The one...

Psalm 89:13-16 (NLT)
13 "Powerful is your arm! Strong is your hand! Your right hand is lifted high in glorious strength.14 Righteousness and justice are the foundation of your throne. Unfailing love and truth walk before you as attendants. 15 Happy are those who hear the joyful call to worship, for they will walk in the light of your presence, LORD. 16 They rejoice all day long in your wonderful reputation. They exult in your righteousness."


I wrestled a little with how to tell you what's on my heart at the moment... How do I convey something so deeply held in a way that won't sound strange, but instead compelling and meaningful to someone trying to find their own way into a real relationship with God as opposed to an exercised, hollow performance of religion? How would I help them understand that a real, living relationship with our God is worth far more than anything that it might cost them in this life. How do I tell them that that relationship is what we were meant to find and the whole purpose we were given this life? Lord, give me the words...


I heard something today, the lyrics of a song that just made it seem as if my own heart had been opened up letting the words pour out as if they were in fact my own. They expressed something I've lived and experienced in my own time with the God that created me.

I won't get into the exact words of the song. But they spoke of God's relentless pursuit of us and His selflessness to love us even though doing so leaves His own heart exposed and vulnerable to whatever hurt we might recklessly cause Him. His is a personal and passionate love that doesn't seem to make any sense to us. It's a love whose cost to Him has been extreme and consequently sets the value that He chooses to assign to us and the love that He so desperately desires to receive from us.  

"Desperate?" you might ask. What would you assign to a desire that created the sun and the moon and placed all of those heavenly bodies in orbit? It's a desire that breathed out countless billions of stars purely for our wonder and enjoyment. That same desire created and shaped the earth - giving life to every living thing in it with one single purpose in mind. He did it all with one intention - to create us in His image so that we could relate to Him... 

Genesis 1:25-31 (NLT)
26 "Then God said, “Let us make human beings in our image, to be like us. They will reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, the livestock, all the wild animals on the earth, and the small animals that scurry along the ground.” 27 So God created human beings in his own image. In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. 28 Then God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and govern it. Reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, and all the animals that scurry along the ground.” 29 Then God said, “Look! I have given you every seed-bearing plant throughout the earth and all the fruit trees for your food. 30 And I have given every green plant as food for all the wild animals, the birds in the sky, and the small animals that scurry along the ground—everything that has life.” And that is what happened. 31Then God looked over all he had made, and he saw that it was very good!"

Revelation 4:11 (KJ) 1"Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created."

Already knowing everything from beginning to end, the all knowing God knew before He even created us, the price that we'd force Him to pay if He was to redeem any hope of sharing a loving relationship with us. He knew that when our own love and loyalty to Him were tested, we'd fail and fall fatally far short of deserving that opportunity to share the incredible wealth of what He selflessly offered us in relationship. In truth we never deserved it, but He offered it to us in awesome humility and grace ... and as mankind, we squandered the opportunity - but He knew we would. 

So again, as He planned, in even more astounding humility and grace, He heaped all of our failures, past, present and future on His one and only precious son and allowed Him to be tortured and murdered by the very mankind He'd once created with loving hope as an atonement - to once again pay the price for the loving hope that what already belonged to Him could be redeemed to the all holy, just and righteous God that He is. It's an unending hope for a relationship of love that we never deserved or should have ever had a right to hope for. It's a desperate and passionate love ... waiting for an answer.

Those same song lyrics that I mentioned earlier also touched on Jesus' parable of the lost sheep, with the shepherd leaving the ninety nine in open pasture in order to search for the one lost until he found it...

Matthew 18:12-14 (NLT)
12“If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them wanders away, what will he do? Won’t he leave the ninety-nine others on the hills and go out to search for the one that is lost? 13 And if he finds it, I tell you the truth, he will rejoice over it more than over the ninety-nine that didn’t wander away! 14 In the same way, it is not my heavenly Father’s will that even one of these little ones should perish."

People that have searched the depths of this blog will likely have found some posts that I've written over time that are very expressive and deeply emotional regarding my adoration and amazement for my God. They're only the tiniest tip of an iceberg that could only be heard if allowed into my conversations with Him, held in privacy. The precious family of Christ that I fellowship with may even wonder sometimes what it is that motivates me to tears during worship and all of it stems from one thing ...

I was once "the one"...

... So I know that I can testify to His faithfulness to relentlessly pursue what He loves - what rightly belongs to Him, even when the object of His desire recklessly causes Him pain and stubbornly refuses to surrender. I can testify to the fact that when we're finally willing to surrender everything for Him, like He's surrendered for us - even giving the life of His own Son, we'll find the love and relationship like no other. We'll find what we were created for and created with a relentless desire to find.

It wasn't for days, weeks or months that I made Him pursue me, but for years. It could have been an easy surrender, but I made it hard. Without understanding the full reality of the truth, I learned to play "church". I'd run toward Him when it was convenient for me - when I was hurt or in trouble, but then kick against Him at times when He reached for me or other times just ignored Him while He called... but He never gave up.

Considering all that I put Him through - through all of the anger that I falsely held against Him, all of the accusations and all of my many many flaws and failures that hurt Him and caused His heart pain... He never gave up on me.

Several years ago, I came to realize the meaning and purpose of something that God told the prophet Hosea to do in the book of Hosea in the Old Testament. He told Hosea to marry a prostitute! When I first read it, I couldn't understand why God would require such a thing - He detests unfaithfulness. I eventually realized that He wanted Hosea to understand the suffering of His own heart and to be able to relate to Him on a level that He wouldn't be able to otherwise. 

So Hosea married a woman named Gomer. She was indeed a prostitute and she continued to shamelessly violate the marriage covenant she made with her husband, Hosea. Hosea loved her and continually suffered the heart rending carnage of her infidelity. She eventually left Hosea and fell about as far as a woman could. She became a slave, with all of the shameful implications of a woman hitting rock bottom. She was at the lowest point she could have possibly fallen to. It was what she rightly deserved ... but Hosea still bought her back and redeemed her...

Hosea represents Father God ... and I, in the story I've written, I am Gomer. I was created by God for Himself, but I found other pursuits. I found other lusts and other desires that betrayed the faithfulness and loyalty that I owed to him. I represent the prostitute shamelessly having given myself to things and desires other than to the God I belong to...

I am Gomer, we're all Gomer and our Lord offers us all, regardless of our past a completely undeserved opportunity to be redeemed from the shameful infidelity and failures of our past and to be lifted, not just to some position in His house, but to the highest position - His faithful lover... what's your answer?

I was once "the one" lost, shameful and hopeless, rightly condemned to the ultimate disgrace without any reason or right to expect anything better...

I am now "the one" deemed righteous, faithful and eternally grateful, passionate lover of God, seated in high, heavenly places - enjoying daily the eternally faithful, intimate and passionate relationship of a God who is all that I could have ever hoped for and far far more than I ever deserved ...

I am now "that one"...

How about you?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xx0d3R2LoU&feature=share