It’s been nineteen years today.
Nineteen years since I was a college freshman who raised her hands and asked God to give her a new life.
Nineteen years of waking up and and knowing that this world is not enough for a heart that thirsts after righteousness.
Nineteen years of getting it wrong, or getting it right, but always getting just what I need from Him every time.
He has wooed me again and again me with love and grace for nineteen years.
“…we who love our Lord, and we whose affections are set on the things that are heaven for us today, will voluntarily and lay aside things that charm the world, so that we may be charmed and ravished by the things of heaven.” -Amy Carmichael, God’s Missionary
He has taught me to kneel, taught me to repent, taught me to stand, taught me to fight, taught me to love, taught me to forgive, and taught me to be grateful. All that teaching and all that goodness has ravished and charmed me, and I don’t want anything but Him and His lessons of grace for the rest of my life.
After spending nineteen years loving Jesus, I’m beginning to realize that it wasn’t time that was spent, it was my own heart.
All these years God pressed and squeezed, held and sifted, and He has been spending the selfishness and sin from it. Then He put His own love and His own heart in me to fill the open hole in my chest.
I’m spent, and grateful, and I really have nothing to lose. Ultimately nothing in this world is mine. Everything I have, all that I am, belongs to Him.
Nineteen years behind me and eternity ahead of me. It is true joy to spend myself, completely in love with Jesus.
Nineteen years.
