How beautiful must a woman be before she no longer needs love? How many times does the average man need to see Cindy Crawford, Claudia Schiffer, and Elle Macpherson nude to block the pain of rejection?
No matter how we try to suppress it, our need for love is inescapable. Behavioral scientists have discovered that even people who focus almost exclusively on impersonal sex � porn, phone sex, fetishism, solitary sex, exhibitionism, bestiality etc � are usually driven to their obsession by a need for love. (How cruelly misunderstood many of these people are.)
Being in love, however, is a risky, potentially agonizing experience. We might kiss with our eyes closed, but relationships are frighteningly fragile. Beauty sags. People change. Death or disagreement can so easily rob us of the one we love. The deeper our love the deeper our insecurity.
But if reality is cold, dreams are too hot to hold.Our passions seem so insatiable that we shrink from them, yet still they haunt us. Just for a moment, release the iron grip that keeps your longings suppressed in the dungeons of your mind. Let your longings waft free before your gaze, no matter how unattainable they seem. Dare to see what they reveal.
You burn for unwaning intimacy; a companion who will never fail you; a friend who can always be with you, no matter what the hour or place, the instant you want this special person.
Too often you are misunderstood. You crave a lover who can slip inside your mind; ideally, someone who has not only heard of your every trauma and triumph from birth, but experienced them with you. You need to unburden yourself with an admirer who knows your blackest secrets, yet delights in you with unswerving devotion.
When life�s blows send you reeling, you ache for someone who not only passionately longs to meet your deepest needs, but is always able to. You need a partner so capable that when crisis swallows crisis you can trust your friend to comfort, protect and power you to success. Yet you don�t want to be smothered. On the contrary, you want someone who will nerve you to reach the heights you were born for.
You pine for someone changeless, yet someone you will never tire of; someone who fits your needs so exactly it feels you were made for each other; someone you will be forever proud of; someone whose love for you is so vast that it always satisfies; someone faithful, genuine, open and warm, yet so resistant to the ravages of aging, sickness and tragedy as to seem immortal. You don�t want death to rob you of the one you love, plunging you back into icy loneliness.
There's hope!
Not a person on earth fits the bill, yet the ache remains. A few dreamers keep chasing the elusive high of starry-eyed love, forever groping for the perfect relationship. The rest of us give up. A person would have to be God to meet our criteria! And how could he help? We're flesh and blood; God, if he exists, is some nebulous, unapproachable Spirit. The notion of a friendship with God is preposterous.
Or is it? Within the realms of the unknown almost anything could dwell � even a God poised to shatter our insensibility to him. If there is an Intelligence behind creation, why were we made with cravings that could never be satisfied? Is God a sadist, or were those yearnings for the ideal companion planted within because he longs to fulfill them by being your most intimate friend? Could it be that God seems impersonal only because you�re not on close terms with him? If God were impersonal, that would make us superior to our Creator. That�s absurd. If we can speak, feel and love, our Maker can do all that and more. God is warm.
But God is a killjoy! Or is it sin that ultimately kills joy � promising so much yet delivering the hangover, the downer, the unwanted pregnancy, the disease, the cancer, the rejection, the hurt, the shame? Ask sin�s victims � the victims of theft, violence, addiction, divorce, hate, selfishness and slander � whether God�s ways kill joy or make joy.
But God is dull! Really? The God whose power and creativity defy imagination; whose wonders are inexhaustible? Wouldn�t it be a never-ending adventure to be in love with the one Person who is continually able to exceed your wildest dreams?
This exciting Person, whose never-ending companionship and limitless power are able to fill the unfillable hole within us, is the perfect partner you ache for.
But I need someone I can touch. God knows your every need.
The ultimate romance
You are passionately loved. In the eyes of the one Person who really counts, you are special. To other people you might be just one of thousands, but not to the One who made you. You mean so much to him that what God wants with you is like a perfect marriage in which you can enjoy each other forever.
Believing in the opposite sex does not make one married. Neither does believing a creed give us the right to live with God. It is not enough to walk down a church aisle. True marriage is believing in someone so completely that you commit all that you are, and all that you have, to that person for life. Your Maker is eager to be that devoted to you, but for marriage to work, the commitment must be mutual.
If a street kid married a millionaire, she would get his riches and he would get her debts. He would be tarred with her shame and she would gain his honor. For this to happen, she must turn from rival relationships and bind herself and her meager possessions to this man in marriage. Everything he owns would become hers, if she lets everything of hers become his.
Similarly, if we entrust to God everything we have � our time, abilities, relationships and possessions � he will reciprocate, embracing us with divine extravagance. We hand our depravity to Jesus, relinquishing even our fondest sin. It becomes his. That�s what killed him. In return, Jesus� sinless perfection envelops us, enabling us to be on intimate terms with the Holy God.
