Celebrate Good News
Another way we can focus on the real thing is to celebrate the good news of Jesus daily. Think about what you’re really looking forward to in the next month—a birthday, a family gathering, a concert by your favorite band, even a Monday Night Football game! Does the kind of joy you experience in your anticipation of this event seem stronger than the joy you experience from encountering God on a daily basis? The point of the question isn’t to take you away from things you like to do in your life. Enjoy the game! But ask the question because it helps pin down an often-wayward heart.
And undoubtedly it’s not only the things that excite us in life that can try and replace God. A friend of mine, a theological professor and all-around incredible person, went through a period of depression that lingered in his life. It came to a point where he kept a loaded gun in his office drawer and daily flirted with the impulse to end his own life.
One weekend taking communion at church, he had a life-changing experience. He was praying through his list of sins, as he did every time he took communion, and suddenly he just stopped and said, “God, I’m sorry, not just because of what I have done, but because I have broken relationship with you.” The tears flowed as it all came out in a torrent.
God had become status quo—reduced to attend church, read your Bible, pray through the list of sins. The rules had become anchors around his neck and they were pulling him under. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t keep it all together. He was taking himself way too seriously and not taking the grace of God seriously enough. The day it all began to change was at rock bottom when he came back to that simple relationship with God.
The weeks after this moment, he seemed to completely change before my eyes. He smiled again, even started cutting up and acting ornery. This kid inside him that had been buried under his performance was freed as he based his life again on the foundation of God’s love and mercy. He just came back to the fact that God pursued him in his sin, found him, saved him, redeemed him, and is still pursuing him each day. He was free to live as an imperfect person who is perfectly loved.
Perhaps it’s time to look beyond your frustrations, fatigue and list of sins and see again the God who continues to pursue you. He’s not sitting back with his arms crossed waiting to see if you can pull it together. He’s not trying to convert you so you can just go to church, be good, and make your mama happy. Jesus didn’t die so you could only perform your religious duties. He died so you can be in a divine romance with a living God. Out of that union everything flows. He’s more concerned about you than all the sacrifices, energy and time you’ve committed to him.
This good news of Christ should point you forward and soften the bad news of life. The dishwasher breaks, but you have good news! Your back aches, but you have good news! The pipes leak, but you have good news! You get a flat tire the afternoon your cell phone battery dies, but you have good news! You’ve been let in on a remarkable mystery—the God of the universe loves you and accepts you in Christ. He delights in you and you in him. This should shape you and bring you joy. So I’ve been looking at my life and asking, “Am I acting like a person whose life is shaped by the good news of Christ?”
Enjoying God
We can also stay focused on the real thing by seeking to intentionally enjoy God. Have you ever wondered what really brings God pleasure? It is no secret. The Bible tells us plainly what we can do that delights him. God’s “delight is in those who fear him, those who put their hope in his unfailing love” (Ps. 147:11).
When you trust him with your daily needs and your deepest longings, when you believe his love will not fail you, he delights. He commits to rejoicing in you with all his heart and soul and doing good to you. What a beautiful eye-opener! Your trust in God’s faithful love is something he exalts in! When you pray, you bring God pleasure. He “delights in the prayers of the upright” (Prov. 15:8). Prayer acknowledges your dependence on God and your commitment to him. When you obey, you bring God pleasure (1 Sam. 15:22). Since God delights in giving you mercy, you can cheerfully obey from the refuge of his love. Each day you can not only enjoy God, but also bring him joy!
Everything we give our ultimate allegiance to that is smaller than God will simply fail us. The hunger for meaning, the desire for pleasure, the thirst for love or romance that draws us to so many things can only be fulfilled in God. I see this every day on the streets of Las Vegas. The self-proclaimed “Sin City” has established its reputation. But the untold story is the brokenness, the pain and the hurt of its inhabitants—the inevitable result of a city designed to max out your senses and push your pleasures to the limit.
When people come to church in Vegas, they don’t need to be convinced there is sin or darkness. They’ve lived it, seen it and tasted it. They know that the idols of sex, pleasure and entertainment are empty in themselves. They come seeking God, seeking substance and seeking something that will last beyond a momentary flash. They often don’t feel they can ever be forgiven for things they have done or things they have seen, but what they find is a God who not only takes them back, but has been pursuing them all along.
They discover that God’s love and grace are bigger than anything they imagined. It’s much more than a religion; they have entered a relationship with a loving and grace-filled God. He never gave up on them. Just as he’s never given up on you. And by keeping this divine romance first in our hearts, we experience the joy for which we were created.
So far our guy Hosea is off to a really rough start. His wife is cheating on him and his kids have horrible names, and it’s all very intense. We’re a long way from Mayberry. No wonder this story has never been made into a movie! This intensity captures God’s divine obsession for us and calls us back to him, but we can miss the big picture and get the wrong message.
Maybe you’re already feeling pressure. Frustrated by your wayward heart, all this passion of God may feel overwhelming. You know you need to deal with your sin and idolatry, but what do you do when you fall back into the same destructive habits again and again? You sense the pull to gear up and try harder, to run fast after God, but you’ve got a hunch that, within a month, your sprint will go through a slow fade into a weary limp.
More guilt and condemnation are not really what God is trying to get at by calling our attention to idolatry. God’s pursuit, not ours, is primary over each page in Hosea, and his intensity only puts an exclamation point on his love. If he cares this much, rejoice with certainty that he’ll meet you in your sin, love you in your betrayal and give you strength when you’re limping along. How could he not nurture you with his mighty arms? How could he not fan into flame even the smallest ember in your heart toward him? How could he not be faithful to you even in your fatigue?
If it seems too good to be true, just wait, it gets better! We’ll turn our attention now to this miracle of God’s grace that leads him to pursue us to begin with, even as we wrestle with our sin and idolatry. Even when in our weariness we don’t wrestle at all. We’ll be inspired by Hosea to accept God’s grace in the deeper places of our hearts and stop the brutal cycles of shame, guilt, and performance before God.
Excerpted from the book Pursued: God’s Divine Obsession With You by Jud Wilhite. Copyright © 2013. Reprinted by permission of FaithWords. All rights reserved.
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