Father, why did I have to see him last night? Everything was going so well and I was content being patient and waiting. Seeing him causes me to melt and completely fall apart. Please give me strength if I see him again. I get so weak, especially in the knees. Help me to trust in you Father. May you be my only love. Father, please show me your will with the John* thing. Please, if I am not supposed to like him, tell me what to do.
Last February (2013) I wrote about liking someone who didn’t like me back, but today I am writing about loving someone who does not like me back. That prayer from a year ago is the same thing I pray today and have been praying for over a year and a half. Everything in my life has changed in the past year, except one thing, I still love a man who does not love me. I write, this time, in order to simply share my testimony. My prayer is that people might be encouraged (and that he wouldn’t read this, because that would be embarrassing.)
A year ago God was teaching me to be content with Him only and bringing me closer to Christ as a result of this romantic interest. This past year, God has been using this thorn to make me more like Christ. Despite my countless prayers to take away these feelings, to do something! God has left the feelings and caused them to increase. I fight, oh, how I fight! Each time I am reminded of 1 Cor. 13, which says that love is not self-seeking. Then I sink down low and cry out to God for help. In this way God reveals to me my selfishness. Shall I not love him and not pray for him simply because I receive nothing in return? If I truly love him, God reminds me, that I must love without seeking my own gain. I must be willing to pray for him to find a godly wife who is not me—I must be willing to pray that God might give him his heart’s desire, even if his desire is not for me. This is precisely how Christ loved us, for which one of us can give him anything? No, rather, he gave us everything—he gave us life. And yet… he was and is rejected and betrayed. So, must I be willing to be rejected.
In the lowest moments, I am reminded that I am here to glorify Christ only—to seek first his kingdom. So, what, if all this time God had me love someone so that he might use my prayers to sanctify and encourage this brother in Christ? Christ asks me, “Am I willing to bear that cross so that his kingdom might come? “ My answer, though tearful, must always be yes. Yes, may you be high and lifted up! Yes, may your kingdom come! Yes, I love you, my first love, my true love, more than any mortal on earth! Here I am; send me.
Now, before I end, I must not be understood to mean that I have been miserable all this time. God is more than gracious to give me joy and strength so that I have not been in a continual state of misery. The misery comes and goes in waves and I must be especially, mindful of the promises in the book of life in those times. I know that my Father will protect me and my heart. I know that he will one day answer my prayer, whether to be with him or for the feelings to be taken away. In the meantime, I pray that my eyes might be fixed on Christ and that I might be used by him to make disciples.
Grace and peace to you, my brothers and sisters. I pray that our heavenly Father might encourage your hearts, as he does mine, and strengthen you in your innermost being. May you, too, seek first his kingdom and his righteousness looking ahead to his glorious return and our eternal home.