, God still uses the ordinary times, not just the times when we are doing crazy adventurous things.  He does things in our lives a lot of times when we least expect it.  Its pretty darn cool!  I also loved Dan’s teaching because it was so down to earth.  He was so real in his teaching.  It was really refreshing to have the realness. 

 View from my window

 "Slow Death"

 Pretty Building on the walk to the base

 Path to the Base

 Walking to the base

 Ahh I love architecture! 

 The "Castle" Aka the base

 Morning walk to the base

 Morning Psalms

 Morning Worship

 Danny's creeper pictures when I was having my quiet time

 All of us right before we left to come home.

 Photo by Danny Wickstrom

 Another Worship time

 Us on the tower looking out over the town

 Class with Dan

 Class with Dan

 Awesome building up the street from our flat

 Worship night

 Class again

 Me and my one-on-one, Bethany

 town

 My roomie and me outside our flat.  We were on the second floor.

 Love!

Dani and Me enjoying a cup of coffee at the YWAM caffee before heading home

Anyway, the week there was amazing!  It was so cool to see the heart of that base there!  It was a much larger base with over 100 people.  Or at least it seemed like over 100 people.  We also were able to learn the history of Herrnhut and how that is where the Moravian movement started, and how revival bubbled out of that town.  However, the week ended on a pretty sad note.  My roommate, and best friend from the DTS, informed me that she was leaving the DTS that Monday.  (She told me on Saturday)  I knew she was contemplating it for a little now, but I did not realize it was going to be that soon.  So, I was semi-prepared, but it was still very difficult.  The whole journey back, we stuck together like glue.  We decided we were going to make the best out of the last two days we had together.  We informed the rest of the DTS on Sunday.  The whole team was very supportive of her decision, but it was still a very sad time. 

The day she left was probably one of the hardest days I have had on this DTS so far.  My roommate and I were really close.  You’re probably thinking, how close could two people get in just three short months.  I know it sounds weird, but when you’re on a DTS, things are different.  You get really really close with the people on your team.  You pretty much become family.  So, it was sad having her go.  I’m not going to lie it was hard.  However, the rest of my team was really encouraging to me.  A lot of people just kept coming up to me just to give me a hug, which was awesome!  I love hugs! (The whole love language thing… yeah touch is number one!  Followed closely by quality time!) In the afternoon, Simon came over with stuff to bake with and got me out of my funk and got me baking, which was awesome!  And let’s be real, the cookies turned out amazing and were quite delicious!  We were able to share them with some of the team who were around.  Then Lukas came over, and the three of us hung out until dinner.  It was nice and chill and a good way to just relax and be with friends.  Side note.  We ended up looking up a lot of things on google earth.  That thing is insane!  Kind of creepy, not going to lie, but cool! Check it out if you’ve never looked at it before.  The next day we had to go back into our normal schedule, which was weird doing things without my roommate, but well, I know God was there in it all because He started giving me peace about things by the end of the week. 

Later that week, was Thanksgiving week, which I already blogged about, so yeah I know this was a really random, not that put together little entry, but I just really wanted to get one done about Germany, so its here now, so I can relax.  Peace out Y’all

Dan Baumann's Page

God's Humor :)

Last entry I shared with you a little about some struggles that I had been having in feeling like the Lord was far from me.  I was feeling that I just could not get it right.  I could not figure out the formula for how to believe with my whole heart that God was there and that God loved me.  You know what is funny.  The answer is that there is no formula, and well we cannot actually get IT right at all!  We need God in order to do that.  So, I was feeling a little better after calling out to God that night in the Church, but I still had a far way to go.  Little did I know that God was just starting me on a new crazy adventure with Him. 

