Romance For All
ro·mance noun 1. a feeling of excitement and mystery associated with love. 2. a quality or feeling of mystery, excitement, and remoteness from everyday life.
When was the last time you experienced feelings of excitement and mystery? For me, that last time I experienced both of these things would be when the Lord brought my husband I together. I fought it at first because I had known him for 19 years. The whole idea was so crazy and ridiculous that I finally figured out that it had to be God. Jim pursued and eventually won. It is quite an exciting story and I could go into more detail but perhaps another time! The last time I felt excitement and mystery on a smaller scale was when I was about to depart for New Zealand and this time taking my children with Jim and I. It was the excitement of seeing them experience the adventure of an unknown that thrilled me. I loved knowing that this time, we would experience the trip together as a family, all four of us.
The mystery part of romance is part that is hidden. It's what you don't know and are about to discover about the one you are in relationship with. The obvious example of this is when a romantic relationship is just budding.
It's an exciting time. You
think about the other person literally 24/7. You get butterflies in your stomach when you know you are going to see them or hear their voice. But a dating or courting relationship is not the only place that we can experience mystery and excitement.
Did you know that God is mysterious? In fact, He invented mystery! It is the glory of God to conceal a matter; to search out a matter is the glory of kings. - Proverbs 25:2 The Message translation says that God delights in concealing things. The Passion Translation says it this way: The glory of God is seen By the wonderful way He hides The revelation of His Word.The glory of kings can be seen In how sincerely they search out For deeper meaning of His Word. God is mysterious and He wants to be discovered.
Here is more of what the bible has to say about love and mystery. Colossians 2:2-4 I want you woven into a tapestry of love, in touch with everything there is to know of God. Then you will have minds confident and at rest, focused on Christ, God’s great mystery. All the richest treasures of wisdom and knowledge are embedded in that mystery and nowhere else. And we’ve been shown the mystery! I’m telling you this because I don’t want anyone leading you off on some wild-goose chase, after other so-called mysteries, or “the Secret.”
I love how the message translation says we are woven into a tapestry of love. A tapestry is woven by colored threads that apart from the other threads, do not tell anything on their own but together they display a great design. So we are woven together by the love of Christ which holds us together. Isolated, we can't produce anything. But together, in Christ, we can make all His glorious riches known.
Colossians 1:26-27 This mystery has been kept in the dark for a long time, but now it’s out in the open. God wanted everyone, not just Jews, to know this rich and glorious secret inside and out, regardless of their background, regardless of their religious standing. The mystery in a nutshell is just this: Christ is in you, so therefore you can look forward to sharing in God’s glory. It’s that simple.
Mark 4: 11 He said to them, “The mystery of the kingdom of God has been given to you [who have teachable hearts], but those who are outside [the unbelievers, the spiritually blind] get everything in parables. Are you teachable?
How many of you who are married have experienced the waning of mystery in your marriage? How easy it is to become disconnected and how quickly the dullness of life settles in as we become all too familiar with one another.
Our hearts no longer beat with anticipation and the butterflies have long gone. Instead of excitement and mysterious, life is very predictable. For the most part you know what the evening and weekend routine will be.
Hmm...and marriage isn't the only place that happens. Sadly, it happens in our relationship with the Lord. Instead of fresh manna from Heaven we're eating stale bread and so there's no surprise, no anticipation, no excitement, and no mystery. If romance involves excitement, then so should our Christian lives. Our God is not boring but religion is. We're supposed to be salt and we're supposed to be light. Instead we are predictable and dull, oppressed and depressed. Who when seeing us in this condition wants what we have? I remember when I first rededicated my life to the Lord after having a rebellious 6 years living in the world. I was set free! I saw the Lord in a whole new light. There was a bounce in my step. Everyone that knew me could see that there was something different about me. I can remember buying all the praise and worship CD's that I could and read all the books that I could. I went to church every time the doors were opened. I pursued! There are times where I miss those days when I had fewer responsibilities pulling on me and it was easier to pursue after the Lord. But, no matter what are circumstances are and the challenges we face today, we need to get back to the place where we are excited about the Lord again. We need to fall in love with Him again!
It was near the first of the year when the Lord spoke to me that February was going to be a month of romance. (A month of mystery and excitement) I know that idea can be quite obvious where it's the same month where we celebrate Valentine's Day. The Lord wasn't talking about Valentine's Day. He was talking about us as His people returning to our first love. This month can be for you a month of Divine Romance. He has pursued you and now He wants you to pursue Him in return. He wants you to be excited for Him. He wants you to think about Him 24/7, for your heart to beat for Him, for you to get butterflies in your stomach at the mere thought of him and for you to be so excited and hungry for His presence that you can't wait to get there! It's time to rise up and not be like the church of Ephesus of whom He said, Revelation 2:4 Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken the love you had at first. I love the message translation: But you walked away from your first love—why? What’s going on with you, anyway? The Amplified versions says it this way: But I have this [charge] against you, that you have left your first love [you have lost the depth of love that you first had for Me].
Not only do we have the T.V., radio, books, and magazines, in this day and age with the internet, we don't have to go any farther than our smartphone to find an answer to almost anything we are seeking. Do you have physical symptoms? There's a website for that. Do you need to know how to fix something? There's a DIY website for that. God never once commanded us "Do it yourself." Do you feel lonely? Well guess what? There's a website for that too! We spend so much time on "social media" that we neglect one another and we neglect the very One we should be looking to for answers. What we need to do is return to our first love, get back to seeking Him. Just a new lovers search out everything they can about each other, so we need to search everything we can about Christ, then as in Colossians 2, our minds will be confident and at rest.
Like in a marriage where a couple both sleep on opposite side of the bed, backs to each other, or maybe even worse, separate rooms, so we have our backs to God. It's like I mentioned in one of my other blogs, though He never actually leaves us, He sometimes will remove the awareness of His presence to draw us out so we will pursue Him. We've asked Him to come to us, in the business and craziness of our daily lives while He's waiting for us to "come up here". He's not coming down to your level. He already did that once. He is waiting for you to come up to His level to pursue Him. "Come up here and I will show you..." Revelation 4:1 Remember, it's the Glory of God to hide a thing. It's your glory to seek it out but you have to pursue Him where He is. We need to get our heads out of the sand
and get our heads in His game - His game of hide and go seek. He is hiding and we are to "go seek" "See ye first the Kingdom of God and all these things shall be added unto you" - Matthew 6:33 We should want to know all that we can about Him. We are part of the greatest love affair of all ages. The greatest mystery of all ages. There's no greater expression of love but to sacrifice your life for another. That's what Christ has done.
It's a love story so marvelous that even the angels looked to these things - 1 Peter 2:12. One of the things I love most about the Lord is that He is so great, so wonderful, and so awesome, that we can never know everything there is to know about Him. There will always be a new depth to discover. The only way we can be disappointed or "bored" is if we stop seeking. And it doesn't stop here. Let's become like children playing hide and go seek, seeking together and finding Him and also seeking and finding Him in one another. "By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”- John 13:35
There's one more thing the Lord showed me about this month of February. He showed me that not only is this a month of divine romance (if we will be wooed by Him and pursue Him), but also this is a time when many will fall in love with America again. Those who were once proud to be an American but have become discouraged, perhaps even to believing that American lost her way, don't give up. Pursue God and pray for America and President Trump. It's not a time to be silent but a time to stand up for both God and Country and fall in love with both, all over again!
