God’s Relentless Pursuit

This past Sunday during our musical worship time, we sang a song called Reckless Love. To lead into this time, Dale read a devotional from First 15 Devotional.

I wanted to share it with all of you…

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God’s Relentless Pursuit – April 2 (First 15 Devotional)

So often we view God as an enforcer of religious rules. We see the commands of Scripture as a list of to-dos rather than a path leading to abundant life. But those perceptions aren’t the truth of Scripture. Those beliefs are founded on misguided notions of God’s character. God is after the heart. More than he wants us to do right, he wants us to see him rightly. He wants going to church, reading the Bible, worshipping, serving the poor, and living righteously to come from a heart filled with a true revelation of his loving-kindness.

The foundation for our faith is not meant to be built on our works or our understanding, but rather on God’s relentless pursuit of us. We have relationship with our Creator not because we sought him out, but because he is always pursuing us. (“We love because he first loved us 1John 4:19”) Any elements of Christian spirituality at work in our lives are the result of his constant grace drawing us deeper and deeper into the abundant life Jesus died to give us. Faith built on anything else but God’s pursuit is faith built on our own strength—an unsure and consistently failing foundation. Ephesians 1:16-18 says:

I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints.

There is nothing we could do to keep God from pursuing us. There is no sin too great, no distance we could run, that would discourage God from loving us. From the moment you were born God has been pursuing your heart. His greatest longing is for relationship with us. Don’t let a wrong understanding of who God is cause your relationship with him to be works-based. Don’t let your sin and failures get in the way of running to the open arms of your heavenly Father. God is after your heart right now. He’s sweetly knocking on the door of your heart that you might simply let him in.

Let’s worship.