RIVERS OF LIVING WATER

“He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.” John 7:38

Three months in, I found myself at the beach, sitting on the stairs of the lifeguard station. It was dinnertime, the four of them, a guitar, and me. Sitting us down, Jeff ques Austin to play the guitar while he sings “Marry me” (with a Jesus twist). As Carina opens the ring box, Sean takes a picture. We’re engaged and off to celebrate.

Seven years ago, God gave me an already established family to love. And for a girl who lived most of her life her way, on her terms, it’s been a journey. I have learned a lot about life, about marriage, about myself and especially about God.

Suddenly, we were five. God formed a family consisting of a husband and wife from completely different cultures, who had previous lives filled with ups and downs, difficulty and pain. Three children who survived a broken family. And like most kids, desperately trying to figure out who they were. Each in a different phase of life. An elementary, middle and high schooler. Each with different personalities and experiences. Trying to live between two homes of which had very little, if any, communication at all.

Our commonality….Jesus.  But as for most of us, our journey to Grace is usually a bumpy one.

We travel from the valley to the mountaintop only to find ourselves back in the valley again. I’ve spent much time in the valley because I’m a person who holds tightly to control and comfort. But I remember it was in the valley where I first met Jesus. And it is in the “valleys” of life that we become intimate with Him and learn how to love as He does.

There is a fairy-tale living inside each of us that is put there by God, as His love and rescue of us is beautiful. But at the risk of sounding like a kill joy, the Devil and the world has hijacked the fairy-tale and their version is completely destructive to relationship and erodes true love.  Love does not live in fairy-tales. Remember, love sent Jesus to the cross.

Oswald Chambers once wrote, “The fiery furnaces are there by God’s direct permission. It is misleading to imagine that we are developed in spite of our circumstances; we are developed because of them. It is mastery in circumstances that is needed, not mastery over them.”

Love lives in trials and struggles, in differences and difficulties, in sickness and in health. It comes alive in pain and forgiveness. We mistakenly think we want a fairy-tale kind of love and so we set out to find it.

When Paul penned 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 “4 Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud 5 or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. 6 It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. 7 Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance. 8 Love never fails" he was not challenging us to find that kind of love. I believe he was challenging us to become that kind of love. And that, as you probably realize, is not an easy task and, to me, impossible without Jesus.

  

We are born into a broken world and are naturally selfish. Think about it, we don’t have to learn to say no or mine!  But God uses the desire of love that He planted in our hearts to draw us back to Him. He uses human relationship to teach us about love. Jeff and I started with the fairy-tale but God loved us enough not to leave us there.

God uses the marriage relationship to rub out each other’s rough edges. And we have many! And our struggles are very different because that’s how God rolls. He gets the job done!!

Here’s a big one for me. Through our relationship, I’m learning how to share. I know that sounds weird for a grown woman to say, but I’ve never really had to share. I chose to, but never had to.  However, it seems my struggle is not a surface struggle. As my protection mechanism, I struggle with sharing my space, my time, my earthly treasure, but God has revealed to me that it’s my heart I struggle with sharing. A fear of being deeply hurt. As a child, I developed and positioned this protection around myself that I believe would have naturally been broken through if I had had my own children. But God had other plans and if I believe He is a good Father (and I do) then I must believe that He knows what He’s doing. I fail much, but I must let Him shape and mold this lump of clay into His masterpiece, for my best and for His glory.

Is it painful? Yep. Hard? Most days. Worth it? Absolutely!

God loved us enough to take our fairy-tale and turn it into His. A fairy-tale that has “Rivers of Living Water” flowing through it. Rivers filled with His Grace and Mercy.  

What do you struggle with letting God do in you?

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