I think many of us do silly things when we first come to Christ. We come believing that we know what He wants and, not knowing Him, we end up putting ourself in bondage to expectations that do not come from God but from our misconceptions about Him.
When I first came to Christ I believed that nothing that I loved could be okay. That everything I did and everything I had could only be 100% about God or it was bad and wrong. I threw out most of the books I loved because they were not about God. I burned close to 1,000 poems because they weren’t about Him. I got rid of many of my CD’s (some of that WAS good but not all). I thought it was what God wanted of me. I had this image of Him that was so staunch, so strict. I imagined that He didn’t want me to have anything that I enjoyed because how could I enjoy something that wasn’t entirely about Him. It was a rough time. But as I grew closer to Him and got to know Him as He really is, I began to understand that He gave me the gifts I had stopped using. Sure there was a purification process in a lot of things but it had not been God who asked me to throw away everything and to stop writing and to stop enjoying life. It was not God who told me to stop playing the flute, to stop writing songs, to stop writing stories. He delighted in my delight in those things, it just took some time for me to see it.
When I began to see how much God wanted me to enjoy life and to see things through His eyes I began to feel regret at all the things I threw away in my zeal to prove myself a true follower of Christ who would give it all for Him. Time and time again my heart would be sad over my ignorance but God kept promising restoration.
In the past several months God has been doing a lot of restoration and just last weekend He gave me back many of the books that I had given away, and in the box with the books, He gave me back many of the poems that I burned. I am still amazed at all He has given to me and His faithfulness to restore according to His promise. He is so amazing!!!!
