Drawing Closer to God: How to Seek Christ Through Relationship Desires

By Sophia Allison

Drawing Closer to Guys is a book that revolves around the main message of singleness, struggle, and the hidden blessing that singleness can be. Through twelve chapters, you will find yourself inching closer and closer to the incredible plan and purpose that God has for you and your singleness. Whether its sexual sin, the ever-wishing desire for a boyfriend, problems in relationships, or the need of a strong foundation in Christ, this book goes through the struggles and temptations that come with singleness within the teenage years and how to combat them and have victory over them. Through awkward and confusing guy friendships to life-changing testimony of God's greatness, each chapter reflects a different aspect of God's incredible workings that He can do and will do in every teenage girls' life, told by a teenage girl herself. Though singleness is hard, and struggle can be unbearable, Drawing Closer to Guys presses the message that it is possible to be single, joy filled, and passionate about purity. From struggle to tears to God's faithfulness to perseverance, endurance to weariness, but God's never-failing love, it is all found within these pages and it is all found within the life of one teenage girl's ongoing experience of it all.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Covenant Books, Inc.
• Release date: Nov 7, 2022
• ISBN: 9781638140221

Book preview

Table of Contents

Title

Copyright

Preface

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

About the Author

cover.jpg

Drawing Closer to God

How to Seek Christ Through Relationship Desires

Sophia Allison

ISBN 978-1-63814-021-4 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-63814-022-1 (Digital)

Copyright © 2022 Sophia Allison

All rights reserved

First Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Covenant Books, Inc.

11661 Hwy 707

Murrells Inlet, SC 29576

www.covenantbooks.com

Preface

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it? (Jeremiah 17:9)

When reading this verse, it seems incredibly ironic to think that the heart the Lord created within us is desperately sick. That all of us, being made in His image (Genesis 1:27), have been given a heart by our Creator that is deceitful.

With the world's shouting messages, calling us to be true to ourselves, to love ourselves, and the most pressed I feel like, to follow our hearts, it seems like we should be more than perplexed with Jeremiah 17:9. As what we are supposed to follow is sick and deceitful, as God's word says. And there's an undeniable level of fear in the truth of these words.

But I am not writing these words to strike fear. I am not writing to depress or discourage or to completely drive you away from my content. Because based on what we first see in this verse, we can find ourselves feeling perplexed, confused, and absolutely riddled by its words. We question ourselves because what we are pressed to follow by the world is said to be sick and deceitful by our faith and by Who we believe in.

But behind it, when we let Jesus unearth the real meaning, deeper from what we just see on the surface, is a very important, essential, and completely undeniable vital element that makes this verse not perplexing, but encouraging. Not fear enticing, but exciting and strengthening. Because as there is Jeremiah 17:9, there's also the truth of who God is and the fact of the matter that our hearts are only sick and deceitful because of the sin that invaded the world. Not at all because of whom our Creator made us to be. Because the Lord did not give us this sick heart. Our hearts grasped for the sickness in the very beginning and caught the cold by the bite of Eve.

For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works, my soul knows it very well. (Psalms 139:13–14)

We are made in God's image; we are fearfully and wonderfully made by His hands and in His sight. Even though our hearts are deceitful and desperately sick, God can and will transform us into perfect imperfection before His eyes. We were not made to follow our hearts. Ultimately, we were made to follow Jesus. Because He is higher and mightier than all of our emotions combined.

I've written this book so that the lies that have left our hearts feeling shallow and confused and sometimes completely in shatters can be destroyed. So that we as teenage girls don't have to run with that dizzying crowd when we have no idea why we are even running with them in the first place. I've written this book so that we can discover the real meaning to romance and love. To unlock what it really means to actually adore Jesus Christ with all of our heart, mind and soul.

Because our hearts were first and foremost made to follow Christ. As Psalms 139 states, our souls know the works of the Lord very well. Before sin entered the world everything was in a state of perfection. Hearts were not sick, and hearts were not deceitful. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth and He called everything good. But then Eve was tempted, she bit the apple, sin entered the world, and that was when all peace and tranquility was shattered in the garden and in the world forever.

I think sometimes we skim over this story and we really don't really realize that here in the first chapters of Genesis was where our hearts were altered forever. Because before that one bite, there was no lusting, no temptations, no broken heartedness, and no fickle flipping's from guy to guy. Because there was no sin, and there was perfection and complete goodness in the presence of God.

But then sin entered the world and our hearts were then able to lust, to crave, to desire sinful things, and to be driven by ungodly desires. Our hearts then became deceitful and sick and there is no denying that. Just by evaluating ourselves, we can all clearly see that our hearts are sick. Because as teenage girls, we flip-flop from guys, we fall by a single kind word and a cute face, and soon, we are falling, falling, falling and tripping over ourselves as we grasp to take hold of our reeling emotions.

It's hard to understand, but sometimes we have to be content with the knowledge that we are in over our heads here. I myself have spent such an immense amount of time attempting to understand my own heart. But a lot of the time it's just things God has to have and not ourselves. And as we begin to realize this, we will find the Lord's promises of strength, wisdom, discernment, guiding protection, and so much more, all found simply in the surrender within His presence.

We don't just have to rely on ourselves in this, because we have Him to hold us up and to help us walk steadily, because as we all live in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together in Christ, by grace you have been saved. (Ephesians 2:3–5)

Sin did enter this world, but the world did not suddenly turn over to the devil once sin invaded. Sin did enter our hearts, but it has not changed who God is and it has not changed how much He loves us. So as sin is in us, so is God. We have the choice right in front of us: walk upright with God or fall backwards with the devil.

Our hearts are surely sick, but the Lord can constantly heal it. Our hearts are most definitely deceitful, but the Lord can make the path clear for us. And as for the understanding bit, well, we can rejoice in the fact that we don't have to completely understand everything, but that simply God understands. So we can take heart and trust that it's all good when we place our hearts in the palm of His hands. We don't have to understand it, we can just trust that God does. But that only comes when we take the purposeful action in giving ourselves completely over to Him.

And I think one of the most important things I could ever stress to my readers is that in order to be strengthened, in order to be healed of our heart's sickness, and in order for God's light to overtake us, is that we then need to constantly immerse ourselves in His word. To immerse ourselves into conversation with Him and into time with Him.

You don't get to know someone by ignoring them every day but by deliberately taking the time to get to know each other by talking and spending time together. The same goes for God, as we cannot expect to know God and to be led by Him when we are shunning Him away from every aspect of our lives. The Lord wants to be right there with you, holding your hand, drying your tears, submerging you into His light so that darkness cannot exist anywhere near you. He wants to renew your mind and to help you guard your heart. The Lord longs to lead you and help you and sustain you and give you joy and peace and contentment. We just need to learn how to take the steps to be willing to run toward Him.

Because it's always possible to know of God, of His love, of His will, but still be running in the opposite direction. When all you have to do is turn around and run into His arms. And I can promise you that He will meet you right where