The next three posts will be excerpts from a project that I have been working on, “Am I Going to be Single Forever?”
When I was writing Pray While You’re Prey, I was at a very peaceful place in my life. I was living within God’s will for my life, trusting Him and obeying His commands for my life and my testimony. Vulnerabilities and intimate details of my life, that would normally be sacred, became my stepping stone to reach out to others. God helped me use my idiosyncrasies and indiscretions to try to help others avoid the pitfalls that I had experienced in my life. Naturally, because I read the Bible, I felt that because I was delighting myself in the Lord, that He would give me the desires of my heart (Psalm 37:4). My desires was that I would finish the book, it would sell like hotcakes, I would become a best-selling author, internationally sought-after speaker, and that would lead to my husband being able to find me, pursue me and in the overly-quoted words of Beyonce, “put a ring on it,” and then, I would never have to write another book about being single. Apparently, God had different plans because it’s been seven and a half years since I sold my first book. I have four boxes of them sitting in my garage. I was invited to speak at one church. I put on a workshop at my church for young women that had four participants. And, I have been on one date in that time period. How could my desires and God’s plan for my life be so different? I have been “in the church” all of my life because God blessed me with parents who love Him, but it is only in the last nine years that I have truly begun to understand the importance of a deep and intimate relationship with the Holy Trinity. I was saved as a young child, but in reflection, I know that I did see God through a child’s eyes for a very long time. I saw God as a protector and provider. I kind of saw God as someone who would pop into my life to save me from trouble and bless me with whatever I wished. To me, God was like some sort of superhero-genie hybrid. I get in trouble and I call on Him. I need a blessing and I call on Him. That is not the relationship that God desires to have with us. He can be all of those things: protector, provider—and everything else we sing about…you know mother to the motherless, father to the fatherless, friend to the friendless, a doctor in the sickroom, a lawyer in the courtroom, my joy in sorrow and hope for tomorrow. He is all of those things, but why? Compared to the awesomeness of God we are dust, so why would He give us a second thought? Why does God love me? Psalm 8:4 puts it perfectly, “What is man that you are mindful of him and the son (or daughter) of man that you visit him?” What I have discovered in recent years is that God created me to love Him, to put Him first in my life, and to engage in service that will bring Him glory. He does not want me to put Him first in my life until some other person, place or thing becomes more important. He wants my full attention all of the time because when He has my full attention all of the time, He can use me in ways that I would have never imagined to bring Him glory. Ms. EV
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