Analogies on God's Pursuit

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God Believes in You

Author

Keywords

Scripture

Jeremiah 31:3, John 3:16, Ephesians 2:4-5, Romans 8:38-39, 1 John 4:9-19

There was what an Orthodox Hasidic rabbi had said on a flight westward. He’d put his prayer shawl in the overhead compartment and sat down, sweeping aside the tassels dangling from his pockets. And so...

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Allowing the Light to Shine

Author

R. Douglas Weaver

Keywords

Scripture

Matthew 4:null

Holy Scripture is witness to the light of God that arises in the midst of the deepest darkness to illumine the darkness. Scripture is not witness to the light taking away the darkness or exempting peo...

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Spiritual Formation: Essential to Human Existence

Author

M. Robert Mulholland Jr. and Ruth Haley Barton

Keywords

Scripture

2 Corinthians 3:18, Galatians 2:20, Colossians 1:28, Philippians 2:12-13, 2 Corinthians 4:16, 1 Timothy 64:7-8, Colossians 3:10-11

In their excellent book, Invitation to a Journey , M. Robert Mulholland and Ruth Haley Barton describe the foundation of life as being spiritual in nature. This means we are constantly be “form...

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The Hound of Heaven

Author

Max Lucado

Keywords

Scripture

Jonah 1:1-4, Genesis 3:8-9, Hosea 3:1, Luke 15:4-7, Psalm 139:7-10, Acts 9:3-6

In 1890 Francis Thompson, a Roman Catholic poet, described God as “The Hound of Heaven”: I fled Him, down the nights and down the days; I fled Him, down the arches of the years; I fled Him,...

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Reaching Out to God

Author

Nahum Sarna

Keywords

In the Law and the Prophets, God reaches out to man. The initiative is His. He communicates, we receive. Our God-given free will allows us to be receptive, to be accepting, to turn a deaf ear, to reje...

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God Makes the First Move

Author

John Stott

Keywords

Scripture

Ephesians 1:4, 1 John 4:19, Romans 5:8, John 1:1-2, Genesis 1:1

In his classic work, Basic Christianity , John Stott shares this most fundamental truth about God: God always makes the first move. Whether it is the creation or our personal relationship, we are n...

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Is God an Object?

Author

Eugene H. Peterson

Keywords

Scripture

Jeremiah 1:5, Psalm 139:1-4, Isaiah 49:1, Ephesians 1:4-5, Romans 8:29-30

We think that God is an object about which we have questions. We are curious about God. We make inquiries about God. We read books about God. We get into late-night bull sessions about God. We drop in...

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Advent is God Coming to Us

Author

Austin Farrar

Keywords

Advent is a coming, not our coming to God, but his to us. We cannot come to God, he is beyond our reach; but he can come to us, for we are not beneath his mercy. Even in another life, as St. John sees...

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You Are There First And Forever

Author

Søren Kierkegaard

Keywords

In this short prayer by Søren Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher describes how the love of God always precedes our own devotion: “Father in Heaven! You have loved us first, help us never to forget ...

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The Drama of Humanity & Nations

Author

Thomas Kelly

Keywords

Scripture

2 Corinthians 4:16, Philippians 1:6, Romans 8:26-27, Ezekiel 36:26, Revelation 3:20, Psalm 139:7-10, Luke 15:20

In his excellent little book, A Testament of Devotion , Thomas Kelly describes the inward reality that governs the course of history: Out in front of us is the drama of men and of nations, seethi...

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The Lion and Its Prey

Keywords

Scripture

Jeremiah 29:13, Ephesians 2:8-9, Matthew 18:12-14, Romans 8:38-39, Isaiah 55:6-7

It is a Masai elder who tells the story. It comes from the book, Christianity Rediscovered, in which the Roman Catholic missionary, Vincent Donovan, shares his discoveries as he worked among Masai peo...

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Grace Upon Grace

Keywords

Scripture

Exodus 3:1–12 , 1 Kings 8:10–11, Isaiah 55:6–9 , John 1:16, Philippians 3:10–14, Psalm 84:5–7

A number of mature Christians have described the Christian journey as one in which the follower of Jesus experiences different levels of grace. Let us imagine . . . that there are many rooms in t...

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The Wild Soul

Author

Parker J. Palmer

Keywords

The soul is like a wild animal—tough, resilient, resourceful, savvy, self-sufficient. It knows how to survive in hard places. But it is also shy. Just like a wild animal, it seeks safety in the dense ...

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Jesus' Arms Opened to Us

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

Keywords

Scripture

Matthew 6:32; 11:28-30, Luke 12:7, Hebrews 4:15- 16, 1 Peter 5:7

When Albert Berte Thorwaldsen, the renowned Dutch sculptor, finished the clay model of his statue of Christ with arms raised in blessing, he left it to harden overnight in his studio. The next morni...

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The Stalker

Author

Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

Keywords

Scripture

Hebrews 13:6, Matthew 7:15-16, Matthew 10:28, Ephesians 6:12, 1 Peter 5:8, 2 Corinthians 11:14, Proverbs 14:12

Editor’s Note: This story is often told as a true story, when in fact it is probably fictitious. Nevertheless, there is a significant illustrative point: sometimes the things we fear most may in fact ...

