Last night, I spoke to aguy at length. And uncharacteristically, with conviction I never desired or developed against my will, I spoke about heaven again. I hit a very sensitive nerve for the both of us. And I had to step back as I watched aguy vent his frustration and fear at the fact that those desire marriage and companionship the most may never find it. Not because God withholds it; it’s just the way things work out. I tried to gently get him to move away from predictable Christianity where everything is demanded and expected of a God who has to meet our innermost desires. Privately, I said to myself,”This is the demon of evangelicalism, the disillusionment with a God that doesn’t work according to humanly constructed biblical formulas”.

I had to go and call the former girlfriend, as she was going through a period of bereavement and loss. But after the call (humbling to hear the girl you love(d) cry and to see her open up), I continued the IM conversation which had to end in an e-mail. I just wrote and wrote, and it all tumbled out of me, finally free of all that time in the womb. And again, it was about heaven and about life as the seeker of the Way and the painful realities I must accept before I can find endless joy in God. It’s not what he wanted to hear. And if I would have told him what he wanted to hear, I would have been a liar. I said that to him. So, maybe in a few days, after thinking about what I wrote, he’ll get back to me and let me know what he thinks. And more importantly, what he will do next.

This is what I wrote:

Men el a7′er, God wants us to live life and live it to the full. To live in the now and enjoy and be stewards and delighting ourselves in Him, not His clothes. Not His gift of marriage, material success, career, ministry, etc. Him. That delight in Him forces an automatic and painful assertion.

That delight doesn’t guarantee anything on earth. It doesn’t guarantee marriage, success, all these blessings of Christ. These things that Christ gives us to wear. These are and will not be guaranteed. Because if they were, what would be the purpose of heaven and eternal life? Earth is a temporary stop, heaven is the destination. Anything on earth is a byproduct, not the goal.

Ironically, what God does guarantee as part of the Christian conviction is suffering. In the Pauline Epistles, it was specifically suffering to do with ministry and witnessing to the unbelieving world. But in the limitless understanding of the New Testament, that suffering is any kind of suffering that can easily deter us from God. On the day of Glory, our whole bodies will be resurrected and transfigured. With all its wounds, its failed passions, its blunted desires, all of it will be transfigured to a much greater and brilliant body that will need nothing more than the glory of the Trinity itself.

I don’t know what to do with these excruciating ape of fire in my being that shrieks for companionship and soul-deep intimacy other than to seek solace in the once Incarnate, now Glorified Christ. Will a life with God, one fully focused on Him, take away the desires? No. Will it lessen the desires? Perhaps. But with time, could it be more satisfying and powerful than the desire for anything else? Definitely.

This is what I tried to tell you on agirl’s blog comments. We’re not Buddhists, where believing in God deadens our flesh or makes us numb to our inherent human nature. We’re seekers of the Way, where the total human being will be transfigured and over time, deified by the Holy Spirit. Are you telling me that even St. Macarius didn’t feel intense sexual desire even after his long years in the desert? 7asha bellah! He still was a man. But even in his manhood, he found and chose to satisfy a desire that fulfilled him more than everything else: God Himself. Put aside the fact he’s an ascetic whose humanity our church wants to obfuscate because somehow it would detract from his great God-given piety. He was a man and when he will rise on the final day, he will still rise with a man’s body that got attacked by devils and raunchy sexual desire in his youth or age.

What does this mean now?

It means that you can be free from all those issues you outlined to me. There is true freedom in Christ and in the Cross. How and when and how long and the mechanics, that’s a secret within the indiscernible workings of the unseen grace of the Spirit. God does guarantee change (albeit that which we can’t quantify or measure) and does guarantee transformation. Along with the other things I mentioned before.

So, when you meet that girl (if you do), you can walk up to her and talk to her without the crippling fear of anything else. Nothing can thwart the will of God. Not even man’s deliberate sin or unintentional transgression. Man’s sin in the Garden couldn’t stop the Cross being erected and salvation fulfilled in Christ. God’s will is simple: your sanctification and your transfiguration and your transformation. (cf 1 Thess 3:16) You meet a girl and you get to know her. God leads gently. Like I said earlier, the unheard unseen but definitely present work of the Spirit. His work through your feelings and thoughts about the girl, and the same in her, will come to show whether this girl is suitable or not. In the bigger scheme of things, God’s will is working out *personally* by you. “Work out your own salvation in fear and trembling” (Phil. 2:12) God leads through His people, His spirit in you, circumstances, and everything else you couldn’t possibly imagine. Let’s not reduce Him down to a formula or hold up our lives waiting for Him to announce in fanfaric fashion His will.

That’s not God.

I realized after ten years, I desired marriage, companionship, and intimacy more than God Himself. His clothes more than Him. And it will take a lifetime for me to learn to want Him more than His blessings or His gifts.

I finished writing the e-mail and went back to working on the backlog of journal entries I had to complete for my counselling class. I was listening to 3adaweya and staring out of the window, the presence of God was made manifest. I deeply sensed that presence of God in this way that washes over me. Turned off 3adaweya and put on tasbe7a. And it was complete, heaven was in my bedroom.

While I was writing the e-mail, I thought of the song that still rings in my ears when I think of the Alpha weekend and that communion service. A time when I worshipped truly…