“God delights in revealing Himself to those who will seek Him with all their hearts. He is an extravagant, abundant Lover, and He loves to reveal His heart to us again and again. …The romancing is extremely personal. It will be as if it has been scripted for your heart. He knows what takes your breath away, He knows what makes your heart beat faster.” - John Eldredge
I never really understood what it meant when people would say, “God is pursuing you”.
I would think, “pursuing me how? and pursuing me for what?”
It never really made sense to me until recently…
In my mind, when I think of being pursued, it's a physical thing; continual, persistent and consistent acts specifically planned to catch someone’s attention.
I think of what it means to be pursued by a man - he sees you and speaks to you, he takes his time to learn you and what you like and offers his heart to you in hopes of winning your affection.
I mean, who doesn’t want to be pursued? It makes you feel like, “wow, they really see me.” You feel valued and worthy. It’s an incredible feeling.
God pursues us just like this.
But the problem is, we don’t see it. And if we do, we don’t acknowledge it. We’re so quick to say something was a coincidence or an accident instead of slowing down enough to realize that it’s God’s loving hand.
Can you imagine how that makes God feel?
It’s like this…imagine you’re back in the 2nd grade. You finally muster up enough courage to share your favorite homemade cookies with the boy in the class you like. You take that long nerve-wracking walk across the lunchroom and open your mouth to offer your last cookie to him, and he totally ignores you and walks right past you to meet with his friends. Your little heart is crushed!
That’s how God feels when He constantly beams the bright sun on your face in the morning…or when He purposely put a field of lilies in your path as you walk to work because He knows it’s your favorite.
…or when He nudges that little baby on the bus to smile a big and wide gummy smile at you when He knows you’re not having the best day. Or even when you’re burning hot and “out of nowhere” a gush of cool wind blows on you for a few seconds cooling you down.
…and you never say at the very least, ”Lord, thank you.”
He does this because He loves you! He wants you to love Him and spend time with Him and get to know Him more intimately.
And get this, the more you seek Him, the more He will pursue your heart, intensely, passionately and fervently in ways unique to only you…Whew! What an amazing and perfect love this is.
God is love. And just like we long to be loved by others, God longs to be loved by us. So He gently pursues us day in and day out to get our attention, to make us feel the warmth of His love, enough that we recognize it and express our adoration to Him freely (yep, that’s worship).
The moment I realized what I had been missing, I immediately apologized to the Lord for ignoring Him. Of course, it wasn’t intentional but I felt terrible about not noticing or receiving His loving gifts to me.
God loves us. And His everyday outward expressions of love to each of us is personal. We are all so different. This is why we should never covet or get jealous over what God is doing in the lives of other people. The way that He expresses His love to you will be different than the way He expresses His love to me. It’s unique and special to only me. Isn't that beautiful?
Now I know. I don't want to miss You anymore.
So every day Lord, I’ll look for You.
Every day.
At home, with friends, at work, during errands…I’ll look for You to see your hand, your messages, how you’re loving me, pursuing me, protecting me and caring for me. I’ll look for You.
I promise.
Love.
"I made you and I will care for you. I will carry you along and save you." - Isaiah 46:4
