What I Thought I Wanted...

The title to this blog post is the title to a Sara Groves song that I heard the other day. I was driving with my friend on Friday and told her to put a new CD in, since I was getting tired of the one I had in there for the past week, and she put in one of my Sara Groves CDs. When I was driving on my way to work later that day, this song happened to be playing. Here is the YouTube video of the song:

The lyrics to this song really spoke to me about singlehood. I have all these things that I want, and sometimes when I think I'm getting those things, I find out that God has another idea in mind. Have you ever been in a situation where you have something in mind but then something different happens? Sometimes that difference doesn't have to be too large, it can be small but still make all the difference. 

I see this fitting in with the topic of singlehood because there are all kinds of things that we, singles, may desire and feel is a need for our lives. However, the true fulfillment of our desires and needs comes from God and God alone. If we are not focused on Him and allowing Him to intervene in our lives, we are not going to live fulfilled lives that are worthy of Him or that bring glory to Him. This goes into living out our lives for the will of God, which is bringing Him glory in everything that we do. 

To speak more on the song itself, I found it very encouraging to me the way Sara Groves was saying she wanted to be broken; broken, grateful, thankful, and peaceful. I want this to become my prayer. Some may ask, why in the world would you ever want to be broken? Let me tell you what I think about that. I find that we may not actually want the brokenness itself, but rather the result of what comes from brokenness, such as this: God can use us in ways that we couldn't otherwise be used and we wouldn't learn things that we would learn had we not become broken. I have an example from my own life.

This past summer I remember continually asking God to bring me to a breaking point, because  I knew that I couldn't go on like I was without reaching a point where I was broken and had nowhere else to go. He slowly brought me there and, while it wasn't actually complete brokenness, I did find myself at a place where I knew things were all a big mess in my life and I couldn't handle it on my own. I had to turn to God to help take on my burdens and really deepen my prayer life. One thing that God has spoken to me on this topic is the prayer of thankfulness and gratefulness. I have found myself taking so many things for granted and not thanking Him when it comes to the little things in life.

Friends, allow God to break you so you can come to a place of full surrender and experience deep growth in your relationship with him that you would not otherwise be able to experience. This may be a hard road to take, seeing as how so many people have relationships and that is what your desire may be at this time. Don't lose hope and think that God will never fulfill that desire. We can take this time we are in right now to pursue a deep and intimate relationship with Him, because right now we can fully focus on that relationship. Think about it, you won't have this opportunity in the same way once you're in an intimate relationship with another person. Use the time you have available now to deepen your relationship with Christ. This is only a glimpse of what I think on this, there will be more to come! I would like to leave you with this verse:

"But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble." James 4:6 (ESV)