Hi Friends, Jemeia here with another post for the Jesus is Bae blog series! People often tell you to “guard your heart” in romantic relationships. However, a relationship with Jesus is the only one in which you don’t have to guard your heart because His love knows no boundaries. But, why do we struggle to see Christ’s love as enough? Keep reading to find out!

One of the most popular verses on guarding your heart in the Bible is Proverbs 4:23. In the verse, Solomon instructs us to be diligent in guarding our hearts, because everything that we do flows from it. When you look at the context of that verse, “guard your heart” means to guard your entire self, including your heart, emotions, and actions. Guarding your heart in relationships with people is extremely difficult, and we all fail at doing it perfectly.

But, when Jesus is Bae, you don’t have to guard your heart because:

He Can Actually Handle Anything You Tell Him, Even Your Burdens and Sins.

In “Christian dating,” you have to be wise and led by the spirit regarding what you share with the person you are dating because there are just some things that they are not capable of carrying. Until marriage, some sin struggles are only meant to be discussed with God, accountability partners, friends, or mentors.

When Jesus is Bae, you don’t have to hide even your nastiest sins from Him. He sees it all, has already paid the price for you, and you are not burdensome to Him. He invites you to cast your burdens onto Him (1 Peter 5:7).

You Don’t Have to Fear Getting Too Intimate with Him.

When Jesus is Bae, you don’t have to control or hide your emotions. You can worship Him in spirit and in truth and communicate with Him in ways no one else has to understand. You don’t have to filter what you feel or say to Him. He invites you to be intimate with Him, in whatever way that it looks like for you.

He Will Never Break Your Heart.

Heartbreak is a major reason why people will tell you to guard your heart in relationships. You just never know how things will work out. I fully understand why people say “guard your heart” because using wisdom and setting boundaries are good, but at some point, you can do everything right, and still experience heartbreak. You can get married and lose your spouse. Divorce is at an all-time high. You can date someone for 5 years and they choose to step away.

As C.S Lewis said, “love anything on earth and you run the risk of being heartbroken.” Look at Jesus – His wild love for us resulted in death on the cross. When Jesus is Bae, you don’t have to fear that your relationship with Him won’t work out. Friend, you are sealed with the promise of the Holy Spirit and you are in this thing FOR LIFE!

You don’t have to second guess His love for you because He displayed just how deeply He loves you on the cross. Even better, you don’t have to fear heartbreak, because a relationship can only get deeper and deeper with Him. Ultimately, there is security in a relationship with Jesus.

Jemeia, I Hear You, But, What If Jesus is Not Enough for Me?

If we take time to examine our hearts, we might find that we don’t really desire God wholeheartedly or we might just not FEEL like we desire Him. The notion of Jesus as Bae is great, right? But today, you and I want other things – a spouse, a new job, kids, or to get into that grad program. We desire things that are fleeting and that ultimately won’t satisfy us, over our steadfast God.

Francis Chan in Crazy Love (if you have not read this book, you need to) says this:

The irony is that while God doesn’t need us but still wants us, we desperately need God, but don’t really want Him most of the time. He treasures us and anticipates our departure from this earth to be with Him – and we wonder, indifferently, how much we have to do for Him to get by.

I am not saying that desiring good gifts from God is bad. But, once we get what we desire from God, whatever “it” is WILL compete with God for our hearts. For example, Paul tells us that it is better for one to be single if one is to serve God with undivided devotion.

The big point I am trying to make here is that if we don’t desire to love God by obeying His commandments, we will struggle to see Him as our first love and to understand how to be intimate with Him. Moreover, we sin because we desire to gratify our flesh over honoring God.

[bctt tweet=”If we don’t desire to love God by obeying His commandments, we will struggle to see Him as our first love and to understand how to be intimate with Him.” username=”heyhanha”]

So, how do we learn to see Jesus as Bae?

The answer is that we must desire Him. How is it possible to desire Him when we don’t feel like it? Well, let’s look at the posture of David’s heart in Psalm 63 and some commentary on Isaiah 26:9. In Psalm 63, David says that he earnestly seeks God; his soul thirsts for God; his flesh faints for God as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.

He then declares that God’s steadfast love is better than life and for that, he chooses to praise and bless the Lord with his lips for as long as he lives. David continues by saying that He will remember God, meditate on Him in the watches of the night and that He will cling to God.

Did you know that from Psalm 60-64, David was actually lamenting (mourning and grieving)? He was in a time of trouble and was a refugee. He was not able to worship God in a public setting, such as a sanctuary. Yet, he had full confidence in who God was and He lived in expectation that the Lord would rescue Him. Isaiah 26:9 reads, “My soul yearns for you in the night, my spirit within me earnestly seeks you.”

Both verses imply that the writers are longing for God wholeheartedly. The funny thing is that they are in need. David specifically needed God to rescue him from his trouble. Yet, the wholehearted desire of both writers was God Himself, even in need of something other than God. Based on commentary from The Blue Letter Bible and the ESV Study Bible, there are key things that are associated with desiring God:

• Recognizing one’s need for God alone
• Waiting on God in confidence
• Earnestly seeking God through meditating on His word and remembering His faithfulness
• Commanding one’s spirit to praise God
• Declaring that God is the ultimate desire of one’s heart

Now, I don’t think that either of those things stems from feelings. I would argue that one might have an emotional response because of an encounter with God, but feelings don’t make us desire God more. They are not required to desire God. Yet, we often fail to love and obey God, because our flesh does not feel or want to honor Him. We then proceed to make excuses based on our flimsy and inconsistent feelings and emotions:

• “I don’t feel close to God right now so I have not spent time with Him in a week.”
• “I just don’t feel like He is near so I will isolate myself from Him.”
• “I don’t feel like I encountered His presence in quiet time this morning, so did I even have quiet time?”
• “I feel guilty about the sin I committed so I have been avoiding Him.”

[bctt tweet=”Feelings don’t make us desire God more. They are not required to desire God.” username=”heyhanha”]

It’s okay if you feel these things… it happens, but the whole goal of this post is to show that loving and desiring God are not based on our feelings. Instead our love and desire for God can be reflected in our actions. To love God is to act in obedience with our heart, mind, and soul.

Desiring God requires the action of recognizing our need for Him, seeking Him, waiting on Him, and even when those feelings aren’t there, desiring God is reflected in the physical act of praising Him with our lips.

Phew! This post was complex, wasn’t it? I am sure that you are wondering how everything is connected. Before I tie it all together, let’s do a recap of what we have discussed:

• We have to guard our whole self with people, but when Jesus is Bae, we don’t have to guard our whole self, which makes Him the ultimate Bae.
• We sometimes fail to see Jesus as our Ultimate Bae because we don’t desire Him and He isn’t enough for us.
• We are tempted to use our feelings as an excuse for not loving or desiring Him, but desiring Him takes action.

To tie everything together, I will leave you with this:

A desire for God brings you into deeper intimacy with Him and empowers you to guard your whole self in relationships with people. A desire for God brings you into deeper intimacy with Him, where you will find that He is your ultimate love and that His deep and wild love knows no boundaries. Therefore, take action steps, even when you don’t feel like it, to desire Him above all things.

And if you’re looking for help in spending more consistent time with Jesus and making Him your Bae, grab this free resource below!

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