Are You In A Theory Or A Love Affair?

Today I saw a picture on the She Reads Truth app devotional which is the picture above with the saying "let your religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair". First off all, I haven't written in a while, so hello blogging world! I'll be honest with y'all I've been very uninspired to write, I've written a few things but I haven't been able to get myself to post them, why? Who knows! But anyways I saw this quote this morning and it was as if God himself gave me a nice slap in the face! A loving one of course. To often we make our Christian life a routine that we forget it's a beautiful love affair. A love affair with ups and downs, faults, struggles, weakness, and strengths. We also forget that there are others doing the same as us. I've seen many Christians bashing on other Christians for not being the perfect Christian that in theory every Christian should be.

THEORY:  a coherent group of tested general propositions, commonly regarded as correct, that can be used as principles of explanation and prediction for a class of phenomena.

LOVE AFFAIR: a romantic relationship or episode between lovers

I'll choose love affair over theory any day. Living a life being in love with God and being on a whimsical love affair with Him is different than being in a theoretical relationship. I'll tell you why, theoretical relationship revolves around thinking too much and observing too much. To come up with a theory, you must research, observe, think and come up with conclusion to create a theory. When we are in that kind of relationship with God we question everything. We observe everyone around us, we think of all the wrong they may be going or even think off all the wrong we, ourselves, are doing. And we draw up conclusions of what we have observed. That's the gate way of being religious, we finger point the faults of others, we think we have ways of making everyone better, we start talking like Pharisees.  

Now a love affair relationship is very simple. I wrote a blog a while back called "Why I Am Dating A Black Man" and I wrote something that I'm going to bring into this, "Many say love is blind. I disagree. Love sees it all; the colour, the perfection, the imperfection, the weight, and the height but love decides to look past all that. Love sees it all and loves it with greater passion." Now that is a love affair. If you are in a love affair with God you are also in a love affair with His people. Simple as that. You love Jesus? Good, but remember; “I really only love God as much as the person I love the least.”- Dorothy Day. When you love, you forget about what the people aren't and you start looking at them for what they have. Like Jesus does to us. The judging stops and the love affair takes over. We start loving in a different way, an innocent way. You may even start to love the annoying things your brother/sister in Christ does. Instead of critiquing you may even crack a joke and enjoy yourself a bit more. 

Ive been in both of these relationships with God, lately I've been on the theory side, were I sit back and draw conclusions in my mind and think I'm right, I caught myself doing this and just started laughing at how absurd I was. As if my God needed a body guard. I stopped myself in my righteous tracks and here I am writing about how good it just feels to love. 

Maybe you've been to hard on others or even yourself, I don't know who this is for, but if your reading this just know it is easier to love than to not love. It takes more muscles to frown than to smile. Make this love affair count, be in love with Jesus and His creations. Don't be afraid to love, love doesn't run out; it's never wrong and never boastful. 

With Love & Grace- Diana C.

Stop Remembering What God Has Forgotten

 A few weekends ago, I had the privilege of going to an all women’s retreat that was organized by my church. The point of the retreat was of deliverance. By this, I mean that the goal was to let the Holy Spirit rid anything in us that was holding us back from the true potential that God has in store for us. Many areas were covered, and I can tell you that there was breakthrough in many areas; but there was one area that really impacted me, and I strongly believe that God had been preparing me for days, even weeks before that. That topic was forgiveness. But not your conventional “I forgive you, you forgive me” forgiveness. I mean, the real deal, the tough kind; forgiveness of the self. I can’t even tell you how many times I have been guilty of this. It was a really annoying cycle that I wanted to get out of for years. I would do something, feel guilty,  I would pray and repent, and get the forgiveness I so desired. But what happened after that? For years, I remained in a cycle of feeling extremely guilty, dirty, unworthy of forgiveness. Even though I KNEW that God had forgiven me, I just couldn't let it go. I wouldn't forgive myself. The lie repeated itself in my head that I was unworthy of forgiveness; that maybe God didn't forgive me after all.
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 A few weeks ago as I was praying for expectancy in that retreat, it came to me. God was like “NEWSFLASH” He HAD forgiven me; He just wanted me to forgive myself. Whatever sin you have committed doesn't define who you are, no matter how big or small. That’s where my freedom was. In forgiving myself, just as Jesus had forgiven me when he died on that cross for me. The bible says that we are new creations, so why don’t we believe it? Jesus says we are forgiven, but STILL we don’t believe it. We are too stuck in our own little bubbles, that if Jesus himself stood in front of us and told us we were forgiven, we probably still wouldn’t believe it.  We are all a work in progress, and that’s a fact! There isn’t anyone out there who can say that they are perfect and free of temptation, and if something is true, it's that we will always fall short of His Glory. 
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I held myself captive for years, and I know that I'm not the only one out there who has let guilt and shame take over. I'm here to tell you that God's grace and mercy is sufficient. His love is never ending, and you are never too deep into sin to be redeemed. We imprison ourselves by letting ourselves believe that we aren't worth it, and that whatever we did is too great. I can just imagine Jesus being like "why are you still on that? I forgave you already, and you are made clean" but then as imperfect and flawed as we are, we go and play "dress up" and we  play the role of the sinner, even though that isn’t who we are. What we fail to see is that in the Bible, there are TONS of people who made mistakes, but God used that for HIS glory! My God is truly a God of second chances! So I will leave you with a word that has helped me in my walk. It’s helped me realize that even if you mess up, it is okay, you aren’t perfect, but as long as you get up, wipe off the dirt and keep going, that’s what marks the difference.  Just remember to stop remembering what God has already forgotten.

“The godly may trip seven times, but they will get up again…” Proverbs 24:16

With Love, Michelle♥