God's Pursuit of Me, Part 1

I’ve been wanting to write this blog post for about a month. Warning, there’s lots of pieces involved…so it will probably be long!! {Edit: It will actually be a short (possibly!?) series of posts}

Last month as part of our Servant Teams training, we talked about the concept of Missio Dei, which describes the person of God Himself, as an outwardly-moving, lovingly-pursuing God.

As I wrote in my email newsletter,

“When you read the phrase, 'the Pursuit of God,' what is the first thought that comes to your mind? Because that simple phrase can be taken two ways, to mean two very different things. 

Option 1: We pursue relationship with God through reading the Bible, praying, attending church, etc.
Option 2: God has pursued and continues pursing relationship with us--primarily by incarnationally moving onto our turf and by speaking through His Spirit and His Word to our hearts. 

Talking about this topic in our training made me reflect back. In my childhood up through high school, I think I was more focused on option one, at least in the 'once I'm a Christian' sense. But sometime in the past 10 years, God opened my eyes and shifted my perspective. He's not sitting up in heaven waiting on us to respond to Jesus and come to Him. The Good Shepherd is out in the wide world, constantly searching for the hearts of His people--throughout their whole lives.”

So when Mandee asked us to draw a picture about the Pursuit of God before she started talking about it, this is what came out of my heart & soul:

At the end of our training on Missio Dei, Mandee gave us an assignment: To create an art piece showing three ways that God has pursued us in our life. Within a couple of minutes, I had jotted down a brief outline in my notes of what I wanted to do for my piece. The actual execution of it took most of a weekend, and some extra bits got added, even after presenting it to my class—but this is the finished project which came out of that assignment:

So the rest of this series I’m going to give you the back story behind each element. Because although I enjoyed being artsy and creating this, I’m still a writer first and foremost :D

But first, a caveat: I talked in my newsletter about how pre-college Esther heard “pursuit of God” and thought of herself pursuing God. So my art piece focuses on life after I began realizing that really, God pursues me. That does NOT mean that God never pursued my heart when I was a child. He definitely did!!! Maybe another time I’ll write more about that. But as far as my conscious recognition of God pursuing me, that has been more in the past 10 years.

Element 1: Heart Unshackled

This section could be a whole blog post!! And maybe someday I will do that. But I’m going to try to keep it short here.

I’ve come to realize that at a relatively young age, I built a castle wall / tower cell around my heart. Instead of sharing with people how I was feeling and how things were affecting me, I started bottling it all up inside. This was at its worst during my “spiritual dark ages” of middle school/high school.

God was still lovingly pursuing me even through that dark period of my life. But it wasn’t until the second half of high school that I learned I could write (as God’s gifting) and that writing was the easiest way to give voice to what was in my heart. And it wasn’t until God took me away from everything familiar to attend college a five-hour drive away from home that I was able to start recognizing the poor relational habits I had towards God and towards those close to me.

A couple weeks ago, during some prayer closet time, I suddenly realized that God has always used times of taking me outside {usually WAY outside} of my familiar atmosphere/comfort zone to do the most work of growth/change/refinement in me. In a lot of ways that makes sense, I had just never quite phrased it in my head before.

China. World Views class. Moving away to college. Going to Uganda. Coming to Portland.

Each of those major life shifts have brought about major changes and growth opportunities, and I am thankful!! But that’s kind of a tangent….! :)

So I went to college, not realizing that my heart was shackled away in a high, dark cell of loneliness and not letting anyone see the REAL me. And I was tired….tired of acting and trying to put on the right outward mask.

Then one day in chapel, Paraclete spoke GRACE deeply, deeply into my heart:

“What you do is not a question of earning My love. You can never earn it. Salvation is a free gift, based on nothing you do, My child. I already love you more than you know – no matter what.”

You can read more about the context/ramifications in this other blog post. But this is the picture He gave me in that moment:

I have carried that picture in my heart for seven and a half years, but had never tried to put it onto paper. When this art project came up, I knew it was time. Time to pull out all the stops, finding images online, tracing them in Illustrator, putting it all together to show what God did in my heart that day.

I know, there’s a word there that most of you don’t recognize – Kisakye. That word wasn’t part of the original picture, because I didn’t know it until years later, in Uganda. Kisakye is the Luganda word for Grace, and is what I took for myself as my “Ugandan name.”

The beauty of God’s Grace has continued to be such an important heart concept for me over these past years. I’m still learning to apply it to my life…it can be hard for me to accept Grace rather than staying shackled in the cell of my own expectations and demands on myself. But God continues to faithfully work this in my heart! And I am thankful.

Well….I think I am a bit written out for the time being. There is more I could say about that heart picture, but maybe some other day. For now, it’s time to get ready for a day at UGM. I will come back another time to explain the other elements of my art piece!