God's Pursuit

Philippians 1:3-6
I thank my God every time I remember you. In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

I love this passage, as it really speaks of my heart right now. First, I must ask you to forgive my absence – I have been sick, and fought a headache for about 4 days. It got to the point to where I could hardly think!! (Not that I’m much better without a headache, but at least I can form semi-understandable thoughts.) Anyway, when I am unable to “meet” with you, I find that I think about you more often. I am thankful for you and your understanding, when I do not meet with you daily. However, I have to admit that I also begin to beat myself up, and I begin to wonder if you think I am lazy or apathetic. I truly am my own worst critic.

As I’ve thought about this tendency in my life (not just with the Morning SonRise, but with everything, especially everything spiritual . . . which I guess for me is pretty much everything), I thought about a quote I read from Eugene Peterson, who translated The Message. Now, I’m not going to be able to get this word-for-word, so I’m just going to have to paraphrase it for you. Basically, he said that his life was completely changed when he came to the realization that God was infinitely more interested in a relationship with him than he was with God. He talked about how he started to just calm down, he stopped fretting about everything he did wrong, stopped his frantic reaching and striving, and he started taking the time to notice God pursuing him every day in ways he had never noticed before.

I have been thinking a lot about that interview I read and I have really been trying to do the same. I try to notice God’s pursuit of me everyday, and stop beating myself up over the little things, like not getting a chance to send out a daily devotional.

Perhaps you need to do the same?

Do you need to stop fretting over all the things you’re not doing, and just start enjoying the things you are? Do you need to get your focus off your “to do” list and start focusing on God and all the ways He is reaching out to you each day? Perhaps you just need to stop and realize that God is so much more interested in your relationship than you are. If this is you, then know that you are not alone – I am right there with you. Perhaps together we can begin to cut ourselves some slack, and let God reach into our hectic but mundane lives and give us some passion, some peace, some excitement, some love, and some of the sweet relationship we always seem to be striving for.

God started this thing in us, let’s let Him finish it – shall we?