Tainted Love // Hosea Week 4

“We’ve made elevator music of Jesus Christ. We’ve made Him the most boring, bland, blah person, and He was the most revolutionary man.” –John Eldredge

“Wouldn’t it be funny if the doors didn’t open?”

My mom and I were the only people left in her fancy business building. We were riding the elevator down 15 floors. My ten-year-old mind wandered through the worst case scenario.

“What do you mean?”

“Like, once we reach the bottom, what if the doors didn’t open? What if we were just stuck here? Wouldn’t that be funny?”

My mom chuckled and gave me a weird look. The elevator reached the ground level.

And the doors didn’t open.

We stared at the doors. After thirty seconds, we laughed a little bit. After another thirty seconds, panic began to sink in.

“Okay, this isn’t funny.”

As soon as I said that, the doors opened. My mom let out a reassuring laugh. I felt a playful nudge on my heart and a faint “I got you.” I smiled and looked up.

“Wow, God has a pretty twisted sense of humor.”

“I used to be a dreamer.”

That’s how I ended my prayer a few months ago. I didn’t end it with restoration. I just ended it with an “I had hoped.” If you know me well, you know that my relationship with God these past few years has been a bit distant.

When I was a child, God would laugh with me. I never doubted for a minute that God loved me because  His playfulness helped me feel wanted and pursued and safe. His pranks and jokes would be so individualized to me that I felt understood by the one true living God.

But for the first time in my life, I feel mocked by God.

It’s a lie, I know. But emotions are mean, and they sometimes win the battle of my heart.

Two months ago, I decided to do something about the distant feeling I was having with God. I told myself that I would sit in my “prayer chair” and actually learn about the Jesus I put my trust in, the man I used to know. I wanted to fall in love with Him again.

On my way to the chair, I tripped and fell head first into a brass cross that  was sitting on my nightstand. I was bleeding, but I didn’t care about the pain from my head, because in that moment, my heart broke.

I curled up in a ball and I wept. That entire year had been moments of feeling like God was laughing at me, and that night  I gave into the fear that it may be true. I couldn’t shake the picture in my head. Jesus looking at me and pointing, saying “You really think this is impressive to me? You think that it’s just going to be like old times and we’ll laugh and play and be friends? Seriously, Gabi. Some people have real problems. Get over yourself.”

Though people in my community gave me words of encouragement, truth and logic, I find myself writing this today, thinking about last night when I cried before I prayed because I already felt foolish for trying to talk to God.

Christ was fully God and fully man. Most people get nervous about Jesus being fully God. I get nervous about Jesus being fully man.

Somewhere in the midst of being violated, ridiculed, and rejected by men, I made a mistake. The first part of that mistake was believing that all men were unsafe. The second part of that mistake was viewing Jesus as someone who would violate, ridicule and reject me.

Until I fix my warped image of Jesus, I will not feel comfortable with Him pursuing me. And because I’ve lost Jesus, I’ve lost heart.

As Eldredge said, “when you lose heart, you can’t love. When you lose heart, you can’t worship. When you lose heart, you can’t serve. You lose the wellspring of life.”

As depicted in last week’s study of Hosea, no one has come with such intentionality after my heart than Jesus. But I have tainted his heart with the evil of this world, and have only loved with obligation out of a promise I made to Him.

Jesus, however, has not tainted my heart with evil. Slowly, I can see Him bringing me back to that elevator, and when the doors won’t seem to open, whispering, “I got you.”

If your perception of Jesus has been skewed, continue to search and seek after Him. God always finds a way to bring us back to His heart. In John 21, after Jesus was crucified, He returned to see His disciples. He brought them back to a moment they would all remember.

“Early in the morning, Jesus stood on the shore, but the disciples did not realize that it was Jesus. He called out to them, “Friends, haven’t you any fish?” “No,” they answered. He said, “Throw your net on the right side of the boat and you will find some.” When they did, they were unable to haul the net in because of the large number of fish. Then the disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, “It is the Lord!” (John 21: 4-8). 

Praying that God brings you back to your elevator, whatever the place is for you when you first saw God’s heart. May it be personal and emotional and playful. But most of all, may it be pure.

Amen.