#10

Your love for God.

I wrote about God's unconditional crazy beautiful love for you, but what about the love you return to Him?

I haven't been sleeping very well lately, I have been making long lists of things i need to do while I lay in bed at night. I toss and turn sweaty and yucky removing my comforter, then my sheets, then my pajama shirt, then 10 minutes later I am cold and thirsty. This lasts throughout the night. Last night while this routine continued, I decided to put this time I waste laying in bed to some good use. So I began to pray, and you know, I really wanted to pray. Why in the world does that matter? it's been a little while in the past couple months (really? months?) of loving, loving, loving everything else like design and the gym and photography and friends. and just not feelin' it with Jesus. You know when you continue the whole reading and praying everyday with little to no emotion, just doing it to check it off my to do list and hope that He will give me some of the things I pray for, what a yucky praying heart, I know. I mean can you imagine if God did this to us? If he had that kind of love for us? Thank God, He loves us with a radical love unlike no other.

So last night at 2 am, i just lay awake praying for people, for myself, for the world, I just prayed. It was like this real deal where I wanted to talk to God and I knew that He heard me. I was praying about different things... and then it hit me like- "hillary, you're praying. Its too late to be awake, and you're praying. since when did you feel like just straight-up talking to God like this? Since when did you begin to feel this intense crazy Jesus?"

And then I was all of a sudden crying a lot, because oh my goodness this is not from me. I didn't suddenly give myself a passion for God in like one day. I just kind of asked God, with my stupid words for praying and everything and my heart is new, its like someone else's heart, definitely not like mine. That's what Jesus does when you strive to love Him! He transforms hearts, it's so cliche-sounding that I hate saying it- I can't stand when people say things about Jesus that just sound so good and so clean, like He is an accessory to their perfectly assembled life. and I want you to know that it is not that way with my life, even if I only talk about optimistic things; I'm total crap- make sure you get that. I am by no means claiming to have a passionate fire-burning love for God, but I am claiming to desire that. I also know He changes people's heart because He changed mine and I long to love God the way He loves me. It's like "jeez!" it kills me! How can I be so selfish and God still love me so. If you're still reading this, you're maybe thinking, "Why does the all powerful God of the absolute universe even bother loving us if we don't return it? That doesn't make sense Hill?" yeah i know, it is overwhelming, I don't get it... that's what I'm crying about! it's ridiculous!

It doesn't make any sense its been days and weeks and months of me loving, loving, loving other stuff, and now I am realizing how little I have loved God, hence the tears that were pouring last night.

So I was sobbing at two in the morning because He blows my mind. He is mine and yours and He is allowing me and you and you the privilege of loving Him. SO TAKE IT! I challenge you to be completely obsessively possessively passionately in love with God. Love him more than you love life itself because He's the reason you have it. So let's all take this challenge together; strive to love God as much as He loves us.