Professional strugglers call for professional chasers

As I was praying this morning, I was really struck with thankfulness for the pursuit of God.

To love is to choose, is it not? Real love lets go of the object of it's affection. It sets it free. And in setting it free, it pursues it in the most powerful way. What truer love than the love that allows a choice? Devoid of choice, there is only control, and only one option. If I cannot choose to reject God, then I cannot choose God. I have no say in the matter. But if God sets me free, He has given me the incredible opportunity to love Him. To willingly come to Him. He has loved me completely.


But God lets me choose, and God lets me run, from Him, to Him, it's my choice in the end. But He pursues. Oh how He pursues. There is nowhere I can go, nothing I can do, that separates me from the small presence that reverberates throughout my entire life, permeating everything until an ethereal tint can be seen out of the corner of my eye, flitting from the highest to the lowest, wherever I decide to go.

Oh yes. He pursues. Those that hate Him, those that love Him, those that tell Him He isn't real, and those that desperately seek His face. He pulls at the invisible ropes that wrap tightly around our hands and our feet, the ropes we use to try to pull ourselves up onto any other surface to stand. The same ropes that lead nowhere. That leave us trapped in our own knots we created in the frantic struggle of trying to get free. Struggle that proliferates bondage.


And whether we are at the end of our rope, or in the middle of our rope, or have just started to grab the rope altogether. He's there. He waits. He runs. He pursues. He takes anyone back, anytime, anyplace. There is no standard to reach before God gives a chance. His hand is always open. His door always ready. The love that let you go is desperately waiting to take you back. To be with you. To hold you tightly and spend an eternity learning you inside and out.
I need that kind of pursuit, because I'm a struggler. I'm held one minute and running the next, in one instant at peace, and in the next instant, fighting those gentle hands that take the beating my rebellion gives. That took the death my rebellion gave.


And the beautiful truth that often stays quietly overlooked is that I'm going to spend the rest of my life, and the rest of my existence being pursued with that kind of passion. Far from ending, far from being completely understood, my life will be spent learning of the inexhaustible pursuit of my God. The depth of His desire for me.


If I am still, and I am quiet, and I realize I am held, I begin to be overwhelmed with how beautiful it is to be able to utter the words "God loves me". Three words that my mind can't begin to understand because I can't comprehend two of them and the third one I am all too familiar with.