God Faithfully Pursues Us
Make this an actual live Blog Post, not just a supplemental reading…
Just over ten years ago, amid the cascading losses of financial stability, career, and church family, an old friend, Andy, reemerged.
At a key moment, he gave me a phrase that freed me from a debilitating, self-imposed narrative. My story slowly became a resource rather than a reproach.
My brokenness became a window into God’s beauty and the precious work he’d been doing since I was born.
Here’s how it happened:
I told Andy about the chain of upheavals that had sifted me, a satchel of traumas just below the surface. I told him about my recent bankruptcy, the years of spending and avoidance that led to it, and about telling my kids their dad couldn’t manage his money. And there was the further shame of resigning from my pastoral role to get my house in order. My eyes watered as I tried to describe the realization that I had lived dishonestly to avoid dishonor.
I told him further of my decision to leave the church I’d been with for over thirty years. I told him of the cold disapproval of my decision. I told him I felt cursed by God.
After patiently listening and treating me with dignity, Andy said he saw strength in the choices I had recently made and remarked,
“God has been so faithful to us over the years.”
The comment jarred me. Was he spouting a cliché? Was he even listening?
I felt I was on my own, dangling in the wind. Anxious fears of the future were rolling over me like waves. Would I fail again financially? Could I build new friendships? Would I ever be useful to people? Could I handle aging?
Inside, I was thinking, “Yeah, Andy, God has been faithful to you! But I’ve blown it.”
Eventually, it dawned on me that Andy did hear me. But he didn’t assign the failure to my life that I did. I had a distorted narrative that was blinding me, in which my sense of identity was shaped by “I have succeeded at this” or “I have failed at that.”
I was stuck in a story about my lack of faithfulness to God. But I was largely unaware that I had constructed a story of my life. I effortlessly interpreted the failures and setbacks as confirmation that I was being punished.
Andy’s comment was a seed that, in the months that followed, sprouted, budded, and burgeoned into a new and animating interpretation of my life.
I began to see God’s love as his active pursuit, not a mere concept like “acceptance.” He is for me and wants me.
Think about it. You are being pursued.
A glorious and generous God is pursuing you. That is the greatest fact of your existence.
Without this master narrative, we render distorted verdicts on our experiences, such as “failure,” “shameful,” or perhaps, “I’m a success because I am more skilled at this than other people.”
Let’s unpack this.
God pursues you with His loyal Love. His faithfulness is his love in action, his relational commitment—an active and passionate pursuit of me based on who He is, not who I am—my wavering and wearying pursuit of God based on my own righteousness.
God’s faithful pursuit, His loyal love, is variously translated in English as “steadfast love” (ESV), “lovingkindness” (NASB), “unfailing love” (NIV, NLT), and “faithful love” (HCSB). It is the Hebrew word hesed, which is about God’s covenant loyalty and promise-keeping. In covenants, God vows to remain faithful to His people. Hesed is His loyal love in action. He sticks with you.
Your faithfulness to God matters, but God’s faithfulness matters more!
His faithfulness is the basis for yours.
It is not our loyalty or “lovableness” that moves God to be faithful to us. It is not a reaction to us. God’s loyalty to his children is a matter that originates in Him.
God’s faithfulness to you carries greater weight than your faithfulness to Him. If this order is reversed, you will live a performance-based moralism, either resulting in denial or despair, depending on how you perceive your performance.
If your performance is lacking, you are insecure and traumatized. “I am a failure; He has abandoned me.”
If you performed well, you may become proud and develop a sense of entitlement, believing God owes you blessings.
We cannot do anything to get God to be faithful. God is loyal to you even though you are not loyal to Him. As Paul wrote to Timothy:
“If we are faithless, he remains faithful—for he cannot deny himself.” --2 Tim 2:13
Our failures cannot separate us from His love. In the writing of the prophet Hosea, it is hesed that describes Hosea’s unfailing and steadfast love for his wife, who repeatedly left him because of her adultery.
