Our Chemistry with God is Off the Charts!
Ever since getting home from China this spring, I’ve been going to what seems like billions of weddings and bridal showers. (That might be a slight exaggeration.)
I’m always happy for friends and family finding love, of course – not to mention how excited I am when the dance floor is finally opened! – but these events often bring somewhat disheartening reminders and questions, too.
“Always the bridesmaid, never the bride” goes the saying. I provide generic responses when a relative asks how I’m still single for the umpteenth time, and I muster up my most Oscar-worthy, convincingly polite chuckle every time an uncle asks “when’s YOUR wedding?” Trust me, I’d love to have an updated answer to these questions. Instead, all I can do is wait and pray and continue to keep an open heart while investing in myself and my future.
Yes, it often feels like I’ve done a lot of waiting in my life – especially when it comes to dating. At some points I’ve been in “dating waiting” and didn’t even know it! It’s happened a few times, actually, that I have found out after the fact that a gentleman suitor had been interested in me but never said anything. Each time I am nonchalantly informed of this by a mutual friend, and each time I am left baffled and wondering: “Well, why didn’t he say anything? He felt the spark, and yet he walked away. Why? Won’t anyone take a chance on me?”
Those are pretty crummy questions to have to ask yourself again and again. Truthfully, I get so swept up in them sometimes that I will find myself frustrated and thinking, “boy, it sure would be nice to find someone with whom I have ANY chemistry, let alone great chemistry.”
Reflecting on this recently, though, I made an important realization – one that doesn’t obligate me to force a smile or feign a chuckle.
Throughout my entire adult life, I’ve often been waiting around for guys who have reason to act on their feelings, but don’t. Meanwhile, God has no reason to love us, but he does – and he’s never waited to act on his feelings.
“For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. ”
We have been Christ’s since before we were even born. From the beginning of time he has known and loved us, so much so that he planned future generations (that means you and me!) through Abraham, his faithful Son.
“The angel of the Lord called to Abraham from heaven a second time and said, “…I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore””
And God ain’t no slacker. He doesn’t “LIKE YOU, like you” and then drag his feet. He has always been quick to act on his unconditional love, engraving us on the palms of his hands (Isaiah 49:16) and planning for our salvation through the sacrifice of his Son – all before Jesus was even born.
Who has believed our message
and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
He grew up before him like a tender shoot,
and like a root out of dry ground.
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
He was despised and rejected by mankind,
a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.
Like one from whom people hide their faces
he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.
Surely he took up our pain
and bore our suffering,
yet we considered him punished by God,
stricken by him, and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
and by his wounds we are healed. Isaiah 53:1-5
Society tells us we should search for a soulmate who loves you so much he would die for you. The Bible teaches us that we all already have that love in Jesus Christ, who died and lived for us. Talk about #RelationshipGoals, right?
Bear with me here. I’m not saying that I’m dating Jesus in the same way that I’m looking for someone with whom to eventually tear up our own wedding dance floor.
Our Lord isn’t the same as an earthly husband (thankfully, he’s much better than that!). But my relationship with Him is, in a sense, a reflection of the whole point of marriage. Earthly, Christian marriage should reflect the relationship between Christ and the church.
“Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church—for we are members of his body. “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church.”
As a single person, love and marriage themselves remain a profound mystery to me. As such, I won’t be so forward as to give advice on those topics. I bring them up only to illustrate the legitimate #RelationshipGoals that are set by Christ’s marriage to the church – that is, his undying love for and devotion to us, his body of believers.
“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”
Jesus has such a love for us as his church – his bride. He doesn’t weigh the few pros and many sinful cons of our dating profiles before acting on his emotions. He doesn’t stay silent when faced with his feelings for us. He shows compassion and care for his entire wandering flock as well as the individual sheep. He listens as we pray to him, and he establishes our steps as we walk on the path of faith. His is a perfect love – the love that led him to help his fellow man while living and breathing on this earth, and the love that led him to the cross for our undeserved salvation.
“You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. ”
Earlier I mentioned all the waiting I feel like I have been doing lately. Waiting to see what group of guys the latest dating app will think are perfect for me. Waiting to find out about the next “nice young man” with whom a friend from church wants to set me up. Waiting to feel that spark that so many people gush about, yet remains an elusive mystery to me.
No matter how much I wait or how many times I check my dating app, however, I am “powerless” when it comes to God’s timing. Romans 5:6 tells us that Christ make the ultimate sacrifice “at just the right time.” The ultimate acts of love, Christ’s birth and his death, happened according to God’s timetable, not in response to any human planning. Even if we had truly wanted him to come, we couldn’t have done anything good to bring it about. It is the sad truth that, by nature, we don’t want anything to do with God and his promised Savior. Born into sin, we are “ungodly.” And yet the Father sent his Son to die for us. What a guy.
Fellow single ladies: we don’t know the Father’s timing, and we don’t know his plans for our love life. That spark may strike tomorrow, next year, ten years from now…or never. God only knows. But we must trust in His timing, for it is the same timing that delivered us from sin and eternal damnation so many years ago on the cross.
We must also use this time of waiting to delight in the duties of our heavenly marriage. That’s right, girls – we may not have husbands at the moment, but that doesn’t excuse us from representing Christ’s bride as his Church.
“Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.
In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:
Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something
to be used to his own advantage;
rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross! ”
“Always the bridesmaid, never the bride” – maybe. But as part of a church united with Him, I am Christ’s bride.
His unconditional love provides wisdom, inspiration, humility, hope, and joy in a way no man ever could. I’ll keep my eyes open for the guy who agrees with that truth and aspires toward it. Until then, I’ll continue dancing, smiling, and trusting in Jesus, knowing he’ll never, ever walk away from our undeniable chemistry.
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“For your Maker is your husband, the Lord of hosts is his name; and the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer, the God of the whole earth he is called. ”
“For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.”
