DEVOTIONAL INSIGHTS & REFLECTIONS

HE IS IN HOT PURSUIT... - December 17

His affections are set upon you and as long as you have breath in your body, He will never stop pursuing you... (Read the Song of Solomon, knowing that it is an allegory of Jesus' pursuit of His Bride, the church.) We are His church, His earthly tabernacle. (See 1 Corinthians 3:16.)

Before you were created in your mother's womb, He knew you. (See Jeremiah 1:5.) God knows the end from the beginning and nothing escapes His all-knowing, all-seeing grasp. (See Isaiah 46:9-11.)

I firmly believe, that if you don't know Him and yet you are His, there is an appointed time when you will accept Him as your Lord and Savior... just as there is an appointed time for death---when you will pass from this life to the next---because He knows the end from the beginning.

That appointed time of acceptance came for me many years ago in the Spring of 1984. I had placed my daughter in a Christian Day Care so that she would learn about Him... I grew up Catholic and learned about Him myself and He was someone I wanted my daughter to know... though I knew about Him, I did not yet "really" know Him personally. He was merely an acquaintance.

I had dated and then married someone whose mother was a born-again Christian and she was praying for me. Next door to the home we moved into were Christian neighbors who had been praying for the new occupants, that they might lead them to Christ---we were those occupants. All these Christians were not Christians "in name only," but they had made Him Lord of their lives.

He doesn't want us on the fringes, but all the way in... and to know Him is to love Him.

God was orchestrating my salvation and not only was I saved, but my entire household was given the opportunity of salvation. Two of us---my daughter and I---accepted Jesus into our hearts as Lord and Savior and were later water baptized, an outward expression of an inner experience. Thus we became "born again," old things passed away and all things---of God---became new to us. Bottom line, we were given the choice of living with or without God and we chose God.

Needless to say, the marriage did not last---but God remained. Once you become his abode, He doesn't take up stakes and leave. (See Deuteronomy 31:6, 31:8; Joshua 1:9; Isaiah 41:10-13; Hebrews 13:5&6; 1 Peter 5:7; etc.) That's a promise to us that is reiterated over and over in scripture because it's important and He wants us firmly aware of it.

Jesus loves you, this I know...