The Difference This Narrative Shift Makes
Without a deep understanding of and strong confidence in God’s faithfulness, you will be worried, nervous, and self-protective.
You will live in fear.
You will feel you are on your own and everything is up to you.
With a focused trust in God’s loving loyalty, you will grow in stability and loyalty.
When you trust in the faithful pursuit of God, your whole perception of what is happening to you changes! Instead of seeing yourself as deprived and neglected, you’re amazed that He’s always inviting you into new grace-gifts. You see all of life as a gift.
Leaning on God’s faithfulness gives you a beautiful story to tell—a compelling testimony to the world.
Sometimes Christians say they believe in a God of love, but self-pity leaks out as they tell their story. The “lyrics” are correct, but the music is sad. David tells of his aim in Psalm 89:
“I will sing of the steadfast love of the Lord, forever; with my mouth I will make known your faithfulness to all generations. (Ps. 89:1)
Who is this God Who Pursues?
When I use the phrase “the faithfulness of God,” I am talking about the faithfulness of Yahweh, the God of Israel, and the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Beware of the god of your imagination.
There is God as He has revealed Himself, and there is God as we prefer to imagine Him. This is especially important in the pain and perplexity he allows to enter our lives. Many of us lack a framework that prepares us to meet the real God.
We all have a tendency toward idolatry—serving the false gods of modern culture, usually unwittingly projecting those onto the God of the Bible. That God scares us. We want a god we can manage, who is tame, predictable, and “domesticated.”
Idolatry is revealed in times of suffering. We feel let down by God, but it was the idol that let you down. The real God did not promise the control and comfort we crave. The real God will continually shatter this imaginary version of Himself.
The God who is faithful is also glorious, loving, sovereign, powerful, and wise. To put it another way, He is weighty and beautiful, a generous giver of gifts, in control, mighty, and He knows the best way to give his gifts. And He is carrying out His plan in the world for the sake of His glory.
This is the God who is loyal to you.
This is the One you can rely on.
Bowing to this God and His agenda opens your eyes and heart, enabling you to cooperate rather than fight or flee. When we don’t come to terms with this God, we try to use God as we imagine him to make our life work our way.
God's pursuing, faithful love is the true and comprehensive account of every Christian's life.
Over against this account of your life is often a rival account, a distorted narrative, in which your sense of identity is shaped by, “I have succeeded at this,” or “I have failed at that.”
We all tell the story of our lives. And like all stories, we tell it selectively. We emphasize some parts more than others.
How do you tell the true story of your life? When you look back over your life, what do you see?
A series of random and unfortunate accidents and failures? A resume of righteous achievements?
Do you put forward your personal accomplishments?
Do you emphasize your failures and the wrongs done to you?
Is it possible that you are telling a negatively biased account?
Telling a proud account?
God says my story and your story is this: “I carried you.”
That was his message to his exiles in Babylon:
You have been borne by me from before your birth,
carried from the womb;
even to your old age I am he,
and to gray hairs I will carry you.
I have made, and I will bear;
I will carry and will save. –Isaiah 46:3,4
When Jacob, who lived so long as a schemer who tried to meet his own needs, looked over his life, he saw one big theme: “God has been my shepherd all my life long to this day.” (Genesis 48:5)
Even though Jacob did not always live as if God were his shepherd, God still pursued and intervened as his shepherd.
Many of us, even though we profess to believe God loves us, live anxious and threatened lives, as if we are on our own in the world.
Much of our effort is spent trying to exert control over our circumstances and relationships. Beneath this problem is a view of God’s love that is abstract and conceptual, lacking a vigorous sense of God’s love in action.
A glorious and generous God is faithfully pursuing you. That is the greatest fact of your existence.
Do you see it?
The 2nd Substack Post
A glorious and generous God is pursuing you. That is the greatest fact of your existence. It’s our story. And yet, sometimes the story we tell ourselves is that we’re on our own, fighting an uphill battle. Sometimes a season of failure becomes our whole story.
Sometimes we think all the initiative is on our part.
