I Was Asking To Be Loved

It arrived all at once, in a kitchen, about three weeks ago.

You were not thinking about any of this. You were doing something ordinary, and a sentence appeared fully formed, the way the true ones do.

I have been asking these people to love me.

And you put down what you were holding and stood there for a while, because once it was out it was obviously true and there was no arguing with any of it.

And since then you have been doing something much worse than feeling bad about it.

You have been sorting. Going back over years of it and trying to work out which ones were free and which ones were requests. And you cannot tell, and you have been unable to tell for three weeks, and it has begun to poison the whole of your own history.

There is a verse about being rejoiced over, and it is aimed directly at the thing underneath the sentence in the kitchen.

He will joy over thee with singing

Here it is.

The LORD thy God in the midst of thee is mighty; he will save, he will rejoice over thee with joy; he will rest in his love, he will joy over thee with singing. (Zephaniah 3:17, King James Version)

Four things about God in one verse and every one of them is directed at a person.

He is in the midst of thee. He will save. He will rest in his love. He will joy over thee with singing.

There is nothing in it a person has to do. Not one clause is conditional on anybody's behavior.

You have been reading a verse with no conditions in it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who wrote four unconditional clauses in a row. Zephaniah 3:17 lists what He does rather than what is required first, and four in a row is not an accident.

Now the strangest one, which is the last.

He will joy over thee with singing. God singing. Over a person. With joy.

That is not a picture of somebody being tolerated or approved of or accepted. It is a picture of delight, and it is the sort of thing a person does when they cannot help it.

You are being sung over rather than assessed, and it is written that He will joy over thee with singing rather than that He will be satisfied with you. The Spirit of God is the one who put that image in, and He put it in for people who have been quietly asking to be loved by rooms full of other people.

And here is what it does to the question underneath your giving.

The question is: am I loved. And the verse does not argue with the question or tell anybody they should not be asking it. It answers it, in four clauses, at a volume that makes the asking unnecessary rather than wrong.

You have an answer that arrived before the question did, and the Holy Spirit is the one who answers that question at the source. His word responds to it with singing rather than with an instruction to stop asking, and the source is not any room you have ever walked into.

The sorting cannot be done

Now let me deal with the three weeks, because the sorting is doing more damage than the original sentence did.

You cannot tell which ones were free. Nobody can. Not about themselves and not about anybody.

Every human act has more than one thing in it. A woman can give something out of love and out of hunger in the same movement, and the two do not separate afterward, and trying to separate them is not humility. It is a way of going through a life with a pair of tweezers.

You have been attempting something that cannot be done, and it is written that He rests in his love rather than that anybody sorts their own history. The Spirit of God is the one who ends an audit like that, and He ends it by pointing out that the tool does not exist.

And here is what the sorting is actually costing.

Every good thing in eleven years is coming back down off the shelf to be examined for contamination. Eleven years of real love toward real people is being reclassified on the strength of one sentence in a kitchen.

That sentence was true. It was not the whole truth about eleven years, and it was never going to be.

You have been letting one true sentence rewrite a decade, and the Holy Spirit is the one who protects a past from a single accurate observation. Scripture speaks in the present tense about what God does rather than reviewing anything, and He is protecting yours.

And one plain thing about the hunger itself.

Wanting to be loved is not a fault to be repented of. It is the condition of every person who has ever lived, and the verse is written to people in exactly that condition, and the answer it gives is singing rather than correction.

You are being answered rather than corrected, and it is written that He will joy over thee with singing rather than that He will address your motives. The Spirit of God is the one who knows the difference between a hunger and a sin, and this has always been the first one.

Give again and let it be free

So here is what to do, and the first half is to stop the sorting.

Stop going back. Not because the sentence was wrong but because the audit cannot produce a result and it has been running for three weeks with nothing to show.

When it starts, say one thing: that is answered, and I am not going through it again. Then go and do something with your hands.

You are able to close an audit that cannot conclude, and the Holy Spirit is the one who ends a review. Zephaniah 3:17 states what God does rather than reviewing what anybody has done, and He ends it by refusing to be the auditor.

And the second half, which is the only way this actually resolves.

Give again this week. One thing, to one person, ordinary.

And do not check it first. Do not inspect your own motives on the way out of the door, because that is the sorting wearing different clothes and it will produce exactly the same result, which is nothing.

You are able to give without inspecting it, and it is written that He rests in his love rather than that a person examines their own before acting. The Spirit of God is the one who lets a mixed motive do a good thing, and every good thing anybody has ever done had a mixed motive in it somewhere.

And here is the part that actually changes the thing underneath.

The hunger does not get fixed by better giving. It gets fed somewhere else, and then the giving stops carrying a weight it was never built for.

So take the verse itself and use it. Say it out loud, once a day, for a week, about yourself. He will joy over thee with singing.

You have somewhere else to take the question, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes a said verse do something in a person. The written word puts the answering in God's mouth rather than in anybody's reaction to a gift, and it does it slowly and it does it.