Cravings

One of my new friends gave me a book to borrow. It's called Soul Cravings by Erwin Raphael McManus. He gave me no specific reason, except that it had really helped him, and that it was Awesome.

It is split into three sections. The first, he talks about how our soul craves love. I only had to read the intro and the first entry to realize that this book wasn't like anything I'd read. It sounds pretty basic, ofcourse our soul craves love. But this book started peeling my sleepy eyes open, and I had not even been aware that they were closed.

I have always made sure that I needed no one. I watched friends growing up needing each other in codependent ways, and I wanted no part. I was convinced that all I needed was Jesus. We could hang out, I'd tell Him my problems, and no one else was getting inside of my head. His love was all I needed.

God really used this for the past few years, we were really close, and it was true for a long time. The fact that all I needed was Him. It still is true, but deep down, I was craving true blue friends, and finally started crying out to God for them.

And now I have AMAZING friends! But I still did not know how to receive love from them fully, and therefore could not love them fully either.

But after reading some of the entries in this book, I started to realize that it was OKAY for me to open up to my friends. I had been thinking that if I spent too much time with them, they would see me make an awful mistake, be in a bad mood, something like that, and they wouldn't love me any more.

I realized this, but didn't know what to do with it. Then, a couple weeks ago, this lady came up to me during a church service and started reading my mail. She said, "You've been thinking that your friends can't and won't satisfy you. But this is not true! This is the enemy deceiving you so you won't receive their love! They will satisfy you! They can satisfy you!"

Then ofcourse the waterworks started.

But ever since that lady came up to me, God has also been assuring me to trust the friends He has brought into my life. He said that He doesn't always just want to speak straight to me when He has something to say, but He wants to speak through my friends and other people in my life, and use them too!

So I've been letting go of my fears, and was honest with my friends about what has been going on, and it has been AWESOME! I've been accepting their invitations to hang out more, and they validate me all the time. We get to minister to each other just through simple fellowship and good eating, and I have never felt so loved! God is loving me through others, and it is extremely healing.


this song has been haunting me for the past couple days. I LOVE it!