There is something special about pulling a book off the shelf - one that you've read before. Maybe you've read it once, three times; maybe the number is closer to a dozen. Today I pulled such a book from the shelf and blew the dust from the title: The Pursuit of God.  As I flip through the book, I can hear the author, AW Tozer, reminding me what it means to be redeemed. 

He says, “To have found God and still pursue Him is the soul’s paradox of love.” 

How does this remind me about my identity as a redeemed girl?  Let me give you an example.

When I first met my husband and we started dating, the pursuit was on.  He was driving almost an hour for weeks in a row to visit my university.  We spent time doing so many different things together – playing games with our friends, spending time alone, talking about our families.  We wanted to know everything about each other.  No effort was too much, no drive too far, it was always worth it to have time together.  How weird would it have been if once we got married all of that stopped.  What if I said, “Well now I know a lot about you, and we’re married.  The important things are done.  I think I’ll get my own place.  It’ll be a lot simpler.”  That would be crazy!  A friend of mine (Denbigh Cherry) wrote a song for his wife on their wedding day.  There are two lines I really like.  The first says, “I do believe I love you even more today than I ever have.”  I love that because it rings true to the significance of the moment.  This is their wedding day; love is at its peak!  But there’s another line that I like even more, “I do believe I’ll love you even more tomorrow than I do right now.”  He realizes that this is just the beginning. 

Sometimes we over-emphasize the starting place of redemption, the prayer or experience that kicks off our Christian journey.  We have misunderstood the beginning and have called it the end. Salvation is not just the end; it is the beginning - the beginning of life eternal, the beginning of knowing God. John says it (Jn 17:3); Paul says it (Phil 3:7-14); and God says it, "I am your portion and your inheritance" (Num 18:20). 

A worship song by Pete James says, “Jesus saves and is still saving me.”  To be truly redeemed means that once we have found God, we still seek Him.  When our journey with God begins, we must be careful to remember that the best is yet to come!  We can enjoy the endless pursuit of God Himself.  Let’s not lose God at the beginning.  “To have found God and still pursue Him is the soul’s paradox of love.”  Let’s insist that we know Him and that we experience Him in the daily grind of our lives, or we are missing the point entirely.

"Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus." Philippians 3:12-14