During my last few weeks in Seattle, God has been pursuing my heart quite tremendously- through beautiful scenery, spontaneous adventures, breathtaking music, and generous and loving people after His own heart. It is truly magical the way He seeks and woos us (yes, I said woos). I have felt invited into more intimacy with Him as I become more intimate with His creation. It is exciting and enlivening, yet also a little terrifying.
I feel myself pull back.
I crave that intimacy, yet I also fear it- fear my soul being so completely and utterly exposed. Being pursued by God (and by other people) makes you become so self-aware that it can be a little freaky. It can make you want to hide.
But the beautiful thing is that when God pursues us, He has no intentions other than to bring us closer to Him- to become more perfect in love. He is completely trustworthy; we have nothing to be ashamed of and nothing to hide that He cannot handle, or better yet, redeem. And He will not hurt us or abandon us, which is what we fear the most when we give our hearts to other people.
I think God is pursuing me so adamantly in this time because I am about to embark a new journey, one in which I will need to be so assured of His love for me every single day in order to assure others of the same. He woos and romances my heart now so that I will be prepared for the heartbreak that I will inevitably experience up ahead in our fallen world- so I will come running back into His safe and loving arms. How reassuring and comforting that is.
God calls us the “bride” of Christ, and He pursues us like a groom pursues his bride- with uncontained affection, adoration, and love. His love for us is unconditional and so beyond what we could ever imagine or understand. He knows the secret keys to our hearts; the secret pleasures we delight in that nobody else knows about, the things that our heart yearns the most for. He knows these things because He created us: He made us this way, and therefore knows exactly how to capture our hearts.
Psalm 139 is a beautiful ode to His intimate knowledge of and love for us. Read it to yourself and be reminded of who you are and how much your Father, and Lover, loves and pursues you.
Only because we are pursued can we pursue.
rhythms of grace 