Ah, February 14th. The beloved/dreaded Valentines Day.

First of all, I'd just like to recommend that you brush up on your VDAY history (i.e. Wikipedia it). Secondly, everything that this day entails has got me thinking: love is a good thing. But making an idol out of being in love is not. Here's what Tim Keller has to say on the subject:

Making an idol out of love may mean allowing the lover to exploit and abuse you, or it may cause terrible blindness to the pathologies in the relationship. An idolatrous attachment can lead you to break any promise, rationalize any indiscretion, or betray any other allegiance, in order to hold on to it. It may drive you to violate all good and proper boundaries. To practice idolatry is to be a slave. It has always been possible to make romantic love and marriage into a counterfeit god, but we live in a culture that makes it even easier to mistake love for God, to be swept up by it, and to rest all our hopes for happiness upon it.

I will keep it short and to the point.

Dear friends, please keep a close eye on how you view and think on romantic love. Believe me, I want to find "Mr. Right," get married, and stay married to him for my whole life just as much as the next girl. But I have too often and for too long allowed it to consume my entire world--to truly become an idol in my life--and it only ever resulted in blindness, broken boundaries, broken promises, and bitter tears and sorrow on both sides. Join me: let's not place all our hope in that guy or girl. Let's not place all our hope in idealistic romantic love. Instead, let's together allow that internal idol to be torn down and replaced by the only one who is truly worthy of our worship, love, trust, and obedience. Because Jesus Christ will never--can never-- disappoint or fail us. He loves us: thoroughly and completely. Let's live our lives loving him back.

"Someone once said that if you want to know if there are rats in your basement, you shouldn't walk down the steps slowly, making a lot of noise. Then you will look around and not see anything. If you want to know what is really down there, you have to surprise it by running and leaping down the steps quickly. Then you will see a bunch of little tails scurrying away. And so it is under stress, in real life experience, that the true nature of our hearts is revealed."

More Tim Keller. I am finding this so very, very true in my own life. What comes out of you when you're between a rock and a hard place is who you truly are. I pray the gospel works deep into our hearts so it affects everything we think, feel, and do.

Tim Keller's Counterfeit Gods is seriously blowing me away this week. In chapter four, "The Seduction of Success," he lists things out pretty plainly:

"If you want God's grace, all you need is need, all you need is nothing... Jesus's salvation is received not through strength but through the admission of weakness and need."

What a comfort to know God doesn't work like we usually do. We don't have to come before him parading our status, achievements, and talents to get him to accept us into his family--to force his hand to move in our lives. None of that impresses him anyway! No, all we have to do is approach him humbly with open hands saying: "Lord, I've got nothing. I need you."

If you want God's grace and Jesus's salvation... "all you need is need, all you need is nothing."

A great truth I have been meditating on today:

2 Timothy 1:7: "for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control."

I don't have to fear anything in life! Instead, I can confidently fan into flame the gifts God has given me because he's already given me power, love, and the ability to utilize self-control through his Holy Spirit.

I can do this.