“Return to Love” has been the resounding message I’ve carried for over 5 years through both the Common Ground Sound project, and now the new record project, The Other Side. In using this phrase, I personally mean a return to God, for God is love. More specifically I mean, return to God’s love. As I have set my intentions on doing this very thing, God made a promise to me a year ago. I did a podcast this week about this promise. He said, “I’m going to heal your eyes.” I have had my eyes open to so many truths and painful realities in the past year that I can hardly keep up with it all. Most of what I’ve seen as my eyes were being healed, were things I did not want to see. These were things that I was, at least subconsciously, refusing to look at. This choice of remaining blind had me rebelliously walking in the cursed consequences of the alternative to God’s ways. Looking at the “Three Realms” I’ve been writing and posting about lately, this is how it plays out.
Heavenly Realm
I am protected ... unless I choose the alternative. I have two back-to-back failed marriages. If I were to boil my mistakes down to one mistake in both of those marriages, it would, without a doubt, be this: At some level, I have chosen the alternative. The Godhead, warring angels, and ministering angels are always moving and shaking in the heavens on our behalf - always! So is the enemy! If I surrender my entire life and everything about it to the blessed side of the heavenly realm, I receive the promised protection, security, provision, peace, joy, fulfillment, satisfaction, rest, power, love, and a sound mind… and on and on. Instead, I begin to conveniently water down and dumb down my walk with God, compromise my beliefs and convictions little by little, concerned by what others think of me and my walk with God. I suffer the cursed consequences that the alternative offers. One thing about being alone is that I am not tempted to do this. The problem is that my favorite thing to be in this life is a wife. I love being a wife. So, now what? READ ON… The Flesh/Soul Realm
Soulish desires are those desires that fight or go against God's will. It is anything I want outside of what I know to be God's will for me. This is the part of "self" we are commanded to "die to." An example might be that I have a soulish desire to buy a Lamborghini when it is ridiculously out of my price range. My physical realm "flesh" wants to impress others with it. That's a pretty surface example. Another would be that I want to handle a situation on my own when God tells me it is His alone to handle. If my child were dying, as noble as the soulish desire to handle, help, or stop the death might seem, I'm commanded to let go and give it to God. When I refuse, no matter how seemingly noble the desire is, I'm walking out of the liberty in Christ's Kingdom and into the bondage of the alternative - the enemy's system. My soulish desire to water down my walk with God so that others will accept and not abandon me is that part of my "self" I have to "die to." In making this choice, I become liberated to fully be the bride of Christ. I love to be a wife because I love to serve. There is not a more blessed place to serve than within the position of Christ's bride. So, that is now where I am so privileged to set my sole focus, and in His time and according to His will, I will be a wife again.
The Word/Spirit Realm
What does freedom look like for a follower of Christ? I asked God that this week, as I find myself freed from a dysfunctional marriage. I know it is not freedom from correction, discipline, refining fire, persecution, trials, or tribulation. So gosh! What the heck is freedom, then? In Jeremiah 15, the prophet gets frustrated with it all and asks, Why then does my suffering continue? Your help seems as uncertain as a seasonal brook! (19) This is how the Lord responds: If you return to Me, I will restore you, so you can continue to serve Me. I don't know quite how to explain it because "on paper" it doesn't make sense, but I have found no other feeling of freedom in this life that compares to the feeling of freedom I find in knowing I am surrendered to and serving God as a part of the body and bride of Christ. There is no greater freedom than this.
My return to Love has not been what I expected. This year has been full of refining fire, conviction, and red-hot correction for my sins and failures in my part of the dysfunctional pain cycle, and a deep look at how I’ve missed the mark in loving others well. Surprisingly though, it has been unveiling after unveiling after unveiling revealing how blind I’ve chosen to be about allowing myself to enter and remain in relationships where I am not loved well. I have seen with crystal clarity, like never before, that when I become supercritical and frustrated it is caused by attempting to tolerate things that should not be tolerated. In the name of grace, I accept intolerable behaviors and remain in those situations for far too long. In this chosen blindness, I have caused myself to endure astounding cruelty!
In my return to Love, I’ve had to have my eyes healed, then look at and see that I cannot love others well when I am not being loved well by others. It is an impossibility. “Wait, but Jesus loved well at all times,” you say. Jesus wisely refrained from allowing close relationships with those whom He knew would not love Him well. He simply moved through those who would not love Him well, stood his ground, and was who He was in their midst.
Love to all,
Jill