Sometimes we feel threatened that when God does pursue us, it’s to take away our joy.
Let’s look closer at God’s pursuit
God pursues you. He initiates.
In Psalm 23:6, David says that God’s loyal love (hesed) will “pursue me all the days of my life.” A faithful God is chasing him!
Imagine being pursued by a police car on the freeway, frightened that you’re going to receive a ticket. But it turns out the officer was delivering news that you had won the lottery! We sense God pursuing, but we suspect it is to harm (because it hurts sometimes).
God Pursues so He Can Give to You
In his faithfulness, God provides for you and protects you. We often think we need something that is simply a desire, and we are often threatened by things that are not actually dangerous.
God faithfully provides what you truly need
For example, I crave human approval, so I am overly frightened by disagreement and rejection. I also think I need more money than I do. So I get frightened when funds are low. God has shown me that neither human approval nor surplus money is essential.
In fact, when I lack them, I tend to draw closer to God. And that is the point. My greatest need is for God himself! And my greatest danger is being lured into self-sufficient moral autonomy.
God consistently gives the gift of His active presence.
In Psalm 23:4, David wrote, “even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me. I am with you.” His presence—his person is more precious than things or comfortable circumstances.
God protects you from real harm
He protects you from evil and from goods that become gods. Furthermore, God’s protection is not just from what you are afraid of, but from what you inordinately love. One thing we don’t need protection from is the demands and risks of love.
What a difference it makes to know I don’t have to provide for myself and protect myself! Meditating on this lifts a weight from me. The real threat is not people who dislike me or a lack of material prosperity. The real danger is forgetting God and relying on myself. A part of me wants to be independent and free from the feeling of vulnerability. I need God to change that desire so I can embrace child-like neediness as a way of life.
He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? (Romans 8:32)
God’s pursuit is constant
God is always moving toward you. He never backs away. He pursues relentlessly. He is never passive. He constantly initiates with you. He is always bringing His good gifts into your life. There has never been a time when God was not engaged in working for your good and His glory.
He never forsakes you or abandons you. He has never withdrawn his love.
Trusting God’s faithfulness means realizing and continuing to affirm that God has never withheld anything I need and never will. He has always been with me and will always be.
God’s pursuit is passionate
God is not a detached therapist who simply accepts you. He is like a husband who experiences the full spectrum of emotions as he moves constantly toward his wife. God is passionate in his joy over you as his bride.
For as a young man marries a young woman,
so shall your sons marry you,
and as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride,
so shall your God rejoice over you. (Isaiah 62:5)
That is why betrayal hurts him so much.
God’s love is a love that fights for you.
You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the Scripture says, “He yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us”? But he gives more grace. (James 4:4-6)
In one breath, James confronts his readers’ attitude in the strongest possible terms (“you adulteresses”), and compliments them in the most affectionate terms, showing them honor as God’s bride (“jealously yearns”).
“Jealous” alludes to Exodus 20:5, where God forbids idolatry (allegiance to other gods) because he is a “jealous” God. God wants our loyal and exclusive love, and it is for our greatest good and happiness. Spiritual adultery and idolatry are when you give your heart and affections to someone or something other than him.
God jealously yearns for you! In his passionate faithfulness, God fights for you and will fight with you. He loves you too much to let you have a successful affair! As James said, “God is opposed to the proud,” another name for spiritual adultery (4:6). In love, God will sometimes intrude and oppose your plans. He reserves the right to disrupt our “affairs of the heart” with his discipline. He “blows up” schemes for happiness apart from him. For this, I am extremely thankful!
Faithful In All Circumstances
God pursues you relentlessly and passionately with His loyal love in all circumstances.
Even in the most painful and dark times, God is loyal and active. God’s faithful presence is part of every experience you have. We tend to let our circumstances define God’s faithfulness. When things are going our way, he’s faithful; when they are not, he has forgotten me. To say that God pursues you relentlessly and passionately with His loyal love in all circumstances means all of your hurts and letdowns occur within the parameters of God’s faithful care.