I guess I have not really shared too much about the different ministries we are involved with, or discussed too much about what else we do here.  But, one really exciting connection we have is with the Hills Road Sixth Form College CU (Christian Union).  (For the Americans reading this, a sixth form college is basically a rough equivalent to the last two years of our high school.)  The CU at this college is really strong and growing, which is amazing!  Anyways, the leaders of this group were having a leadership retreat that weekend and we were able to partner with them and encourage them in what they are doing.  (Five of us from the team went along with Connie (our leader) and Jane (an amazing staff member)

I was blown away by the maturity that was there!  These students had it so together and were so organized!  But more than that, they had a deep love for Jesus, and had a real desire to get to know Him better.  In addition, they had a deep curiosity about how to get to know Him better, and how to form that solid relationship with Him.  As we were sharing testimonies throughout the weekend, one of the students asked a question that really struck me.  He asked, “You all seem to talk about talking to God, and hearing God.  How is it that you do that?”  Why did it strike me?  Well, that is a question that I feel like I always have.  Just last night, I was calling out to God saying, where the heck are you God?! And now today, (well actually this happened two days later, but that’s besides the point) I am discussing with a group of girls, different ways that we are able to hear God’s voice.  We talked about how we are able to interact with Him throughout daily life in addition to those times when we feel like everything has gone wrong, and we do not even know how to have faith in Him at times.  I was able to share with some of the girls a set of verses that really have gotten me through rough times.  1 Peter 5:6-11

⁶ Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. ⁷ Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.  ⁸ Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. ⁹ Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that the family of believers throughout the world is undergoing the same kind of sufferings.  ¹⁰ And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have     suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast.¹¹ To him be the power for ever and ever. Amen.

Now, the beginning of this may not seem too overly uplifting, but let me explain to you what this means to me.  (Keep in mind that I am horrible at comprehending what things are actually supposed to mean, but what matters is that this is what God has encouraged me with, so therefore it works for me and can hopefully encourage others if I share it.)  These few verses tell a story to me of God’s love for us.  First we must humble ourselves under His hand, meaning that we must come and turn to Him in all times and circumstances.  In this case to relate to the rest of the verses, I must come to Him with my troubles and difficulties.  He wants us to turn to Him rather than other things or people.  He is there for us.  He is there anxiously waiting for us to turn to Him.  He wants us to turn to Him, so that He will be able to “lift us up in due time”.  He knows our lives better than we do.  Therefore, He alone knows the perfect time to lift us out of whatever it is we are going through.  We may feel like He is leaving us to suffer alone, or that He has forgotten about us but He certainly did not.  He is so excited to allow us to receive the best that we can have in life, so He wants to wait until the perfect time so that we do not miss out on His best for us. 

He desires us to cast ALL of our anxieties on Him.  He wants to take them.  He does not like seeing us suffer from anxiety or struggles.  Do you know why He does not like seeing us struggle?  BECAUSE HE LOVES US!  He cares for us so deeply!  I do not think it is even capable for us to even begin to understand His love for us.  Because He loves us, He gives us a gentle, yet extremely important warning.  He tells us to “be gentle and of sober mind”.  He warns us about the enemy, the devil, who “prowls around” looking to hurt us.  He, the devil, is looking to trap us and deceive us and take from us anything that he can get his hands on.  God does not want us to fall into the devil’s traps.  God wants us all to Himself!  He does not like sharing us!  So, we must be careful and on guard to watch for the deceit of the enemy when he comes to try and convince us that our situation is worse than it really is, and be on guard for when he tells us that there is no hope. 

God gives us advice to resist the devil and to stand firm in the faith.  We can do that because and we can be encouraged that other believers are suffering or have suffered similar things.  Meaning, we are not alone.  This is not something that is only there to make our lives terrible.  Most importantly, there is nothing that we are going through that Christ did not already go through.  Therefore, we must be patient in waiting on the Lord and His perfect timing.  Now to the best part of the set of verses.  “¹⁰ And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast.¹¹ To him be the power for ever and ever. Amen.”  God, who is the God who is full of Grace, and who called us to be one of His own, after a little while will HIMSELF restore us and make us strong, firm and steadfast!!  Wow! Is that not amazing?!  God HIMSELF will restore us!  What other God is there that is so personal that He works in EVERYONE’s life like that?  He works in each one of our lives and hearts.  He figures out the plans for EACH ONE OF US!  In order to plan out all of our lives and to figure out the perfect timing and to figure out how to restore us, imagine how much time He must spend thinking about each of us individually!  Just think about how much time is spent planning a simple event! Now times that by an insanely large number because it is a person’s life we are talking about! Wow!  That is all I have to say!  God loves us!

