It's all about love

Going to France would identify me. France would differentiate me from my neighbors. Being abroad again would challenge me in new ways. I hoped to find purpose while I was in France. I wanted to become a better Christian overseas because sometimes I feel like God has just given up on America and on Americans. We are too materialistic, too selfish, too greedy, too crazy...

What I've always said though is that I want to know God more than anything else: more than going to France, more than living abroad, more than ever getting married, more than being a mom someday, more than anything. I thought that I could get to know God by uplifting His name in my life. If I prayed more, went to church more, read the Bible more, spent time in Christ-centered community more, loved others more, served others more, tithed more, more, more, more, then something would happen. A spark would ignite. I would love God completely.

That isn't how it works.

HE loved me first. God loved me completely first. 1 John 4:19 says that "we love Him because He first loved us."

In a skit I saw on youtube, one guy was lamenting to God how terrible he felt because he wasn't able to uplift God. The man playing the role of God said, "It isn't your job to uplift Me. I will uplift you with my victorious arm." I went, "ohh..." My desire shouldn't be to do my best to praise Him, to uplift Him, to wander far and wide proclaiming the name of Jesus. Those are good things, please don't get me wrong. My desire needs to be loving Him. Loving Him will lead to praising, uplifting, declaring Him.

I need to love God. I need to remember that He loved me first. I want to be in awe of that. I am His masterpiece - me! Can you believe it? (With a major paper due in about two hours that I haven't started, trust me when I say that I can't believe it either.) It is the same with you, my dear reader. He loves us. He loves us more than we can ever love Him.

I do want to go to France. Abroad is where I feel that incredibly deep sensation of what Heaven must surely be like. I feel it so intensely abroad because there is nothing familiar to dull those sensations. I long to feel that way again and to remember that God is far greater that my unfinished paper, my uncertainty in the future, and more.

Love, love, love, love. There is nothing more important.