Why Do We Settle for Less?

A sweet friend of mine asked this question,

“How do we wait on the Lord’s timing for relationships and not settle for less?”

This is a great question and a hard question. It seems so simple to wait for something we know to be good, and yet we live in a culture that tells us we must strive to get anything good. I mean most people can share the guidelines of what makes for a beautiful godly relationship, and yet many christians still end up in relationships where they settle for less.

As I pondered this it led me to another question,

“Why do we settle for less than what God has?”

We have to understand the root of why we allow ourselves to settle, in order to understand how we wait for the blessing the Lord has to offer.

Since I can remember, I have struggled to find any true value in myself. I have cultivated the dynamic for myself that I am a failure no matter what I do or say. I may not have always had this at the forefront of my mind, but long ago I internalized this belief. Through life circumstances and traumatic situations, I adopted the belief that I could not trust myself to do the right thing. If I can’t trust myself to be anything other than a walking mistake, then how could anyone else love me, an individual so devastatingly broken? So, in adopting this belief I believed the lie that I didn’t deserve God’s best.

Striving, bleeding, lying down defeated, and willing to receive any fickle facade of love; because I naturally desired to have some sense of being known. Speaking continuously of the love the Lord lavished upon me, but never believing the Lord had anything good to give me.

Why did I believe this to be true?

Well I chose it. I chose to settle for a watered-down version of my God’s character. Only the watered-down character of my God, wasn't Him at all. Rather a wicked character that said I didn’t deserve to ask for anything more. A voice, saying God didn’t want to fulfill the desires of my heart because I didn’t deserve to have the desires of my heart fulfilled. A deceiving voice that I had taken comfort in in times of my greatest distress because it was the only constant I had in an ever changing environment. It was the only voice that gave me any sense of protection and at the time what I assumed was love.

But isn’t His grace, His mercy, and His love so much more?

Why is it that I didn’t want to believe He wanted good for me?

If I am honest with myself, I didn’t trust that He could want to love me or give me any good gift. It was impossible for a love so pure and divine to ever be bestowed on a human as horrid as me.

So, no matter how much I desired to be loved, something inside said I had far too long ago crossed the line to receive this love that His word spoke to be.

And if I allowed myself to believe He did; I was terrified of the moment I knew I would prove to be unworthy, and lose the perfect love I had long waited to receive.

In believing this I worked to obtain the kind of love that sways with the wind. A love like a dandelion; the ones I loved to pick as a kid. Seeing the beautiful fluff ball, plucking it up, making a selfish wish, and blowing the seeds to be tossed to the care of the wind. A wind that changes direction often and abruptly without warning. Leading some to new life and yet others to a slow death. This love that at times was lavishing and exciting, and then cold and distant within a shifting and triggering moment. One that I sought out because it felt comforting and just as confusingly warm as the thoughts inside my own mind.

Then I realized I don't deserve God’s love, but that’s the whole point. I don’t and He does. And He isn’t fickle or abrupt, but rather steady and quiet. He isn’t overwhelming or diminishing.

He is love like an ox. Strong, unmoving, and bold. And a God with this kind of character desires to lavish His children with good gifts. Gifts that can only be explained and understood by the world, if they open their eyes to see a God who gives miraculously to those who seek and ask.

And I want that gift because that gift makes people fall to their knees to see a King that has been and will continue to be, kind and gracious to me.

I want the kind of gift that makes other people say,

“Only God could have orchestrated a love so divine.”

“that they may see and know, may consider and understand together, that the hand of the Lord has done this, the Holy one of Israel has created it.” Isaiah 41:20 ESV