Faithful Jesus

Such a fun morning! Instead of my usual Saturday morning ballet class, today I had contemporary. There’s just something so much more fun about wearing messy hair and a giant sweatshirt rather than tights and hair in a bun in the early morning. Overall, I think it’s going to be a great day! It’s so beautiful outside too…70 degrees again! Anyway, this is just some stuff that’s been floating around in my head all week, but I’m just now having the time to really sit down and get my thoughts together enough to write a post. Have a beautiful Saturday!
-taye

P.S. After re-reading through this post after writing it, I realized that it unintentionally ended up being way more personal and a lot lengthier than what I started out with in my head. So sorry about that!


Faithfulness None Can Deny


This week was a difficult one for me—starting out with those days that everything seems to be going wrong, and ending with me being sick. Basically, overall it was not a very fun week. However, God has been so faithful to me throughout my stubbornness, and sickness, and He has remained faithful in His promises to restore His children.

“He restores my soul…”
Psalm 23:3 (ESV)

Trusting God is really hard for me, as it is for most people, I amm sure. The hard part is giving up all of your fears and desires and worries and giving them completely and fully over to Christ. But what I have been realizing lately is that God is so deserving of our trust. He has made so many promises to us and yet, He keeps every single one of them. He is so faithful to His children, although we are constantly unfaithful to Him.

“He…is called Faithful and True…”
Revelation 19:11 (NASB)

“…He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
1 John 1:9 (NASB)

“[They] shall entrust theirs souls to a faithful Creator…”
1 Peter 4:19 (NASB)

The best way that I can try to show some extent of God’s faithfulness is through examples from my own life. Over this school year, God has shown His faithfulness so clearly to me; even when I have not noticed it at the time, looking back I can see it all so well.

I am a senior and so this past fall, I was really struggling in my decision to pick a college to go to; the pressure kept building up. I was seriously looking at three colleges, all with good dance programs, which is what I will be majoring in. In November, I went to Jackson, Mississippi to audition for Belhaven University’s dance program and also to visit the school. I had spent many summers in the their dorms over the years for Ballet Magnificat’s summer dance intensive, but I had never really considered attending to University before. The audition went well; I was accepted into the dance program and received an offer for a dance scholarship. For the next month following my trip to Jackson my parents and I continued to pray about where I should go to school. I was registered to audition for two other public universities' dance programs in early 2011, but around New Year’s I decided that Belhaven is where God wants me for the next four years of my life. God’s faithfulness radiated in the fact that He revealed His plans to me in due time—not a minute too soon, nor too late.

“’For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord…”
Jeremiah 29:11 (NIV)

God has also shown His faithfulness to me in blessing me with three incredible best friends. The four of us have grown up together and, throughout high school especially, they have been the best encouragers in my faith, and the best accountability I could have ever wanted. Every Wednesday night, we meet at Starbucks after dance or church and just talk—sometimes for hours. I feel really bad for the Starbucks employees. Fellowship with Christian brothers and sisters is so vitally important in our walk with God. Fellowship helps to encourage us to seek God when we have grown weary; it helps to rebuke us when we have chosen the wrong direction; and overall, it helps us to have joy in what God has blessed us with and in what is to come.

“And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.”
Hebrews 10:24-25 (NIV)

