Relentless Pursuit

I took this photo on my birthday last year. That day I had woken up to gray skies and threats of rain. That just made what I just knew would be a horrible day even worse. I kept thinking about that dreadful 30 coming next and the countless ways my life had gone so wrong. I was nowhere near where I wanted to be, hadn’t accomplished the long list of things I wanted to do with my life. I felt as if I was going nowhere fast. Twenty-nine wasn’t looking so good to me that day.

As my family and I were heading out the door that day, my mood was just as gray as the sky. I remember leaning against the doorway and thinking “Once, Just once; I would like to have blue sky on my birthday!” But blue sky in November just wasn’t going to happen. At least I had convinced myself of this.

On our drive to dinner and a movie, this woe is me self was staring out the window when all of a sudden the sky opened up and a shaft of light shined through. And there it was, a patch of blue sky in the shape of a heart!

And I didn’t even directly ask God for it. But He knows our thoughts. (Isaiah 66:18). He knew how desperately I needed that piece of blue sky.

It was as if He was saying, “I see you, I know, I am here, I love you.” In that moment I realized that God pursues us. He was pursuing me that day.

His pursuit of us is relentless. It is “immovable in purpose or will” and “occurring without interruption or end”.

These past couple of years for me have been about pursuing more of God. But in the midst of my pursuit, I failed to see the moments when He was already there. He’s already here!

Tokens of His affection are scattered all around us; we need only open our eyes to see and our hearts to receive.

“Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.” – Romans 5:5

In My Father’s Arms

I will never forget that day I climbed into my father’s lap and asked him why we were not packing his things in boxes. I was five years old and didn’t fully understand what was going on. But I was observant. I knew enough to know that we weren’t packing his things. I looked him square in the eyes as he gave me a half-truth. The army wouldn’t let him go yet. He still had another year of service left at Fort Leavenworth. I will never forget looking into his eyes that day and seeing the heartbreak pooled there. It would be years later that my mother would reveal the full truth to me. She had every intention of filing for divorce that year. I am so thankful she didn’t. He may have been gone for that one year but by the grace of God, he won my mother’s heart back and is still here with us today.

I don’t know if it was because of that ‘lost’ year or those few scary times when we thought we might lose him to one health problem or another; but to this day my favorite place to be is in my father’s arms.

There is truly nothing like the sound of my father’s heartbeat.

The sound of his heartbeat takes away all the fear and melts away the stress. There, I am safe and secure. I’m a daddy’s girl through and through.

As much as my earthly father loves me, there will be and are days when he will fail me. I will be let down. Promises will be broken. His arms will fail me. He won’t always be there to catch me when I fall. I won’t always have the sound of his heartbeat.

But there is One whose arms are everlasting.

Deuteronomy 33:26-27New King James Version (NKJV)

²⁶“There is no one like the God of Jeshurun (the upright one),
Who rides the heavens to help you,
And in His excellency on the clouds.
²⁷The eternal God is your refuge,
And underneath are the everlasting arms;
He will thrust out the enemy from before you,
And will say, ‘Destroy!’

My heavenly Father desires me to depend on His everlasting arms more than I desire my earthly fathers arms.

Everything I need can only be found in my heavenly Father’s everlasting arms.

Psalm 16

Preserve me, O God, for in You I put my trust.

²O my soul, you have said to the Lord,
“You are my Lord,
My goodness is nothing apart from You.”
³As for the saints who are on the earth,
“They are the excellent ones, in whom is all my delight.”

⁴Their sorrows shall be multiplied who hasten after another god;
Their drink offerings of blood I will not offer,
Nor take up their names on my lips.

⁵O Lord, You are the portion of my inheritance and my cup;
You maintain my lot.
⁶The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places;
Yes, I have a good inheritance.

⁷I will bless the Lord who has given me counsel;
My heart also instructs me in the night seasons.
⁸I have set the Lord always before me;
Because He is at my right hand I shall not be moved.

⁹Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoices;
My flesh also will rest in hope.
¹⁰For You will not leave my soul in Sheol,
Nor will You allow Your Holy One to see corruption.
¹¹You will show me the path of life;
In Your presence is fullness of joy;
At Your right hand are pleasures forevermore.

