Been awhile since I wrote anything. Thanksgiving, Christmas, birthday, New Years: a lot of stuff has happened since I last sat down and wrote here. I’ve written elsewhere, but not here. Why?

Cause I can’t put it all together neatly. I can’t put words together in a line to describe how I am feeling. There’s so much I want to sit down and tell you about, but I can’t put together the story.

• had Thanksgiving dinner by myself
• connected with a new friend dressed up as Santa (as was I)
• spent a lot of time wallowing in loneliness
• said goodbye to my counselor
• began project Letters
• started fighting my desires for a bride, pushing to desire God
• family spent Christmas watching Gettysburg
• formal birthday celebration
• very informal celebration of my 24th birthday
• after NYE party saw my sad face in mirror

So yeah, which would you have me write about? I could write about all of them I suppose: how long do you have?

There is one thing that seems to be consistent in all those things: God. Duh, right? But it’s more than just God. All the problems I face, all the struggles I wrestle with, all the fear I encounter…the answer, the solution, the victory is found in God. And it’s not that God has the answer, or the solution, or the battle plan, but that He is those things. He exists as the answer, as the solution, as the battle plan.

It seems so simple, and it is. But simplicity doesn’t mean it’s easy. Actually, I’ve found that the simpler something is, the more difficult it usually is. Weird, huh? Finding a needle in a haystack is actually a very simple and easy task, it just takes, forever. Putting God first, by definition, is a very simple thing: you just put Him there and keep Him there.

“Take every thought captive.” You’ve heard that before. What the hell does that mean? Like, my brain has a miniature jail cell that I throw every single thought into? I’m going to need a bigger jail cell. I’m going to need more than a jail cell; I’m going to need a maximum security penal colony.

The past few weeks, it’s been made clearer what that command means, and how it applies. In my life, I long for companionship: to find my bride, and to make her mine, to share life with her. And that’s great, and it’s good, and it’s God given. But, I haven’t found her yet, and so, I can’t spend all my time wondering about her, fantasizing about her, dreaming. God has things for me to do. He deserves to be number one, now. Not when I’ve got nothing else to pursue, when I’ve got my bride and my family, when I’ve got my job and a great house. Now. In a fight over my brain power, God should destroy my bride, every time. And yet so often, He loses. I force Him to lose. Not that He couldn’t win; not that He couldn’t contort my brain chemistry in a single blink. But He loses, He steps back, because He’s gracious, because He knows His worth, and wants me to want Him. He knows that He’s the best thing for me, and the only way He could be the best thing for me, is if I embrace Him and make Him number one.

When I think about my bride – about long walks through the park, cold nights snuggled up together, being present for the hard times of life – I have to stop, and remind myself: God is already available for those things. I take my thoughts about my bride captive (even though inherently they are good), and I replace them with thoughts of God. God wants to walk with me for hours, He wants to cuddle up on the couch, He wants to call me to bed, He wants to wrap His arms around me.

Just this past Sunday during prayer, God brought this to mind: “you have not, because you ask not.” Only a few nights before, a friend of mine had been expressing frustration with the way we speak to God. How we so often say “God meet us here” or “Holy Spirit come” or some similar deviation: God is already there, why do we ask Him to show up? The answer is yes God is already there. He wants to pour Himself out to us, to love on us fully, to wash us with His grace. God is anxious to do those things, but He needs us to ask. His need is not for us to give Him permission, cause He certainly doesn’t need it. His need is for us to acknowledge that we need Him, that He is what we need, and to come to Him in recognition of our helplessness, and ask for help.

Seen Pirates of the Caribbean 4? Think of the relationship between the mermaid Syrena and the cleric, Phillip. He captures her, which results in her torment, physically and emotionally. At the end, Phillip is near death, and he staggers to free her from bonds. He desires to be forgiven, to have her forgiveness. She says, “ask.” She so desperately wants to forgive him, to bring him into a deeper understanding of who she is, to welcome him into a world of no fear. But he must ask; she will not simply make it easy and do the work for him. She realizes that there is opportunity for deepening intimacy, for deep and true forgiveness, and she waits for him to ask.

“Philip, I can save you. You need only ask.”
“I seek but one thing.”
“What is that?”
“Forgiveness. If not for me, you’d have never been captured.”
“Ask.”
“Forgive me.”

Their lips embrace, her arms wrap around him, and forgiveness is given. Such a beautiful moment. That’s all God wants: for us to ask for Him.

During prayer, I was sitting silently, wondering what to pray, and then I knew what to do. I didn’t want to, cause it seemed so strange, but I gathered my voice, and asked, “God, will you sit with me tonight?” I knew He was already there, and I knew He’d be sitting with me even if I acknowledged Him or not, but it needed to be voiced, to be heard, to be asked. God sat with me that night, because I opened up, because I was vulnerable, because I knew I needed Him, and He was more than happy to sit with and love me that night, as He is every night.

Ask. Take captive every thought. Together, these two commands, can heal even the most broken of hearts, can rewire even the most frazzled of minds; can restore lives. Embrace them! Practice them! God is faithful. He proved it to me just this past night. If you want Him to, He will come through for you. In God there is victory. In God there is healing. In God, there is freedom.

To freedom.