Also over the past year, I have had a tough time with guys—three guys to be exact. I have had only one boyfriend in my lifetime (I am thankful for that low number). Relationships, especially high school relationships, I feel like are such a waste of time and effort for most people. Granted, there are exceptions to this—you know, the couples who started dating in 10th grade and end up happily married twenty years later. But let’s be realistic: that does not happen very often. Since my sophomore year, I have always told myself that I would not date again in high school—it is a setup for heartbreak— but what I have come to realize is that you do not have to be dating to get your heart broken, and also that guys are not the only ones who can break your heart, God can too. The difference is that God breaks your heart so that He can heal it, while guys break your heart simply out of carelessness or in ignorance, and they have no intention of healing it for you.
I may be young but I have felt love before, at least, a part of what love is. Part of love is being able to love someone when they have done nothing to deserve it, and to be able to love someone even after they have hurt you. That is what I felt with guy number one (we’re not going to mention names, for the sake of everyone who reads this). He and I became friends a few years ago, he lived a couple hours away, but through facebook and phone conversations we continued getting to know one another after we had left the place where we met. For an entire year we did this, slowly becoming closer friends, but eventually I began to like him more than a friend, and apparently he did too. About a year and a half ago, we were on the phone one night and the subject came up; we both admitted liking each other as more than just friends and felt relieved to hear that it was reciprocated; we then talked every day for about two weeks. One day, we were talking and he nonchalantly mentioned that he didn’t feel that way for me anymore, as if the way he had felt two weeks before had just abruptly disappeared. I acted fine with it, but really I was deeply hurt, deeper than I realized. The hurt began to grow, and I allowed it to, in fact, I watered it and pulled the weeds. For almost another year and a half the hurt continued to build up, but so did the love. I continued to fall for him even though we only talked once every few months or so, and he completely ignored me on some occasions. He had led me on, but I tried to love him when he rejected me, and the hurt that he planted had grown so big that it began consuming my heart. I had allowed this situation in my life to take over my heart, slowly taking it back from God and giving pieces of it in desperate pursuit of this guy who did not even acknowledge my feelings for him.
Finally, around September or October it hit me that guy number one was not good for me. I have the mindset that every guy I find myself liking I should ask myself if he could be a potential husband, and if not, ditch him. Dating and courtship are preparation for marriage and if you cannot see yourself spending the rest of your life with them, why waste your time? So I realized this guy would be a horrible husband for me someday and also that he probably was not ever going to like me back again. So I gave him up; I stopped thinking about him, I stopped trying to talk to him, and I stopped feeding the hurt. The crazy thing is that after that, there was such a heavy weight that had been lifted from my heart, and I realized that the weight had been so heavy that only God could have lifted it, and He did. This is where guy number two comes in. I mentioned in a previous post about how there was this guy at church that I found myself noticing. I do not think that I can say that I ever really liked him, we still have never really had a legitimate conversation, but even so, I found myself thinking about him. Now, before you start thinking that I am a creep for thinking about this guy I had never even talked to, I will tell you that guy number two was just something to fill what my heart was searching for. God was there, I knew He was because He had so recently healed me and put me back on my feet again, but instead of being content with that, my heart still searched for love and for something that my affection could fall upon other than Christ. That is pretty much it for the story of guy number two; his presence is not all that significant in the purpose of this drawn-out story.
Before guy number three entered the picture, there was such a huge change in my heart. God showed me everywhere I had gone wrong. I had been searching for love everywhere but in Him. I had been using God rather than living for Him. I simply allowed Him to heal me when I needed it, but then ran on my way again in search of fulfillment elsewhere. But the thing is that God is not content with that. He is a jealous God and He wants all of us, not just particles and leftovers of our heart. He knows exactly what is best for us, and what is best for us is Him. God stopped me in my tracks and showed me a glimpse of just how incredible His love for me is, and yet that glimpse was more than I could ever imagine or hope for. I was finally content to rest wholly in the love of Christ when guy number three came along. This guy was different; I had never had such encouraging conversations with any other guy before. Our conversations were filled with dissections of scripture and reflections of what God was showing us. It looked to me what God intended relationships to be about—completely based on Him. But then it just ended. He and I had talked consistently for about three weeks, and then I stopped hearing from him. I think that God allowed it to end in order to teach the guy some things as well as myself—things that He could not teach us if we were friends.

I suppose that turned into more of a testimony rather than a simple example, but it all leads up to how God is faithful. I have seen God’s faithfulness in many ways through these three guys, which is one reason, I think, that God allowed them to have a part in my life. I have come to know that God is faithful even when I am not. As seen in stories of the first two guys, I was not looking for contentment or satisfaction in Christ, but rather I was searching for it everywhere but in Him.

“Why are you looking for love, why are you still searching as if I’M not enough?”
“By Your Side”, Tenth Avenue North

I have also seen God’s faithfulness in the fact that He promises He will never leave us and forsake us, and that He keeps that promise. He brought my heart back into focus on Him, even after I had left Him in the background to search for love somewhere else.

“The Lord Himself goes before you and will be with you; He will never leave you nor forsake you…”
Deuteronomy 31:8 (NIV)

And lastly, that He is faithful in doing what is His will for our lives. He knows what He’s doing better than what we think He’s doing, and in the end, everything works for the good even if we do not understand it. His plan is always greater than anything we could plan for ourselves.

“And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good…”
Romans 8:28 (ESV)

“I will instruct you and teach you in the way which you should go…”
Psalm 32:8 (NASB)

I apologize once again for how long that was, but I hope that you have found some encouragement in reading this and some hope because of the Lord's constant faithfulness to us, and that He always keeps His promises to His people.

“My God, You are here with us, constantly here with us, You are our everythingfaithful and true.”
“Constant”, Charlie Hall

“God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.”
1 Corinthians 1:9 (ESV)

“If we are faithless, He remains faithful…”
2 Timothy 2:13 (ESV)

“But the Lord is faithful. He will establish you and guard you against the evil one.”
2 Thessalonians 3:3 (ESV)