God’s faithful presence is part of every experience you have.
But that doesn’t mean this is easy or obvious. We have to look. Our eyes need to be trained. Our sense of value needs to be expanded.
How to Notice God’s Pursuit and Welcome His Gifts
Watching and Marking His Faithfulness
Since our default is, “I get so much less than I deserve,” you have to train your heart to see that all of life is a gift.
In this final section of the post, I’ll look at the gifts God gives: the pleasures he sends, the people he sends, and the pain he allows.
Because he is sovereign, all of life comes through his hands. God’s glory and your good, conformity to Christ’s image—not your personal ease—are the motivations of his faithfulness.
Affirm God’s faithfulness in the pleasures he gives
It is essential to take note of every good experience God bestows, especially the small things. Noting and expressing gratitude to God for small pleasures increases pleasure and helps you not to expect them as a right or entitlement.
Don’t try to “bottle” blessings or demand “encores.” There is another form of trying to assert control rather than submit to God’s wisdom.
Affirm God’s faithfulness in the provisions he sends
Provisions may not always be pleasurable, but they are beneficial and should be acknowledged. They get taken for granted. Examples: job, food and shelter, health, opportunity for exercise, nature, rest, family of origin, family now, a church community, relational connections.
Additionally, these include conviction of sin, moral challenges, the leading of the Holy Spirit, the Word of God, and prayer.
I try to remember this about my job: “It’s easier than I deserve and pays better than I deserve.”
Affirm God’s faithfulness in the people he sends
There will be people who bless you, and you will feel strengthened. There will be people who are hard to enjoy and who even sin against you. In all of these encounters, God’s faithfulness can be seen—he encourages you, he teaches you to get out of yourself. Since the goal of spiritual growth is love, and love is what makes people happy, all our relational encounters are opportunities.
There will be people who build you up, and you will feel strengthened. There will be some who initiate and stay close. These people are gifts from God! Friendships are not entitlements any more than pleasures are. We need to savor these. And while we may have a close friend now, things could change through relocation, a new assignment, or death.
There will be people who serve you because of their weakness or brokenness. You can’t “fix” them or “cheer them up.”
There will be people you don’t like. God is faithful to send not only enjoyable people, but also those who are difficult.
How is this faithfulness? God shows us what he is like—“kind to evil and ungrateful men” (Luke 6:35). And it’s a chance to unearth your sin, which would remain hidden if you only associate with the likeable.
I have had people whom I initially disliked, but later came to appreciate through my repentance.There will be people who hurt you. God teaches you to forgive and live in his approval when humans reject you. This is precious and valuable, even though it feels like death in the moment.
Jacob, Joseph, and David (with the murderous hatred of Saul) are examples of those who were shaped by being sinned against. Both had hardships with people and eventually saw the hand of God in it all. In the Psalms, David expresses the pain of having enemies. He learned to take that pain to God rather than seeking revenge.
Affirming God’s faithfulness in the pain he permits
I know, O LORD, that your rules are righteous, and that in faithfulness you have afflicted me. Ps. 119:75
Sometimes God’s faithfulness is very tangible and joyful. You just want to praise him!
It is also possible to experience God’s faithfulness as painful and perplexing. The same loving motive that led God to the cross for you is behind his handling of your suffering, but the pain can feel like more than you can take. It can feel like God has abandoned you. While suffering is an essential part of God’s faithful love, it is also very confusing.
We don’t expect God’s faithfulness to hurt or deprive us. This magical thinking is part of our brokenness. We are simply not capable of judging what is good for us.
The God of grace inflicts wounds. If we are to become transformed, pain is a necessary component of the process. Because God is faithful in his loving pursuit of you, he will afflict you for your good.
My Challenge:
Take a look at your story currently and over the years, and see if perhaps there are some pleasures, provisions, people, and pain that occurred, but that you missed or undervalued.
Maybe you saw it as a failure. Maybe you were ashamed. Reconsider it as the beauty God wants to bestow in your brokenness.
Try some reframing of your story.