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Posted by Elizabeth Learnard on August 14th, 2009 at 4:15pm
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February 9^th, 2009.

This was the day that I committed the next year of my life to being a God-lover, and started a new chapter of my life.

The term “God-lover” to me is so much more than being a Christian. Many people in this world claim to be Christian, and the word stands for a religion more so than a born-again believer. I wanted to define my spiritual life as something far more important than merely going to church. I claim to be a God-lover because it was Him who loved me first.

To me, being a God-lover means making a commitment to be in His Word and spending time with Him. A wise person once said, “The value of an object is determined in how hard you look for it”. A God-lover is someone who looks hard for Him even when it feels like the search is hopeless.

Have you ever had one of those moments in your life where you just feel like you prayed an honest, sincere prayer, and God answered in a big way? This was one of those times for me. I asked Him to radically change my attitude and my character. I told Him that my life was his. And He responded as though He’d been waiting to do just that all along.

Some things I have learned along the way:

Honesty is hard.

I never thought honesty was a problem for me. I don’t make it a habit to tell lies, and I tend to think of myself as a truthful person. But what I have realized over the past six months or so is that being truly genuine and honest is risky business. Opening your self to others makes you vulnerable to rejection. People do not always want to understand the real you.

So many of us take on different personas depending on the people we are with and what we are doing. The person we are at church is not the same as the person at school or the Friday night date night person. It’s not uncommon. We’re taught to do this since the time we’re toddlers. It’s a part of being human, and it started way back in the Garden of Eden.

We have to start being honest with ourselves before we can ever be genuine with others.

Instead of focusing on myself, I should be focused on others.

This seems so simple. We are taught in kindergarten to love your neighbor as yourself. But as I’ve evaluated my own life, I have realized that I just don’t do it. Pretty much every waking moment of every day I spend on me. I go to school…so I can earn money and get a good job for me. I go to church….so I get something out of the experience and become closer to God. I work…so I can earn money to spend on clothes, books, and movie tickets for myself.

“But I’m so busy!” you say. “I don’t have time to volunteer!” And I think that’s the key. Our time is not our own, but we act like it is. I want to spend my days in God-glorifying pursuits, and sometimes that means saying no, even to activities that are fun and acceptable by a Christian’s standards.

Marriage is desirable, and I should living like I am intending to marry.

I do not have to content to be single.

Since the beginning of time, when God created Eve to be a help-mate for Adam, a relationship between a man and a woman has been the standard. We see this throughout all of Scripture, both in the Old and New Testament. In the Old Testament, we see that Isaac was comforted by marrying Rebekah. When Jacob found Rachel in the fields, he wept aloud. In Matthew, Jesus answers the Pharisees challenge to marriage by saying, “Haven’t you read…that at the beginning the Creator made them ‘male and female’ and said, ‘For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh? So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore, what God has joined together, let man not separate”.

Basically, marriage is a good thing that everyone should want. It is a God-given gift and a unique relationship meant to be fulfilled by one person alone—your spouse. Desiring marriage does not mean you have to sit around and passively, does not mean you are not trusting the Lord, and does not mean that God must intend for you to be single because you are at the moment.

It also does not give me the right to sit around like a bump on a log and do nothing. I should be preparing myself practically, emotionally, and spiritually for the day when I am married, because the fact is that most of us will be at some point during our lives. Marriage on earth prepares us to be Christ’s bride in heaven.

You have to know what you know without a shadow of a doubt.

This year has challenged my personal beliefs in deep, profound ways. I’ve been forced to take it upon myself to learn what is biblical and what is not. In the world in which we live, even within the Christian faith, beliefs are questioned and statements doubted.

As believers and God-lovers, we have to be asking for wisdom and discernment at every step along the way.

Six months have passed...another six remain. All I really know is that I am hopelessly, unbelieveably blessed to have made it this far.