If you want to learn about pursuit, there's no one better placed than God Himself to learn from. From the beginning of time, God has been steady pursuing mankind to redeem, restore and to reconcile us back to the place that He ordained and set for us. And we know by now that He never grows weary of doing that which He has promised and that He is not a man that He should lie or change His mind. So from everlasting to everlasting, His heart is for you with an ageless Love that He reveals to you in every season of your life.
To pursue in Hebrew is translated as "Radaph" which means to “to follow, to run after, to chase” or, quite literally, “to hunt you down.”
Matthew 9:37-38 AMPLIFIED VERSION
"Then He said to His disciples, The harvest is indeed plentiful, but the laborers are few. So pray to the Lord of the harvest to force out and thrust laborers into His harvest.
Does it make sense why He (Lover of souls) is moved to force out and thrust labourers into the harvest? It's because every soul in need of redemption and an encounter with Christ counts. Each and every one.
Here's the thing though: We don't "radaph" lost souls much because we ourselves don't "radaph" hard after God much. Christians are called followers of Christ but do we really chase after and steady hunt down God because only He matters and satisfies? This is the one reason David was called a man after God's own heart. Nothing else mattered to him but God and God alone. The problem is, we're not hungry.
Hungry people don't have etiquette. They're not proper. Their hunger cannot be hidden. If the refugee camps are anything to go by, when food shows up, there's a struggle in the camp to get to it. If only His people hungered for Him like that...
What about when God shows up?
Are we conscious of His presence?
How do we respond to Him?
We forget easily. One time past, you were a wandering heart wildly chasing after the illusion of a better life before you finally ran right into the arms of God.
There is a selfishness resident in every ungodly contentment. It's the contentment that makes us stay when we are called to move. It's the contentment that makes us look away when the wail of a sick heart pierces our ears. It's the contentment that makes us watch a soul fade away.
The simple truth is that the great commission begins where you are. It's not for you to pack suitcases and leave to far away countries when people outside your doorstep are perishing. Our God is a God of charity. And charity (love) begins at home. And the message of love is the message of Christ. Of a Love that breaks boundaries, a Love that covers sin, a Love that redeems and restores stretching wider than our imaginations.
Increase your radius. Where you are right now, God needs to use you if you are willing, available and obedient. That's the genesis of the great commission (Acts 2:44-47) Because God saves the limping ones and gathers the outcasts. He draws them to Himself (Zephaniah 3:19-20) His heart is for them even when all they see are broken bones, wounds and shame. God loves people more than anything.
But how will they know what they have not heard?
Even more, how can we preach what we are yet to fully trust and believe?
Our "radaph" is incomplete because we don't trust the reputation of the One who choreographed all life to brings us back to Himself.
Yet His message of love is simple: He desires you above all else. You. Not things. Not doings. You. Just you. This is the simple message at which burdens that coil around a life fall. It is the message that wipes years of shame, guilt and regret from our faces. That we mean everything to Him.
And we cannot preach what we ourselves do not know. We need a personal revelation of God's immeasurable boundless Love. We need to thirst after God until His heart is bare before us. Until our heart is like His - beating with the same passions and desires as His own. It's the only way that we will passionately minister to the lost about Christ. It's the only way that we will see the broken as He does: People aching for perfect Love that never fails. And we will know where to lead them - right to His Heart.
