Hunted Down…and Restored!

I am up early this morning…the house is quiet…my coffee is hot and I am alone. 

Yet, in the quiet, His whisper thunders through my soul!  He is beckoning me!  He is pursuing me…chasing after me with all of His might.  I can hear Him.  I can feel Him drawing, pulling my heart strings.  He is relentless with His pursuit.  This wayward girl has been running, running away from the holiness of all He is.  I’ve been scared, weary, hurt and broken.  I allowed my feelings to beat me down and used the very emotions that He has given me to DRAW me CLOSER to Himself, tear me away.

It was a gradual spiral…it started slow.  Small little things, harmless really by themselves.  But it built, like a snowball rolling down a hill…until my world broke away like an avalanche and at the bottom of the mountain, I’m buried in a heap of hard packed snow!  Grasping for air…if only I could breathe! 

His hand reaches down through my prison of frozen white, to pull me up through it.  But for months now I have ignored His promise of breath and beauty and blessing, and I have chosen to gasp, to slowly suffocate rather than embrace and be restored.  It sounds ludicrous!  I know better.  No matter how far gone I am, His forgiveness is there.  He loves me.  He wants me.  But sometimes it seems so hard for head knowledge to seep inside and become the heart knowledge that leads me to freedom.  I keep thrashing about…desperate for peace…all awhile His hand is held out…and He is waiting. 

Then I am reminded: “That surely goodness and mercy shall pursue you all the days of your life.”  We may think that they only follow us, but the Hebrew word for “follow” is RADAPH- which translates “to pursue, to run after, to chase”, or quite literally, “to hunt you down”. (Ann Voskamp – “A Holy Experience”) 

The goodness and mercy of God pursues after me passionately !  

And so, I cease running and I stop and turn.  I allow His embrace to surround me and I feel His love oozing out and engulfing me in every way.  He has definitely “hunted me down” and has captured my very soul. I am a fool, there is no doubt.  I have wasted precious moments…But I will waste no more in regret.  I will “sing a new song.”   I will be restored!  I will sing and praise and dance and shout!  For my life will be a instrument of His grace once more for the world to see His glory shining bright!  Our God is good!