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Confessions of a hopeless romantic:  I own a lot, I mean a LOT of dating books.  A girl inherits these heirlooms from friends and sisters that get married.  They were all given to me, and reading at least two of them is like a rite of passage for the singleton. 

I stand and laugh at the spines sitting pretty on the shelves.  I scoff.  I stagger and then declare, “You are no formula for happiness!”  Rather, I have learned more about pouring out my heart to God and in return hearing what He has to say.  This requires lots of hours on your face.  This means humbling yourself to the point of saying, "Father, teach me to delight in You alone  I don't want my fleshly comfort, I want Jesus."  Usually there are tears involved.  That’s where this relationship begins.  No amount of formulated books will bring comfort, but the Spirit of God Himself brings rest for my pining soul.   

“Trust in him at all times, O people; pour out your hearts to him, for God is our refuge.”—Psalm 62:8

Then, there I was in all my skeptical glory weeding through my bookshelves and I came to the notorious Lady in Waiting.  Dun-dun-DUNN!  I’ve been thinking about handing it down to further generations of girls (and no, I’m not engaged).  All skepticism fled the scene once I picked up ol’ book and read the quote written on page 250 (of the study guide edition, naturally).

“By rejoicing in Him, however, I do not mean rejoicing in ourselves, although I fear most people think this is really what is meant.  It is their feelings or their revelations or their experiences that constitute the groundwork of their joy, and if none of these are satisfactory, they see no possibility of joy at all.”
“But the lesson the Lord is trying to teach us all the time is the lesson of self-effacement.  He commands us to look away from self and all self’s experiences, to crucify self and count it dead, to cease to be interested in self, and to know nothing and be interested in nothing but God.”
“The reason for this is that God has destined us for a higher life than the self-life.  That just as He has destined the caterpillar to become the butterfly, and therefore has appointed the caterpillar life to die, in order that the butterfly life may take its place, so He has appointed our self-life to die in order that the divine life may become ours instead.  The caterpillar effaces itself in its grub form, that it may evolve or develop into its butterfly form.  It dies that it may live.  And just so must we.”—Hannah Smith, The Chrstian’s Secret of a Happy Life

I put the book back and said, “You’ve earned your keep."     

“And he said to all, ‘If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.  For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.  For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself?’”—Luke 9:23-25

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