Choice Love

God has convicted me to hold an accountability with a wonderful resource He has given me. Through this accountability, voicemail messages are left each morning confessing triumph or failure in reading the Lord's Word daily.

He has opened my eyes to the reality that He has set before me fantastic witnesses and tools for spurring each other on and I have been careless and lazy in failing to use them to further His Name.

But this morning He really opened my eyes to His Beauty. A phone call came at "too early" o'clock in which to hold me accountable and in which to cause me to hold another accountable. And I agreed with the person, lowering my choices with a familiar habit.

I drove into work this morning with unfamilairly early traffic... reports are due by 4:00 today. And a warm, passionate voice spoke through lyric. The words natural, yet foreign in many ways to me. Isn't it funny how God can take a concept that has been taught to you for nine years and teach you to re-think it and re-think it until you posses His mind and determination about it?

Choice.

It is my choice to grow in or fail away from the Lord.

It is my choice to place Him at highest priority.

MY choice.

Not another's.

See, for so long I expected my faithful walk to come "naturally." Of course there's struggles, I'm perfectly fine with admitting that, but some level of naivety lived within that statement for the past nine years.

Love. It is something to work at, not natural at all. See, we are a self-pleasing flesh. So love, in it's purest and most basic sense is a sacrifice. I choose to do this because I love you. I choose to accept this about you because I love you. Too much of our society teaches that love is what you receive from a relationship, turning the focus inward and selfish in nature. But it is a choice. Matt and my marriage is not going to last on a romantic high. (I knew that coming in to the relationship.) But the only way it is going to last is not in the way that my family has survived. See, my family has survived in that I have loved them because that was all I knew and some inherent bond that the Lord created caused me to stick with them through thick and thin. (though I think the latter part of the previous statement applies to Matt and I as well.) But this love... this marriage is a choice. Daily I choose to love Matt and be in love with this man, Matt, and only Matt for the rest of my life.

I am a part of the bride of Christ. And it is a daily choice to love my Groom. Some days I wake up and think, "no, not today. no more today," because my flesh is weak. I just want to survive today. I just want to last through today. I'll never get this whole daily Bible reading down so why even bother. I'll never be perfect until Heaven so why even bother. And I choose to accept that love should gratify me. It should be an easy and automatic high. It should be a romance... not a lasting love. But when it comes down to it, many times my relationship with God is a romance. His Spirit sweeps over me in a way that I cannot keep from responding through praise. His voice whispers Truth in my mind. He pursues my thoughts, He opens my inner being and calls it beautiful, He smiles at my obedience, and He even blesses me when I stumble. And yet other times I must choose to read His word. I must choose to sing His praise when it's not easy... it's not a romance. It's a love.


And it's amazing how the Lord has opened up this Truth to my mind...
through my husband.

- I love the Lord... He is my Love.
Thank You, Lord. Thank You.
Thank You.