Hot Pursuit

Isn't a wonderful feeling when you were dating someone and they were calling you, adoring you, courting you, treating you with utmost respect and made you feel so special? They would go out of their way to make you feel like the most important person in their world, because you were! The relationship was new, fresh and exciting! In their eyes you could do no wrong and cloud 9, wasn't just a state of mind but your everyday with this person.

I remember the early months with my husband before we got engaged. This is how we both felt. But fast forward almost 12 years and life, kids, mortgages, debt, and family sure do fog up those rose-colored glasses. That is why it is vital to never neglect pursuing each other as husband and wife and not forgetting that first love that brought you together in the first place. So many other things in life and even people will compete for your attention. Date nights, I believe, are essential on a marriage that has a few years on it, to revive the romance and remind the other that you are husband and wife first, parents and all other titles next.

The same idea applies to our relationship with God. He loves us with an unfailing love that doesn't rival that of two star-crossed lovers but surpasses it! He is constantly pursuing us and chasing after us, hoping we might stop long enough for even just a few minutes in His presence. When we stop to take that time to allow His all encompassing love to embrace us, we can return that love to Him and it opens up our eyes to a whole new world. A world filled with a joy unimaginable, a peace that surpasses all understanding and a life filled with so much excitement and adventure, we wouldn't have even thought up of some of God's plans for us ourselves.

So let's stop running away from Him. Let's run to Him! I have been there before...afraid to let God in to all the areas of my life. Afraid He will mess up my plans, afraid I won't like where He takes me so I would abandon the thought of even bother asking Him where He would take me. But boy, was I naive, "A man may have many plans in his heart, but the Lord's purpose wins out in the end" (Proverbs 19:21) You can fight Him all you want, but God gets His way in the end. If there is something God is calling you to do, that you have put on a shelf for a while, pick it back up and pray about it. Allow God to weed out the junk in your life that prohibits His Spirit to freely flow through you and this "project".

He has great plans for you and me. Things that only we are capable of doing within our realm of influence, giftings and talents. If you don't do it, God will find someone that will and it will be different from how you would have done it with your individual personality and character traits. Run to Him! Because if you don't you will find yourself courting something else...disaster. Remember, "Stay alert! Watch out for your great enemy, the devil.He prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour" (1 Peter 5:8, NLT). The devil pursues you and aims to keep you from pursuing God if you let him. So let's decide today to turn the tables, change our sails and fix our eyes on Jesus and His plan for us in hot pursuit!