So, yeah, I was able to share that with some of the girls there during a reflection time.  It is really neat/funny how God works and uses things that we struggle with to help others.  As I was speaking to the girls, I was hearing myself speak out these words of truth, and kind of laughed to myself.  God, you sure do have a sense of humor.  That weekend was definitely a blessing.  We were able to share with the group of leaders our hearts for seeing other people personally know and understand the Love of God.  We want others to experience, know, and believe that Christ died for them and loves them dearly.  Our leader Connie shared with them all about the Cambridge Seven and about CT Studd, and all about his passion for spreading the Gospel.  It is really cool because they really were inspired to follow in suit and start to spread the Gospel themselves.  They were encouraged to bring all they learned back to the rest of the CU, and to come join us on the streets during some of our Evangelism times and talk to the people of Cambridge.  In addition, they are joining us at one of our House of Prayer nights, and leading the worship that night and taking part in prayer with us.  It was just really encouraging to see the joy and excitement in their eyes.  That weekend was amazing! 

P.S. I encourage you to look up the Cambridge Seven, and CT Studd.  Pretty cool stuff there!  Until Next time!  God Bless!

Part Two... Be Real With God

Sooo… Update part two.  I left off kind of on Tuesday.  Which means I have some major, important, not so fun news to share before I go into what happened on Wednesday.  In order for people who are not from Europe to live in England, we need a Visa.  Yes, you all probably already knew that.  The reason I am saying that, is because different organizations have licenses to give out Visas to people coming to “work for” them.  Which is what YWAM does.  (Work for being in parenthesis meaning, working with the organization.  I do not officially work for YWAM, I am a trainee in the YWAM organization). 

Anyway, the UK government is buckling down on immigration.  They decided that the best way to do this is to start taking away licenses to give out Visas, which makes sense.  Unfortunately, YWAM, along with many other Christian Charities and organizations, was one of the organizations that they decided to look into.  I do not want to go into too many details because I do not want to end up spreading information that may not be 100% true.  Also, I do not want to say anything that could be taken as something against the UK government because well, I do not have anything against them.  I do not understand all of the facts and if I say something wrong, which I could easily do with not understanding everything, that could just not be good.  Feel free to research for yourself more information, but keep in mind that not everything you find on the internet is always true.  So, basically what you need to know is that our License is on suspension right now.  We have put in for them to take a second look.  But most of them have been revoked.

With all of that being said, on Wednesday, we took part in an England and Wales wide day of prayer and fasting.  We basically continued our normal schedule just taking out meal times.  And, during all of our prayer times, we focused on the Visa situation.  It ended up being a really powerful day.  There was also a team from Denver, Colorado visiting Cambridge as part of their outreach that was joining us for two weeks.  So, they joined in with us in the prayer part of the day.  That evening, our team got together and decided to watch some movies to just relax.  It ended up being a really nice day.  Even though we do not really like what the License being revoked could mean for us as a team and for the rest of YWAM England and Wales, we were filled with a peace that was great.  We know that God has it all in His hands.  (If the license is revoked, from the day of them announcing it being revoked, any of us who are not part of the EU, would have 60 days to get out of the country, which would be five of us.  Fortunately, it falls close to when we leave for outreach, so we would just leave for outreach a little early.  And for he more widespread of YWAM England and Wales, that means that 350 staff and families would have to leave the country as well.  So major uprooting for people.) 

However, like I said though, we are trusting God with the whole situation.  There is nothing that happens in this world that He is not aware of.  Nothing that happens in life is a surprise to God.  He is able to make all things work out for His good.  It is just up to us to turn to Him in all situations and He will have our backs.  It may not be the way that we want things to pan out, but we will know that God is with us, which is really all we need.  Which I know is something that anyone can just say but it never really helps or it feels like it does not have any weight to it.  But really, that statement has a lot more weight than we think.  When we truly give our lives over to God, and are willing to go where He wants us to go, and do what He wants us to do, it can only lead to one thing…getting closer to God. 

