The Girl And Her God: Surprised By Unexpected Answers

I’ve been exploring ideas about longing, seeking, and relationship.

As someone who hasn’t had much experience with healthy relationships, I’ve found myself asking what it really means to have a relationship with God.

When the Verse of the Day caught my attention, I knew it would become the center of my study. I had no idea it would also speak so directly to the very things I’d been wrestling with.

Colossians 3:12 says, “ Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience."

The beginning of the verse stands out to me. I want to know what chosen, holy, and dearly loved actually mean here. I haven’t really put definitions in an article yet, but I think these are important enough that I should.

Chosen — intentionally pursued and selected by God for Himself and for His purposes.

Holy — set apart as God’s own possession; belonging to Him and reserved for relationship with Him. In other words, God looks at you and says to the rest of the universe, “Hands off. This one is Mine.”

Dearly loved — the continual recipient of God’s fierce, protective, sacrificial love and affection

Belonging— to be fully known, completely safe, and with nothing left to prove; able to be yourself 

From what I read I made my own kind of declaration to internalize the truth and hopefully help me see God‘s heart a little better…

God intentionally claimed me to be in a deep personal connection with Him and just as I am right now, I belong to him, and I am the unconditional recipient of an intense flood of fierce, protective, costly affection.

Here, Paul isn’t using “holy” primarily to describe behavior. He’s reminding believers who they already are. Before he tells them how to live, he reminds them that they belong to God.

When you pause to realize that the Eternal God chose you, declared you holy, and made you His own at immense personal cost, it hits hard.

By this point identity and worth finally became something more than just a concept to me. 

I’ve heard about most of these ideas before, but suddenly it’s becoming intensely personal.

When I think about my worth through the lens of what it cost God to have me, something inside me swells until it feels like my chest could burst — and somehow  that feels okay.

It’s difficult to describe.

It’s like intense waves radiating out from somewhere deep inside me.

Yet somehow I know I am not their origin point.

Love.

Reverence.

Awe.

Gratitude.

Sadness over what He had to experience for me. I think mixed in there may also be regret for not seeing Him sooner. 

I feel valuable in that moment. 
I feel like I really truly belong somewhere. 
I feel wanted beyond measure.

I see His beauty, wisdom, affection, and worth more accurately here in this place.

And I can’t help but want my life to reflect the value He says I have.

Not because I’m trying to become worthy of His love, but because I’m trying to agree with His evaluation of my worth.

If He considered me worth rescuing at such an immense cost, who am I to keep living as though that isn’t true?

When His Words stop being ideas I agree with and become realities I begin to experience, my heart naturally responds.

This internal response doesn’t happen by accident.

It requires slowing down long enough to really look at what was given up for you.

Love doesn’t stay abstract when you begin to see the heart behind the sacrifice.

When you realize that the King of eternity chose you, set you apart, and pours out His highest affection on you right in the middle of your mess, that is the spark that creates the emotional response.

Obedience stops feeling like an empty duty and starts feeling like a joy—like pleasure.

It starts becoming the natural overflow of someone learning to love the One who first loved them.

I don’t want this moment—this place that I’m in right now—to ever go away.

And I wonder…

Does it have to?