True Love

Hey people! My name is Andrea, and I am going public! (Woooooooooooooh!!!!!*clap* —I know you are doing that secretly!) And I am here to tell you all about the love of my life! But let me start from the beginning. One random Sunday my friend was at church. I had not seen him in a while and so I wanted to spend time with him, so after worship I stayed in the Hanger (oops?!) but now that I look at it, God put me there for a reason.  It was the day that Haley Graham talked about living your life to the fullest. She said that she only personally knew around five people that really lived their life like they weren’t going to wake up tomorrow. I thought about it for just a moment and I thought that she doesn’t know me that well, so she obviously doesn’t know how I live. I put this thought in the back of my mind and didn’t even think about it until Wild Weekend ’07.  

Shane Heuman talked about whether we would go to heaven or hell, and do we know about God, or do we actually know him. And he told us to really think about it. And I did. I thought about a lot of other things as well. Would I be standing at the gates of heaven on judgment day and God saying “Sorry, maybe if you would have just let me be your friend.” Would that be me?  Do I really know God, or is he like the dude that I see at church every once and awhile. I had accepted God as my Lord and Savior, Creator and Father, but as my best friend? I just didn’t know.  

Then peace rushed over me like a flooded river and I knew in that very moment, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I, Andrea Leigh Horton, was going to, one day, be lying on the ground at the feet of my best friend and sing “HOLY, HOLY, HOLY IS THE LORD GOD ALMIGHTY-THE ONE WHO ALWAYS WAS, WHO IS, AND WHO IS STILL TO COME.”(Rev. 4:8)I knew in that moment that I was going to heaven. But I also knew that the next step in my faith, to grow with God, was to live life like there is no tomorrow. That is when the thought from Haley’s sermon resurfaced. 

I came back to school on Monday morning with that thought in mind. So I thought; as going along with the thought, that there is no guarantee of living on to the next morning so it would be best if I went ahead and told the “boy of my dreams” that I liked him. Pretty sappy and gross, right? Well at the time he meant a lot to me, so this was a really big deal.  

He was told and nothing changed. Until I listened to the “Pursuit of Pleasure” sermon series by Matt Chandler. His words have totally changed what I thought of the world and my happiness. There was one particular sermon out of the four that was called “The Pleasure in Dating” so obviously I listened to it. And it was all about how Christ is your true love and the only way you can come to love a human being, is if they are living the life, and literally “oozing” with your true love. This changed my perspective a bit and I started to think if the guy I liked was a Godly man, and if I was a Godly woman. The more I spent time with this boy, and the more I listened to myself talk, I really thought that we were both devoted children of God, and we still are. But as time wore on I began to think more about the guy, not the Jesus in the guy. And I began to be so distracted during worship because I wanted to look good while I worshiped, for the boy, not for God.  

My mind was overwhelmed with thoughts of him and there was no time for God, or anyone else in my life. It got to the point that I was literally asking God to make me stop thinking about him. Then I asked my bible study group to pray for me, and that is when God answered my prayers. For the next two days this boy wouldn’t even give me a passing glance, which was odd. It became frustrating and it ruined wonderful days. I then decided that it wasn’t worth it anymore. He wasn’t talking to me, but yet I was so caught up in him that I couldn’t worship and mean it. It just didn’t make sense. So that was that. Bye bye boy!  

I went to church a day later, and I could feel God. When I was singing, the only people at Crowded House that morning were me and Jesus. The only person that mattered was Jesus. It was just me, standing at the feet of my Creator, Father, Savior, Best Friend and True Love, and I was singing praises with a song that I had never heard before that morning. It was fan-freakin-tastically amazing! And it was all because I just didn’t care what that boy thought. He wasn’t there to occupy my mind and I LOVED it. I truly worshiped that Sunday morning.  

Now I have found my true love. I even wrote a song in the middle of this and didn’t realize the entirety of what had come from my mouth. But it wasn’t me! It was God using me to help myself and other people. God is good. And he loves me. He loves me on the outside and inside. That is one thing about God that no one can relate to. He loves every extra pound that I weigh; He loves every zit on my face. He loves all of my imperfections so much that he DIED for them. That is how much God loves me, and you, and everyone. I just wish I could return that much love back, but we try, and life goes on!  

Andrea