Happy Valentines Day! I know this day can be a hard day for some of us so I wanted to send a little Valentines Day encouragement! Plus, it’s been a while since I talked with you all and I just wanted to check in with everyone and see how you are all doing, and catch you up with me. So drop me a line and let me know what‘s up. I used to talk to some of you quite often but communication has kind of died down lately. Hope everything is going well.
I’ve found myself in a very exciting time recently. God has been very good to me. Right now I am touring with a band called Newfire and we are opening for a band called FFH that has decided to get back together after a two year break. I have moved to Tulsa, OK from Little Rock, AR and have gotten plugged into a church called Victory Christian Center. Which has to be in the top 3 coolest churches in the nation. It’s amazing. There seems to be an unending supply of completely amazing people there. God has given me a very nice place to live, a good close circle of friends, and I get to travel around the nation and (soon to be) world ministering with Newfire. I’m getting to meet a lot of new people, make new friends, and do a lot of things that I have dreamed about doing ever since I was 12. But there is a reason I’m telling you all this. And here’s why.
This particular season in my life happens to be a very happy and easy one. BUT, not to long ago I was going through a very lonely and pretty difficult time emotionally. It seemed like all of my friends were getting married, getting exciting career opportunities, or moving away to college and doing all sorts of fun things. I, on the other hand, felt like I was the only single guy left in Benton, AR doing the same ol’ boring routine, still living with my parents. I would get up, go to work, come back home and do nothing. . . And then do it all over again the next day. I didn’t have a life AT ALL. I hardly ever went and hung out with friends, the majority of them had moved away, and the ones that hadn’t were always busy or married. I remember seeing a sticker that said, “I love my computer, all my friends live in it” and thinking that pretty much described my life. Lol. I felt very forgotten, rejected, and unimportant. I really felt like I was getting left behind while everyone else was moving on with life.
God became the only thing I had. I started hanging out with Him all the time because He was the only person I had to hang out with. Every day I would go to Tyndall Park and walk around for hours just talking to Him. I had nothing else to do. But through that process I began to really fall in love with Him. And it was during those intensely lonely days that I really developed a passion for the Lord, and that was also when the whole vision for Divine Romance Ministries and my life was given to me and fleshed out. I would never want to experience the hurt and loneliness that I went through during those times again, however, I would not exchange the things that the Lord taught me during those times for the world. Every time I preach, every time I lead worship, or even every time I minister one on one it is out of that place of intimacy that I developed during those lonely days of just Him and me, and I realized that God had me in that place for a reason. He was after something. . . My heart. I’m not saying that God caused any of the bad things that happened to me to happen, because He didn’t. But He does want us to come to the place where we realize that He is ALL we need. We don’t need to be popular, we don’t need a girlfriend, we don’t need to be touring, we don’t need a socially impressive job, NO! ALL we need is Him. And God used that lonely time in my life to teach me that. When every other “crutch” in my life was removed God was the only thing I had to lean on.
But the thing is that God wants to be our only “crutch” all the time, not just when things are bad. It’s easy when cool things start happening in our life to sort of put God on a shelf and forget about Him (that deeply hurts Him) But when we do that it proves that God was not really our source in the first place. But that all the “things” were. Now I’ve got a lot going on, but I still spend quality time with God every day. Not because there’s nothing else to do, but because I WANT to. Because I got addicted to Him during the lonely times. Now I have to fight to create time to spend with God. But I make sure I do. Because He is my source, not all the things happening around me. I don’t want to be the person that only loves God during the bad times and when I need His help. No, God is my everything during the bad times AND during the good times. He IS my good time. I want you to pay very close attention to what I’m about to say next. So focus – What we do during the hard times of our life will determine how high we can excel during the good times of our life. If the only time you love God is when there is nothing else going on and times are bad, well . . . Just keep in mind that God is relentlessly pursuing your heart and so He knows how to get you into a position to seek Him . . . But it is how we react to life when it is hard that will determine how far God will take us in the good times.
“God is the rewarder of those that diligently seek Him.” That verse is so true. If you will diligently seek God during the lonely and hard seasons of your life, than I PROMISE you will be greatly rewarded for it. So after spending two years of my life in this “wilderness” season of just me and God – All of the sudden out of the blue a guy calls me that I met ONE time in a small Podunk town called Paren (sp?) at a small church camp in Arkansas nearly 7 years ago!! He had come across my website and found my number on it. So he calls me up, tells me he is going on tour with Warren Barfield (an Essential Records artist) and wants me to go on tour with him as drummer. And then the rest is history. Now I live in Tulsa constantly surrounded by amazing people and friends and always meeting new ones, with new and exciting plans being told to me daily. Loneliness for me is now just a memory. That is part of the reward for me because I diligently chose to seek God during the hard times instead of get bitter.
So let me encourage you, if this Valentines day you feel forgotten, lonely, and unimportant, let me remind you that there is a lover that is relentlessly pursuing your heart. So let Him have it. I promise you will never regret it. And the reward will be greater than anything you can imagine.
Living to touch God’s heart,
Chris Ulery
divine-romance.com
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