a searching heart

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

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?

Tag: a searching heart

Relentless Pursuit