There are many different ways to get closer to God.  Not all of them are what we as humans consider good, but in the end, they really are good.  When we get closer to God, it could simply mean that we get more peace from Him.  And receiving peace from God can really make any situation, no matter how crappy the situation, one that we are able to be okay with, or even rejoice in.  So, if the license does get revoked, and all of us do have to leave, we can be confident that when we turn to Him and trust in Him, He will be with us.  It may not lead to the result that we want, but in turning to Him and in keeping in mind that our purpose here is to Advance the Gospel, God will honor that and give us peace.  It may take years to get to where, in our minds, we want to get, or we may never get there, but that peace that God can give us is better than anything we can dream up or imagine.  Therefore, I know that no matter what happens, and no matter what country I will be living in next year, as long as I am following the Lord, and working towards the advancement of His Gospel, I will have Him on my side, giving me peace and joy along the way.

(Side note about Wednesday.  Others felt this peace about the Visa situation at that point, I was just left confused.  I had some peace about it all, but I was left quite confused, which leads to Thursday.)

Enough about Wednesday, onto Thursday.  Thursday was a typical Thursday for us.  Meaning that in the evening, we had House of Prayer.  At this point I was reaching one of those how the heck am I continuing to move forward, I am confused beyond all belief, I feel like I need to run and scream and hit something repeatedly stages of life.  So, while everyone was worshiping, I snuck away with my journal and my Bible and decided to journal.  For those of you who do not journal, or even for those of you who journal but journal different than me, by journal, I mean I write in my journal as if I am talking to God.  So basically, I write letters to God.  I journaled for the entire evening.  I was so frustrated with God at this point. 

Now, this is the point where in part one I said sorry if I offend anyone with the post, but this is real life and I am going to be real.  God is real, so we are real too.  He does not expect us to fake it through life and always act as if we are happy with life.  Read the Psalms.  David was quite real with God and was loved dearly by God.  He is a great example of how to have a genuine relationship with the Lord.

Anyway, yes I am in a discipleship training school, so those who have never been on one may think that it is a time where it is Jesus all the time, and things are happy and amazing.  Well you are half right in that.  Yes, it is Jesus all the time.  Which is amazing, but also well honestly can be quite difficult at times.  Being surrounded by people so in love with the Lord all the time is great, but sometimes you just feel like you are the only one who is struggling to feel God there at times.  Which is never true.  It is just the devil trying to deceive us into believing that we do not belong or fit in with Jesus loving people.  The truth is everyone goes through times like this where they feel alone and separated from God.  And if you talk to someone who says otherwise, well, they are just lying.  And if they are not lying, well then they just really have it quite together and I would love to meet them and get their secrets. 

Well, I was struggling soo much to know that God was there with me, and to know that He loved me.  What I did know was that God called me to leave my comforts of home back in the States.  He called me to leave a career that I finally was able to begin, that I wanted to work in my entire life, to jump in a plane and move across the ocean to a foreign country to live in community where I have crazy rules where you at times honestly feel like you are being treated like a five year old, just so that I could get to know Him better.  (Well that is quite the sentence.  I am just going to leave it.  I never said this blog was going to be grammatically correct.)  I was calling out to God that night.  Why God?  Why did you tell me we were going to get closer, and I was going to learn more about you, but yet it seems to me like you are further away than ever before?  God, why did you make me fall so in love with Cambridge, that I want to move back here next year, then pull that away from me?  And my big question.  God.. why the hell do you tell me you want me to have You as the focus of my life, and when I try so damn hard to have You as the focus, all I get is more distractions?!  God, I always thought that when I pray for You to help me focus on You, You would want that right?  So You would help me to do that? No?  I feel like I just dumped my dream career for nothing.

