The I Am

The following is a small excerpt from the book I have told many of you about that I am working on. I haven't gotten to work on it much this semester, but it is one of my goals over the next few weeks... The title of the book is Dateless on a Friday Night and my heart is that it will be a different perspective on Christian relationships- well, maybe not so much of the relationships aspect, but kind of what I have learned through being single and how God has blessed me for waiting for His timing in this area of my life.

Have you ever heard that one of the names of God is the “I Am”? I learned this in elementary school, and always thought it was kind of weird because it didn’t seem like a complete thought. God is… what? At one point in my life I heard someone say that it meant God was whatever we needed Him to be: our Protector, our Provider, and so on.

One night during my sophomore year of college, I was lying in bed trying to go to sleep. It wasn’t working, so I started reciting the passage of the Bible I was trying to memorize at the time – Psalm 139. The words began to hit home with me, and I realized how well God knows me. The first four verses especially stuck out:

“Oh Lord, you have searched me and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O Lord.”

One of my personal desires has always been to be intimately known. I want someone to ask me about my childhood years and for stories from high school. I want someone to discover the things that make me tick and the things that make me smile… maybe even if I have different smiles for different things!

If you have seen the movie Win a Date with Tad Hamilton, you will know what I am talking about. When Pete is describing Rosie (his best friend he is in love with) to Tad (the man Rosie is dating), he tells him, “Like do you know she has six smiles? One when something really makes her laugh. One when she's making plans. One when she is laughing out of politeness. One when she is uncomfortable. One when she is making fun of herself. And one when... she's talking about her friends.” Talk about knowing someone completely! I want someone that knows me so deeply that he knows things about me that I don’t even realize about myself.

I have always waited and hoped that this desire would be met by a boy one day. What I didn’t realize is that God knows me like that. He knows every detail of my life. I don’t even have to say something before He knows what I will ask. He wants to be the one to fulfill that desire in me.

This sparked an idea: what if I made up a list of the traits that I was wanting to find in a man, then truly make that my “Perfect Man” list by finding Scripture that backed up these desires. Here is part of that list:

· A desire to know someone intimately: Psalm 139, John 10:14, Matthew 6:8, 32

· A desire to be called beautiful and special: Psalm 45:11, Isaiah 61:3

· A desire for someone to always be there: Isaiah 49:15, Joshua 1:5, Hebrews 13:5, Matthew 28:20

· A desire for someone to listen when I need to talk: Psalm 94:9, Isaiah 65:24

· A desire for someone to protect me, take care of me: Zephaniah 3:17, Psalm 91:14, Psalm 32:7, Nahum 1:7

· A desire to be loved – eternally, fully, unconditionally: Jeremiah 31:3, Psalm 32:10, Isaiah 54:10, Psalm 136:1, Psalm 147:11, Lamentations 3:22, Hosea 2:14, John 15:13

Someday, maybe I will have a man that fulfills these to some extent (I am not expecting someone to be perfect and completely fulfill every detail), but I always will have Christ. He wants to fill that role in my life. And that’s where I want Him to be. Psalm 37:4 says, “Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart.” He has already given me the desires of my heart because He is the desire of my heart.