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! :)