In entering this love pact, we give God the right to do whatever he likes with our assets, but the Owner of the universe makes his riches available to us. We trade our talents, for his omnipotence; our attempts to run our lives, for his unlimited wisdom. We give him our time on earth and he gives us eternity.
In every way we benefit from this proposal and God gets the raw end. But God is in love with you. He wants this holy union more than you can imagine. Don�t break his heart and miss out of the ultimate human experience by holding back.
A marriage made in heaven
The following corresponds to wedding vows in which you give yourself to the Lord, thus making him your God. In turn, the King of kings makes you worthy of spiritual fusion with him and pledges to devote himself unreservedly to you. If the following accurately describes your feelings, you can make it your prayer by reading it to God.
Wonderful Lord,
It hurts to admit how selfish I�ve been. I have caused you grief, yet you sent your Son who gave his life and defeated death to secure my pardon.
You have given yourself totally for me and I long to respond to your overwhelming love, by dedicating all I have to pleasing you. I take you to be my God from this day forward. I will love, honor and obey you. I yield to your loving protection and guidance. I surrender my sins to you, renouncing even those things that entice me. And in exchange I receive your pardon, your purity, and your power to live a life worthy of you.
Thank you that we have now commenced a union so unique and powerful that not even death can break it.
The Lord of heaven and earth knows your secret thoughts. If you prayed the entire prayer honestly, you have entered a new spiritual realm. That�s hard to believe. Everything seems the same. But not from heaven�s perspective. The spiritual contract is sealed.
In old-fashioned romance, young lovers, leaving reality behind would let their emotions and dreams run wild. Not surprisingly, their language was laced with religious expressions:
* She idolizes him
* He adores her
* You�re divine
* He�s heavenly
* He worships the ground she walks on
* A marriage made in heaven
Religious words dropped spontaneously from the lips of people who weren�t religious. As they discovered, throbbing just below the surface of our consciousness is the awareness that religion and the euphoric love we crave are inextricably linked.
The craving deep within you will remain insatiable until you enjoy a thrilling and fulfilling union with the One who made you. God is the perfect partner you pine for. Yet his very perfection makes him unapproachable. The Almighty is awesomely holy; incomparably virtuous; incomprehensibly pure. We are not. If the intensity and purity of God�s moral perfection were thought of as blinding light, we are like darkness by comparison. And darkness cannot exist in the presence of light.
Back to reality
We come hurtling back to reality. There�s a solution, but to appreciate its grandeur, we must consider the magnitude of the problem. This is so distasteful that we instinctively shrink from it, like dungeon dwellers recoiling from sunlight. We�ll expose facts that challenge the limits of our ability to grapple with reality. Yet facing them is the most liberating experience a human can know.
If we burst into a hospital and chanced upon a doctor sterilized for surgery, he could not touch us. We may seem immaculate, but not by the standards he must keep.
We are like that in the presence of the holy Lord. We may be as good as the next guy, but by the unreachable perfection of God�s standards we are moral lepers. God must keep his distance.
That seems an over-reaction. Being surrounded by imperfection all our lives has clouded our ability to see ourselves objectively. Deep down we suspect the worst but we flee from it like people refusing cancer checks, even though early diagnosis brings life, not death.
We try to fill our lives with endless activity so that we do not have to think of it. Yet deep down we know we stand guilty in the presence of a holy God. Even when we imagine we have pushed it out of our minds, it controls us more than we realize. A favorite, rarely conscious, technique to silence our suppressed but nagging conscience is to concoct a doctored moral code that lets us entertain the delusion that we are morally superior to some people. What drives us to despise certain people, or to gossip, is not unkindness or snobbishness so much as a desperate attempt to drown the shrieks of our own conscience. We are driven to all lengths � even to accusing God of injustice � to try to ease our guilt.
Years ago, experts confidently stated that security is the single most important factor determining whether a woman will have an orgasm. My brain splutters into action. The height of security is to feel valued, fully accepted, and in a relationship that will last forever. Insecurity, on the other hand, is characterized by embarrassment, wondering if you are being exploited or in danger of being discarded like a used tissue. Put another way: security comes from feeling the object not of self-centered lust, but of true love that will never end.
Neuro-scientists from a Netherlands University ran PET scans on women as they were experiencing the �big O.� They discovered that when women genuinely achieved orgasm, areas of the brain involved in fear and emotion were deactivated. This did not happen when resting or faking orgasm. �During orgasm, there was strong, enormous deactivation in the brain,� said one of the researchers, Gert Holstege. �During fake orgasm, there was no deactivation of the brain at all. None.� Addressing a fertility conference, he said, �The deactivation of these very important parts of the brain might be the most important thing necessary to have an orgasm.� He added, �It means that if you are fearful or at a very high level of anxiety, then it is very difficult to have sex because you really have to let yourself go.�
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