Christianne's Spiritual Journal

For once, I’m going to try to write without any Scripture or without trying to find reference to anything; biblical background or theology. I always feel that I need to back myself up; that the things I feel or say aren’t solid without validation from some sort of legitimate resource. I get anxious when I write about spiritual things without anything to support it. I feel naked, like my thoughts can be discarded as trash or searched through for holes. 

My soul is extremely exhausted by the demands of my mind.

Can my heart and my feelings be enough to validate what I say for once? Why am I so afraid to feel in my walk with the Lord? Can I just write my heart out?

I just want to confess that I am so unfaithful in my relationship with Jesus Christ.

My heart breaks over how unfaithful I am; how much of an adulterer I am. I am vehement toward the cheaters and the players I have met in my life. I’ve grown up around men in my family who have engaged in repeated adulterous affairs, and I just want to puke at the thought of how someone can deceive their life spouse to chase after another man or a woman for the shallowest of reasons. 

If I were to be unfaithful to a boyfriend or a husband, I would personally insult myself and all of the members in my family who have been hurt because of an adulterous affair. So naturally, I’ve always tried to be the best girlfriend that I can be—loving, spiritual, caring, affectionate, faithful. I go into a relationship thinking that if this relationship doesn’t work out, this man will not say that I treated him as worthless.

Why do I give all of this love to the human male, yet when it comes to the Saviour King who died for me to rescue me from myself, I become the very adulterer that I despise?

I realize that God has been teaching, guiding, scolding and revealing new things to me by demonstrating them from a romantic-relationship perspective. He is stooping down to my level of understanding so that I can know Him better. It is easier for me, as a girl who struggles with putting my trust into relationships with men, to transition into a better understanding of Christ by seeing Him as a “boyfriend”. I can now understand Jesus as my Lover; I am His and He is mine. My process from moving from a biblical knowledge of Him into a relationship with Him is understood better to me when I see Him in this way; as my Lover. Not in a sexual sense, but in the way that He is intimate with me as emotionally as I get with men in my relationships with them.

Emotionally? With Jesus? 

And I finally understand what it is that has road-blocked me in my Walk with the Lord.

I’m a female and I find it unbelievably ridiculous how uncomfortable I am with the word emotion. Why! What sick and twisted event in my childhood turned me into this anti-emotional machine! I wretch at the thought of sharing my heart with family and friends for fear that my strong-girl reputation will be revoked, yet when it comes to a significant other, my heart is split open and bare, bleeding and ready to be examined. And where I have left my heart open to men, I have shut it away from the Lord. I’ve come to this belief that I can’t be weak with Jesus; that Jesus is manly and doesn’t like dealing with emotions and therefore doesn’t want to hear my own. Where did this come from?

And if Christ is my Lover, and I am spilling my heart out to someone other than Him, who would blame Him for becoming angry or jealous? I would be jealous and more if the man I was in a relationship with was spilling his heartaches to a woman other than myself. One thing I’ve realized about the Lord during this week is that it’s not just me wanting to know Him; He wants to know me. He wants to be in a relationship with me. He wants me to come to Him when I’m heartbroken and breaking. And that just blows my mind away completely.. because it’s not just a one-sided deal. God is jealous when I go to other things or other men besides Him for comfort and joy. He must feel like I commit adultery whenever I go to someone else or turn to others to satisfy the needs of my heart. How painful. And yet, He still continues to pursue me like a man after a woman playing hard-to-get.

And I’m a woman who knows how to play hard-to-get, if there ever was one. God has been on the run for me since I was a child. How arrogant I must be. I’ve always prided myself on being a great girlfriend, but I’m the worst girlfriend I’ve ever been in my life in my relationship with Him. With men, I take care of them and love them and appreciate them; with Christ, I cheat on Him, have a wandering eye and ignore Him.

It’s amazing how much God has been turning my perspectives upside-down and how everything is just a paradox. It hurts me, but I revel in it at the same time. I love this process of growth that I am experiencing. It brings me so much joy to have Him work in me, even though it hurts.

But I hate that I’ve been this unfaithful in my relationship with Christ. I hate it. It is only today that I realized how unfaithful I was. I hate that I afflict Him in the same way my family was afflicted with adulterous affairs. I’m so ignorant of my actions sometimes.