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A Wrong Understanding of What This Life is Supposed to Be

Author

Larry Crabb

Keywords

Questioning God

The problem sincere Christians have with God often comes down to a wrong understanding of what this life is meant to provide. We naturally and wrongly assume we’re here to experience something God has...

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How Grace Transforms and Holiness Follows

Author

Bryan Chapell

Keywords

Scripture

2 Corinthians 12:9, Titus 2:11-12, Ephesians 2:8-10, John 8:1-11, Exodus 16:13-18, Romans 7:18-25, John 15:1-5

A number of you may be aware of Jerry Bridges’ series of books on holiness, and the book that maybe put him on the map was Pursuit of Holiness . Jerry’s a friend, so he’s told me these stories, and I...

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Biblical Meditation

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

Keywords

Scripture

Psalm 1:null

Biblical scholar Nahum Sarna (in On the Book of Psalms) points out that the mediation mentioned in Psalm 1 (The man who “meditates on [God’s] law day and night”) is “not engaged in meditation and cont...

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Seeking God Like a Lost Coin

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

Keywords

Scripture

Luke 15:8-10

In the Parable of the Lost Coin, the woman who discovers that she has lost one of her ten silver coins doesn’t just hope that the coin will be found. She diligently works at finding it. She lights a l...

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God is a Consuming Fire

Author

Fulton J. Sheen

Keywords

Curiously enough, it is a fear of how grace will change and improve them that keeps many souls away from God. They want God to take them as they are and let them stay that way. They want Him to take a...

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God’s timetable

Author

John H. Walton

Keywords

Scripture

Genesis 45:3-11, 15

In Andrew Lloyd Weber’s Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat , the narrator encourages the imprisoned Joseph not to despair because “I’ve read the book and you come out on top.” Unfortun...

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Where Are You?

Author

Ann Voskamp

Keywords

Scripture

Genesis 3:8-9, Jeremiah 2:13, Psalm 139:7-10, Psalm 16:11, Luke 15:4-6, Isaiah 53:6

For all the wandering, this is the first question of the Old Testament—God coming to ask after you, “Where are you?” Where are you in your life? Where are you—from Me? To get where you want to go, t...

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God’s [Perceived] Absence

Author

C. S. Lewis

Keywords

Meanwhile, where is God? This is one of the most disquieting symptoms. When you are happy, so happy that you have no sense of needing Him, if you turn to Him then with praise, you will be welcomed wit...

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The Love of God Wrapped About Him

Author

Thomas Kelly

Keywords

Scripture

Psalm 4:1-3, Psalm 30:5, Romans 8:28, 2 Corinthians 4:16-18, Psalm 34:18, Isaiah 43:2, Psalm 23:4, Job 1:, Job 2:, Job 42:, 2 Samuel 11:, 2 Samuel 12:, Genesis 37:12-36, 1 Kings 17:8-24, Daniel 6:, Psalm 34:18

The sense of Presence! I have spoken of it as stealing on one unawares. It is recorded of John Wilhelm Rowntree that as he left a great physician’s office, where he had just been told that his advanci...

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Teaching Us His Name

Author

Marlena Graves

Keywords

Wilderness

God uses the wilderness experiences in our lives to teach us his name. If we, like Moses, wish to see God’s glory, it will often be in the wilderness that we see it. The beauty of the desert experienc...

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The Glory of What We’re Meant to Be

Author

R. Kent Hughes

Keywords

Scripture

John 14:23, John 10:27, Isaiah 40:8, John 15:10-11, Psalm 100:2

Elisabeth Elliot once stayed in the farmhouse of a Welsh shepherd and his family high in the mountains of North Wales. She stood watching one misty summer morning as the shepherd on horseback herded t...

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What the With-God Life Looks Like

Author

John Ortberg

Keywords

Transformation

There is a consistent pattern in Scripture of what happens in a life that God wants to use and improve: -There is always a call. God asks an ordinary person to engage in an act of extraordinary trust...

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Do I Have a Choice?

Author

Francis Chan

Keywords

God

Scripture

Psalm 73:25-26, Romans 8:28-30, John 6:44, Psalm 16:11, Deuteronomy 6:5

While I was speaking to some college students recently, an interesting twist on the contrast between our unresponsiveness and God’s great desire for us came up. One student asked, “Why would a loving ...

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God Gets His Family Back

Author

Keywords

In my lifelong study of the Bible I have looked for an overarching theme, a summary statement of what the whole sprawling book is about. I have settled on this: “God gets his family back.” From the fi...

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The Voice of the Shepherd

Author

Richard J. Foster

Keywords

Scripture

1 Kings 19:9-13 , Exodus 33:12-23, Habakkuk 3:17-19, Luke 10:38-42, 2 Corinthians 12:7-10 , Psalm 46:10

One evening I was taking a stretch break from study, walking out into the night. Soon I began speaking prayers of complaint . . . a little like the lament psalms in the Bible. I wasn’t angry, really, ...

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