Unrequited Love –The Living Sacrifice: My Story/God’s Story Part 2

When you love someone with the Lord's love, it requires sacrifice! Being a living sacrifice, means a day in and day out laying down of your wants and rights. To die once to self would be easy! To die daily is another matter entirely! There are 5 basic things to sacrifice, and I got to practice a lot!

(1). You have to give up.
This means giving God complete control of your life, your dreams, and your desires. You no longer care what’s to benefit you- you care about what’s best for others and the common good.
(2). To let it go.
You quit hanging onto something that is very dear to you! – what should scare you the most is holding so tightly onto something that you miss God’s best.
(3). Forfeit
Relinquish your rights to power, position, and personal gain. Ask yourself what is God’s call on my life? What is HE telling me to do. The biggest sacrifices are the ones no one knows about or the ones no one understands.
(4).Offer up.
Give away something only you can until it hurts! – No pain, no gain, if it doesn’t hurt it’s not sacrifice.
(5).Surrender
-is the act of giving control to someone else.

I had to give Jesus compete and total control of every area of my heart and life, Oh I had done it many times before, but this was on a much deeper level and then I had to WALK in it! You can say you forgive someone and you’re over it and all cool with it until you have to actually act on it! :D

Somewhere along the way, the pain in my heart morphed and it was no longer about my ex. Very hard to explain, but it was almost like the Lord saying, see it’s not about him anymore, it’s about ME. This is the way I feel about you and everyone else. I love you so much it hurts! You reject my love time and again, yet I never leave you and am always there for you. The Lord showed me a glimpse of how He feels about us and it literally blew my mind and it has radically changed my life. On a very small scale I know understand the book of Hosea a lot better! I am also amazed at the understanding it has given me for some of the other things ppl go through.

Again Oswald Chambers puts it best :

“If you are going to be used by God, He will take you through a number of experiences that are not meant for you personally at all. They are designed to make you useful in His hands, and to enable you to understand what takes place in the lives of others. Because of this process, you will never be surprised by what comes your way. You say, "Oh, I can’t deal with that person." Why can’t you? God gave you sufficient opportunities to learn from Him about that problem; but you turned away, not heeding the lesson, because it seemed foolish to spend your time that way….Are we partakers of Christ’s sufferings? Are we prepared for God to stamp out our personal ambitions? Are we prepared for God to destroy our individual decisions by supernaturally transforming them? It will mean not knowing why God is taking us that way, because knowing would make us spiritually proud. We never realize at the time what God is putting us through— we go through it more or less without understanding. Then suddenly we come to a place of enlightenment, and realize— "God has strengthened me and I didn’t even know it!"

He did strengthen me every step of the way. I would beg Him to take the pain away, but I knew it was also something He wanted me to go through and I didn’t want to miss that lesson! This became my theme song:

“I admit there is a yearning, for this hurting to subside, but not at risk of missing, what your doing in my life, all I know, I know to do is lift my hands to you, take all of my life, all of my life, and make something beautiful, I’m lifting my hands trusting your plans to make something beautiful, so all will see your work in me, as you make something beautiful. Make something Beautiful, cause all I know to do, is lift my hands to you!”

– Laura Story


I’m an only beginning to see the very edge of how God is going to use all these experiences for His glory, but I know He will. This is only one chapter in the long story He is writing! He is a God of redemption! Selah put’s it this way:

“ Life breaks and falls apart, But we know these are places where grace is soon to be so amazing It may be unfulfilled It may be unrestored But when anything that's shattered is laid before the Lord Just watch and see It will not be unredeemed”

I’m just starting to see that redemption and He has filled me with hope – not hope in circumstances, but true hope in the very character of who HE is (that story’s a whole other blog – titled Even Now)

Eventually the Lord did heal my heart and lift the burden to pray I had for my ex. It happened suddenly and unexpectedly – poof! I’m very thankful that season of my life is over, but I treasure all God’s done in me and shown me.

Currently my ex is very happily and seriously dating a godly woman, which I pray makes him happy and draws him closer to the Lord! As for me, well I’m me!! I am more in love with my Lord than I have ever been and I have come to the place where I am not only thankful for the Lord allowing my heart to be broken, but I also wouldn’t go back and change anything either. It was a long winter of the soul, but spring has brought healing and new life and release! There is spring in my heart and I feel full of new life that is just waiting to bloom. I can’t wait to see what God has next- bring it on baby!!! – That was probably stupid prayer #4! Oh well! LOL.

So if you ever want to see God work in crazy ways, I dare you to pray stupid prayers and then fasten your seatbelt; cause God will take you in directions and on journeys you never imagined!- But it will be GOOD!