The Choice to Love; Part III

Go HERE for links to parts I & II  

The Choice to Love; Part III

I began to realize how much my Savior loved me and this realization awakened my desire to please Him and to love Him more fully. But along with that came a fear of what 'pleasing Him' would entail.

I passed through a time of intense spiritual exhaustion. Over and over again, God asked me to do things that were terrifying or seemingly impossible. I wanted desperately to obey Him, and I would fight with myself to say 'yes'. More often than not, though, it seemed that I would lose the fight...and then I would have to live with the horror of my sinfulness and the knowledge that, once again, I had failed the One who loved me. This pattern exhausted me mentally, emotionally, even physically at times. I knew, in the midst of every crisis of obedience, that the Holy Spirit was ready and eager to give me strength. However, I could not summon the willpower even to accept the help I needed, and seemingly, God wasn't going to force it upon me.

I was so tired of being asked to do things that I was terrified to do and then loathing myself when I did not do them, that I considered calling it quits on this whole following Jesus thing. 'I'm not getting anywhere,' I thought, 'and all I'm doing right now is giving lip-service to my faith. I'm not actually obeying and I don't actually want to obey because obedience is painful and awkward and scary.'

None of this reasoning seemed particularly good, even at the time, but it did seem realistic and I felt very ready to do things that were realistic and within my own abilities. But, deep inside, something held tight to my faith and refused to let go. Perhaps it was my spirit, my soul, or just my stubbornness. At any rate, when the Holy Spirit spoke, this part of me listened, and forced the most rational portion of my mind to consider this ugly question: do I truly want to allow myself to become a coward and a quitter?

'If I don't finish this,' I thought, 'I may never be able to finish anything else.' 

And so I asked for the very thing that had terrified me so much. I asked to fall in love.

With Jesus.

Not to have my love for Him increased - I'd frequently asked for that - but to fall in love. I was asking to lose control. I was asking to be influenced by a thing so powerful that it would over-ride sense, fear, and rationale and enable me to follow Him blindly wherever He wanted me to go.

I was tired of decisions, of counting up the cost, of choosing between comfort and holiness time and time again. I wanted to be enamored. I wanted to be out of choices and out of control so that I never had the option of choosing wrongly again.