I’m just having the hardest time ever trying to pour my heart out to Jesus and to be a girl with Him. People laugh at me about the way I am, but I feel like I just can’t do it sometimes.. I find myself so stubborn, unwilling to pray and resistant to crying and admitting weakness, even though I know without a doubt that I am. I’m so uncomfortable with being a woman, being soft and gentle, that I struggle with playing this part in my woman/man love relationship with Christ. I just want to be tough and strong and in-control as usual, but as a woman, I admit that I need that emotional exchange; I just don’t know how to finally exchange that with Christ. With men, it’s so much easier, but with this Saviour-turned-Lover, I can’t do it. It’s so hard.. and it breaks me in half, because instead of going to my Lover to comfort my heart, I go to other things to vent my emotions onto; other men, other distractions, other people, other types of leisure. I just feel like Jesus is still the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, so I can’t go to Him with these weak, girly emotions. It hurts me that I can go to a significant other with my hurts much more easily than I can to the One who knitted me in my mother’s womb even before the world began. I don’t understand myself at all.

The fact that I’m seeing Him as my Lover really helps a lot though, because when I devote myself to a relationship, I pour my heart and soul into it, much to my own destruction, as is evident in my past endeavors. Even so, I give my all, because I believe all relationships deserve that kind of dedication. So where men used to have a stake on me, Christ has finally and rightfully declared His authority over me, saying, “You are Mine.” He has that claim over me as a husband has over his wife. He has the right to tell other men that they have no right to me, because I belong to Him. And as such, being in this new relationship, my heart and my soul is being poured into the Creator of the Universe this time around; my Lover and my Maker. I’m giving, or at least attempting to give, my all to Him, and to no other man. I love the sound of that.

And I do love Him. I love that I am finally in a relationship that I don’t feel guilty about; one that I don’t have second-guesses about. This is a very righteous relationship to have, one with my Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. 

I want to grow so much in Him. I can’t imagine my life apart from Him, or putting anyone or anything else before Him. I have to do this. I have to persevere. I’ve focused on other relationships for my entire life, and I hope that for once, just for once in my life, I can start the right way and pursue a relationship with the Perfect Man that ever lived. 

I want to be a faithful woman to the Lover of my soul, without being distracted by men or the things of this world. I have been unfaithful so many times in my relationship with Christ, but it amazes me still how He continues to pursue me and chase after me like I’m someone really worth keeping. Christ makes me feel like nothing a man has ever made me feel; he shows me that I am truly loved.

And I just want to know this love so much more.

I know I’m so weak right now, but I also know that in my weakness, Christ’s power is perfected. I pray that in my weakness, He continues to speak to me about anything else that I need to fix in my life.

I don’t want to be a cheater. I don’t want to be an adulterer. I just want to be faithful to Christ in everything. This is the real definition of a faithful woman: one who puts her relationship with Christ first, and refuses to have anything distract her away from Him. I’m going to be that one day, God. I only want to have eyes for You.

Dear God, help me to be yours and only yours alone. The things of this world distract me and take me away from you. Forgive me. I’m sorry for being unfaithful to you, but thank you for being faithful even when I am not. It is because of your love for me that we are still together, and I thank you for constantly chasing after me these last 21 years. Thank you for pursuing me even though I chose others instead of you; you just stood at the back, waiting for your turn. And I swear, you have your turn, Lord. I’m yours. I want to be yours completely. I want to be used for your glory somehow, but please work out these kinks in me first. Break me, destroy me, and get rid of this old me. Continue to teach me and show me the way. Show me how to cry to you, how to run to you in my pain and sorrows, how to discuss my fears and anger to you. I am aloof to this, but I know over time our relationship with blossom into something beautiful! Help me to understand you better and better each and every day.

Thank you for being my Lover; for dying for me.

Take these adulterous thoughts out of my mind, and fill them with you. My mind disgusts and pollutes my soul; I pray that you cleanse it and fill it all with you.

Mahal na mahal kita, Panginoon. Salamat para sa lahat. 

All of the praise and glory and honor goes to my Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, who I love with all of my heart and mind.