Receptive Hearts

"It is for increasing degrees of awareness that we pray for a more perfect consciousness of His divine Presence. We need never shout across the spaces to an absent God. He is nearer to our own soul, closer than our most secret thoughts." ~ Tozer

During these last few months the Lord has opened to my eyes the necessity of receptivity in the Christian walk. Mid-February I ordered A.W Tozer's book, The Pursuit of God, and it has been exactly what I needed for such a time as this.

As I have a tendency to classify much of my life in seasons, the six years preceding college (dating to a youth conference I attended the summer before my 8th grade year) have been marked as an overall season of "desperate pursuit." My focus had been so much to pursue God with all my heart, and not settle for anything less than for Him to meet me where I was.

In a effort to maintain brevity, I will sum those years as this: necessary. They were exactly what I needed, at exactly when I needed it. I learned so much about my faith and what it truly means to know Him.

These last several months, however, have revealed me a different perspective on pursuit--that it is not about us trying to run after a relationship with the Lord, but about recognizing that He is already within our grasps right where we are. It is then that we move forward with receiving His offer. Tozer describes it as this, "where God's previous working meets man's present response." God is the only One who holds time in His hands, He doesn't just exist within either the past, present, or future, He dwells in an eternal realm with no such bounds. Therefore, when the Lord pursued us on the cross it was an eternal thing. Our pursuit is simply the "present response" of Him desiring the hearts of His people.

At the start of my extended season of "pursuit" my personal verse (which has always been on the blog's left column banner) was James 4:8, "Draw near to me as I draw near to You..." It used to perceive that the more I sought, the more He'd seek after me, but in reality I had it backwards. My seeking is, and has always been, a reciprocation of God's pursuit of me!

He was always pursuing me.

He is always pursuing me.

He will always be pursuing me.

So does that mean that the pursuit is over now that a new season is in full swing? Nope. Man's present response should mirror His continual seeking after us. We just need to be receptive of His pursuit, and then follow suit.

"He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end... I know that everything God does will endure forever" 

~Ecclesiastes 3:11,14