So, I’m guessing you’re getting the picture of how I was feeling by now.  That is obviously just a little clip of what was going through my mind at that time.  I ended up asking the Lord to please show me if there was anything in my life that I needed to surrender more to Him that could potentially be blocking me from getting closer to Him.  He revealed something to me in that time, but I still was not too sure of how to do that.  So, I left that evening still feeling kind of sucky but a little encouraged by the fact that I was able to get my thoughts down on paper.  (Don’t worry, the next week, God gave me some awesome revelations of stuff and is continuing to give me revelations of some amazing things that I will soon share, so it is not a terrible thing, no worries, I did not lose my faith or walk away from the Lord or anything.  I was just having a real moment with Him)

My point for sharing all of this is to say that it is completely okay to have times when you are confused or lost or feeling alone.  God still loves you through that.  What matters is that you turn to Him during those times, no matter how hard it is to turn to Him.  He would, in my opinion, much rather you turn to Him and have a huge tantrum at Him, telling Him exactly how you feel, than have you turn away from Him and go to something or someone else.  He does listen!  He listens to everything you say to Him.  It breaks His heart to see you upset, and will honor you coming to Him.  It may not be right away, but every single time I have gotten to this point, He has given me a peace to a certain extent about things in that time.  I still may be confused or lost, but I get a feeling inside me, knowing that God is there, and He cares.  (Even though it can still feel like He is distant, I still have that small peace within me.  It’s hard to explain.)

Okay, so I wrote way too much again.  I am getting closer to caught up now though, which is good! I have now been sitting in the coffee shop for a bit too long and should probably start to head home.  So I will stop there again.  Later all!

The Proposal

Let me start off by saying, No, I am not engaged, nor am I even close to getting engaged.  That way we can clear all that up before we even start!  Well then Becca, why the heck would you title this, The Proposal?”  Well, random person, who really is me, speaking, that is a very good question.  I am going to tell you about the most magnificent proposal one could ever even think to dream up! 

I am going to pause and rewind a bit so I can lead us into my train of thought.  Being a 23 year old female, who has a facebook account, it becomes pretty blatantly apparent that everyone around you is either engaged, married, pregnant, or just had a kid.  Pretty much every day that I sign onto my facebook account, someone new is announcing one of those four life events.  Oh, and I did not even mention the “is in a relationship” category.  And those people are just those who post things on facebook!  When I was in a relationship, I did not even post it online for quite some time after it actually occurred, so I am assuming there are some people like me out there who wait or don’t put it up at all! 

With all this being said, it can get quite difficult sometimes to keep my mind focused on what it should be focused on, which is my relationship with God.  I went into this year of my DTS so confident in building my relationship with the Lord, that feeling the desire to have a man in my life was not even something close to a thought in my mind.  However, as time has gone on, and me being me, I started to drift my thoughts from a full steam ahead with God to “yeah God, you’re all I need but could you please….”  At a DTS, you’re not even allowed to date anyway, so it is not something that is even a possibility, but, let’s be real I am a female, my thoughts wander to my future and my what-if’s. Like what if I never find anyone?  What if I become an old maid with ten billion dogs? (Let’s be honest, I will NEVER become a crazy cat lady!  First of all I’m allergic, and second, dogs are SOO much better than cats!)  What if I’m missing out on so many opportunities to meet people while I’m on this DTS? And last but certainly not least, What if no one will ever want to be with me?

Is that really the way I have begun to think?  How does one go from such confidence in and dedication to my relationship with the Lord to this?  This belief that a relationship with the Lord is not enough.  You always hear girls say I’m going steady with Jesus.  But what does that really mean?  My thoughts always were that it was just girls saying that to try to make themselves feel better about being single.  (And I believe it sucks that it is such a thing that there is such a pressure on relationships and marriage that it IS a thing that girls actually HAVE to try to feel better about being single.)  To be honest, that statement always annoyed me!  Anyways, avoiding my prejudgments about that statement, the statement itself is kind of true.  We are all “going steady with Jesus” in a way.

 A few weeks ago, we had a speaker, Joey Rozek, come and speak on the Bible.  He touched on many different important elements of the Bible.  But what really stuck out to me was when he touched on the marriage of Christ and the Church.  I had always heard of the metaphor of marriage used with Christ being the Groom, and the Church being His bride, but for some reason this time was different for me.

