Soooooo, it’s been a minute, and I apologize. The last month has been all kinds of crazy, and there has been so much to process. In the midst of it all, I’m excited to share more of what God has been teaching me. Crazy enough, He has been speaking despite my lack of intentionality and desire for specific answers. He knows exactly what I need to hear.

I’ve been receiving so much poetry in the prayer room and even throughout my day-to-day life. If I’m honest, I’ve felt a lack of inspiration lately, which is partially due to my lack of writing. But of course, Jesus always gives me the words. So stay tuned for more poetry over the next few weeks.

Recently, God — Yahweh, Father — has been revealing two things to me:

1. the power of a name
2. the power of choice

I’m currently reading God Has a Name by John Mark Comer, and it’s revealing so much more depth into who God is and what we believe about Him. What we believe about God is the most important thing about us.

The last seven months have consisted of the Lord peeling back the layers of my heart in this exact way, challenging every wrong belief I’ve held about Him. It’s been extremely humbling. This is the God I serve: so concerned with even the smallest things I don’t see rightly about Him.

For me, that has often looked like believing He won’t come through for me in the ways He has for other people. But that is so far from the truth, and it’s exactly where we can become entangled in the lies of the enemy. This is why Scripture continually calls us to LOOK to Him.

Secondly, the power of choice is the very basis of our relationship with God. He created us with the ability to choose — to exercise free will. Why? Because He didn’t want robots; He wanted relationship.

At the end of the day, love is a choice. It’s an action. True love is choosing someone despite circumstances. God already chose us, fully knowing we might never choose Him back. That brings me to tears every time I think about it.

He already went to the cross, experiencing rejection and risking everything so that we could be brought back into right standing with Him. That is so wild to me. That truth alone should make us want to love Him more, but we still have to choose, every single day, to actually love Him. It doesn’t happen by accident.

This is the beauty of covenant. Though God’s love is not dependent on us, we still have to show up and love Him back. Marriage is such a powerful picture of this — two broken people coming together and continually choosing one another. For better or for worse, united by the grace and love of God, all reflecting our covenant with the Father.

I truly believe our ability to love and serve God directly correlates to how we love and show up in our relationships. We simply cannot love people well if we are not first receiving the love of God and ministering to Him.

When it’s hard, when it’s easy, when you feel burning passion, and when you feel absolutely nothing — choice still matters. Choice is a beautiful thing. It’s not meant to scare us but to reveal what is taking first priority in our hearts.

Following God is a journey made up of a thousand everyday “yeses” along the way. 

He is worth every single one.

Exodus 34:6–7
“The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.”