A Searching Heart

“All we find are Band-Aid cover-ups. The wound is still there, just hidden away.”

We are all in search of something.

We look for love. We look for a sense of belonging. We look for purpose. We look for security. We look for what we’ve lost.

Our heart longs to find that which it lacks.

We are so desperately hungry for it, that we look in all the wrong places. We look everywhere but the one place it can be found. We want love so we turn to people and our hearts get broken. We want to belong, to be accepted, so we try to fit in and we find ourselves trying to be something we’re not and end up hurting ourselves. We want to have purpose so we try anything and everything that we think might make us happy but end up more empty than before. We’ve lost things and people along the way and are grasping for something, anything to fill that void. But nothing we do works. All we find are Band-Aid cover-ups. The wound is still there, just hidden away.

Are you looking in the right place?

All these things and so much more can only be found in one place. They can only be found in Jesus. ” But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.”- Matthew 6:33 Seek Him first! He should always be the first place we look. You need not look far. He said He will be found by us. “You will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart.” – Jeremiah 29:13

What is your heart searching for?

A Heart of Value

What if we had the imaging technology to see our hearts through God’s eyes?

Your heart is of great value to you. From a medical standpoint, it is of high import. As long as your heart is beating and your blood is coursing through your veins; all systems are go. A heart that stops beating typically results in death. We know to take care of our hearts for this reason. We even have the medical technology to see what our hearts look like, how they are functioning, and what might be blocking them or keeping them from functioning. We do everything we can to keep them going strong.

Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life. Proverbs 4:23 KJV

As important as our heart is to our physical life, how much more important it is to our spiritual life!

The Darby Translation says to “keep thy heart more than anything that is guarded”. In addition to guarding (keeping) our heart we are also told to guard our mind (see Romans 8:5-6) and to guard our mouth (see Ephesians 4:29). All three are important. But the heart is of high import. I love the way the Living Bible puts it. “Above all else guard your affections. For they influence everything else in your life”.

What you do with your heart affects everything!

What if we had the imaging technology to see our hearts through God’s eyes. What would we see? Would it be well guarded as He advises us to do? Or would there be missing pieces, blockages, malfunctions or death?

Have we given our hearts to people it should not have been given to, only to be returned with pieces missing. Have we allowed things/sin into our hearts that have caused us to die a spiritual death. Have we held onto things we should have let go of that create blockages in our hearts. Have we let lies and doubts plant themselves in our hearts like seeds causing our hearts to malfunction.

Examine your heart. What you’re storing there comes out.

Luke 6:45 ” A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth evil. For out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.”

A Heart to Know Him

Jeremiah 24:7 KJV “I will give them a heart to know me, that I am the Lord: and they shall be my people, and I will be their God: for they shall return unto me with their whole heart.”

Today this verse strikes a cord with me. For the longest time, I knew about God. I had a heart to know about Him. I loved hearing the stories about him. I loved memorizing and reciting His word.

But I didn’t know Him. I didn’t have a heart to know him. I am discovering that there is a big difference between knowing Him and knowing about Him. Knowing about him is good but it doesn’t really mean anything until the head knowledge turns into heart knowledge.

Sometimes I look to other translations for different wordings for better understanding. In the amplified bible it says “a heart to know, recognize, understand, and be acquainted with Him”. Contemporary English version says “a desire to know him, and a want for him to be our God”. International Standard Version says “the ability to know him”. The living bible says “a heart that responds to him”. That’s a lot of responsibility on our part! But he’s already done His part.

He desires to know us! So much so that he gives us a desire to know him. It’s a relationship that requires communication and action! Let’s not be one-sided in this! We get more out of him than he gets out of us. Let’s make this personal. (He will give me a heart to know him, that he is my Lord: and I will be His, and He will be my God: for I will turn to him with my whole heart.) This implies an intimately close relationship. He desires to be with us in that secret place, the place that only He should ever be allowed to go.

See Psalm 91:1

Category: Knowing God