So, what is a marriage?  According to biblestudytools.com, it is an intimate and complementing union between a man and a woman in which the two become one physically, in the whole of life.  The purpose of marriage is to reflect the relationship of the Godhead and to serve Him. (2014)  So, how does this relate to the church?  Well, to tell you the truth, I am not 100% sure on how it all works out.  I have been sitting staring at this part of the post on and off for weeks now.  I can just tell you the bits and pieces that I believe to be true.  I do know that Christ is the Groom.  He invites us to live life with Him.  And we, the people who make up the Church, are the Bride.  When we accept Christ into our hearts and accept and know Him to be our Savior, we enter into that marriage with Him.  And just like with a marriage between two individuals, two become one.  We get filled with the Holy Spirit, and Christ lives within us.  We are now set to go on the most amazing adventure of our lives with the most amazing Groom!

Now onto the proposal story.  The thing EVERYONE wants to know is how did He pop the question?!  Well, when Christ came down and died on the cross, that was really Him proposing to us.  He was inviting us to lead a life with Him.  A life full of adventures, a life of joy, a life of love, and a life of mystery.  What a beautiful picture of love and dedication.  God, our God, came down in human form, knowing He would have to face all of the rubbish from this world, knowing He would have to humble Himself by limiting Himself with a human body, and knowing full well that He would have to die on the cross and face the wrath of God, all so that WE could be united with Him! 

As He hung on the cross in excruciating pain, He was thinking of ME!  Okay, obviously not just me!  He was thinking of each one of us!  He experienced ALL of our hardships, all of our pain, all of our suffering, and all of the effects of OUR sin at once.  HE faced the wrath of God in OUR place!  He did that for every sin that was ever committed in the past, the sins that are being committed as I am typing this, and for the sins that will be committed in the future.  Imagine the agony!  And He did that for US!  Now we do not have to face that!  But instead, we get to live a life with the Man who did that for us!  If that is not love, I do not know what is!  So, as Jesus was hanging on that cross, He was really “down on His knee” asking us to be His Bride.  He is asking us to spend eternity with Him.  I do not know how anyone could say no to that.

You know, as I am finally finishing up this post, I honestly do not know if I have really come to a conclusion that makes me feel much better about my future when it comes to a marriage here on Earth.  I feel like I should have a super optimistic thing to say right now about how because I have Christ, that is the ultimate proposal, so I should not feel like I need any other.  However, I still have that desire to get married someday.  I still worry about finding “the one”.  I still worry about the potential of never finding anyone and living a life of singleness.  But, I do know that I am loved by the God of the universe.  I know that I will never be able to find a love more powerful or more fulfilling than the Love Christ has for me.  That is what it is that I need to focus on.  That love is the love to hold on to.  Not the idea of love that Hollywood gives us in all the movies that is so far from the real thing that it is almost unattainable.  And I do know that God cares about the desires of my heart.  Because of that Crazy Love that He has for me, He wants me to have the desires of my heart.  So deep down, somewhere in me, I believe that someday God will point out the “perfect” man for me. (No I am not naive in thinking that there is such a thing as a perfect man.  What I mean is the man that God has for me.)  He may be someone I have known for years, or someone who I will not meet yet for some time.  But until then, I am able to be romanced and loved by my God.

Side note.  Now that would have been a lovely way to end the post with that last statement, but, I feel I need to clarify what being romanced by God is.  No, I do not have some weird messed up view that I can have an earthly romance with God.  It is more a phrase that I guess means to allow God to just fill you up with love and joy and peace that only He can give.  God wants to love on all of us.  He wants us to allow Him into our daily lives, even if it is just sitting in silence with Him in a coffee shop typing a blog post.  If you could not tell, that is what I am currently doing.  A lot of times, God can “romance” us by pointing things out to us in our daily lives.  For example, I love nature.  I should clarify that.  I love the outdoors meaning trees, flowers, animals in the outdoors, hiking, mountains, basically those really pretty scenes you picture in your mind when you think of a national geographic magazine.  However, I do not always love being in the outdoors.  I strongly dislike bugs or SPIDERS!  So, for those of you who know me, I wanted to put that in to make sure you did not think I was making stuff up.  Anyways, ways that God will love on me is that He will point out a beautiful sunrise, or simply just remind me that I am living in a beautiful city, or that it is a beautiful day!  Like right now, I am sitting in a coffee shop with the sun shining in behind me!  It is AMAZING!  Okay now I feel like I can end this post.  Have a fantastic day!

The view from the window behind me, then obviously, me! :)