We are complex. On one hand, we can experience God moving deeply in our lives through a growing intimate relationship. 

And at the same time in our flesh, fallen nature, and fallen world, we are fractured. Pain and suffering remains and reminds us that it is not as it should be. We are not as we should be.

God loves us where we are but He loves us enough not to leave us where we are. He designed and created us to be whole. His love for us calls for our healing and transformation. His redemptive power can transform the pain and suffering, fractured and broken, bad and ugly into something whole and beautiful. He is our Redeemer, Healer, and Transformer. 

As Tim Keller stated, “He gives me what I would have asked for if I knew everything that He knows.” My growing trust and love for Him gives me the power and ability to choose to lean into the unknown with Him. I am learning to trust God, not man. 

Tim Keller also stated that when Jesus reveals Himself to me, part of me is wooed, and part of me is repulsed. The deep, spiritual, eternal part of me that is made in His image and filled with His Spirit loves Him, is drawn to Him, and is willing. AND at the same time, the fractured and unhealed flesh parts within me resist. 

The battle is real and sometimes relentless. Yet, as I grow in my intimate relationship with God and in my trust and love for Him, I get to choose Him from my deepest self even though parts of me are still resistant.  I get to accept the battle and lean into the wrestling. Somehow mysteriously, His love is changing my will and wooing me to refuse the parts that resist, and to choose Him instead. 

He woos me, I choose Him.