it's been a month!
1) our level of surrender of power/control to God will reflect the way we handle relationships with people and how we perceive things to be in control.
God's way was to love us.
and in doing so, soften our hearts to surrender all power and control.
by doing so, we run the risk of losing our lives, feeling helpless, feeling minute and manipulated.
but yet we don't.
because of His love, the strangest thing is that when we give up this control, we gain all the power in this surrender.
i learnt that in that moment i realised a true God who really loved me, there was nothing i wanted more than to give everything up for Him. i truly hated to control in situations. the only way i did so was because i saw no better alternative.
i think i could only let go of my tight fisted control of situations and things to people whom i knew i could entrust my love with. i guess the question would be then, do i have faith that God will see me through this step of faith to entrust that he turns a sure fail perspective around when i start praying? after all, i could only see situations through my worldly, human eyes.
2) God called us to not just do, but to love.
there was a period of time i let my feelings for people in friendships come in between the way we became friends. i loved with all i had and always wanted the best in their lives. all my life that had been fine because i think i was just exceptionally picky in choosing people to be close to.
but of late, i've realised how i could be really close to people vastly different from me as well. strange combinations turn out not so strange, but that just meant my heart was put on the raw. and being the me i still was, conducted these friendships in a manner that of how i had been doing so. that didn't entirely work out, and i found myself wanting to separate my heart away from all these hurt.
If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. (1 Cor 13:3)
what's was the point of relationships then if i separated my heart from all these? sure i could do so, but what runs my core is not action but love. yet as how i found it tiresome to love all the time even if i didn't receive, i just found it purposeless to do things without loving.
3) let the spirit lead the way i guard my heart.
i could put platonic love on the pedestal, get trampled and hurt, and still pick myself up after that. but romantic love is a pocket in my heart, reserved and left untouched. looking back, i don't think i've in a sense given anything from this place. not even in my previous relationship.
for the longest time, i had a foolproof way of doing so. i just refused my way into the lives of people. i guarded it so well that refusal turned into judgment, impeding even normal friendships from happening.
i guess i am finding out that this method isn't the most effective one, because there is someone i really like. the strangest thing is this - i've a conditioned defense mechanism that has activated the urge to reject an attachment, but a heart that i cannot control that has chosen to lead the other way. i have a heart that i was determined not to let the people who had my heart read, but i know there is a part of me who wants to love knowing that i may get hurt.