Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. But the LORD God called to the man, “Where are you?” Genesis 3:8-9

 For this is what the Sovereign LORD says: I myself will search for my sheep and look after them.   Ezekiel 34:11

We all know the story of Adam and Eve’s sin and the eyes of their understanding of good and evil being opened and subsequently covering themselves with fig leaves and hiding from God. Then God, as has been speculated, did something that He did on a regular basis, He was walking through the Garden. When He called “Where are you?” to Adam, it was not because He didn’t know where they were. He wanted them to know He was looking for them. 

This is just the first of many times throughout the scripture that His seeking after those He loves is either directly or indirectly spoken of. 

Speaking of going to seek after that which is lost, I am reminded of Jesus’ parable of the lost sheep and how the shepherd left the rest of the flock to go find the one that was lost. To conclude the message Jesus adds, “ it is not the will of your Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish” Matthew 18:14. In fact, “one of these little ones” actually refers to each and everyone of us. In fact, in yet another passage we are reminded of exactly how much He loves us and all that He has done to prove it.

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. John 3:16-17

The Father loves us so much both as a whole and as individuals that He sent His Son, down out of Heaven to come and live on Earth as a man for one purpose, to die so that we might be saved and restored to a right relationship with the Father. 

We are reminded yet again in Paul’s letter of the Father’s love and grace towards us.

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.  Ephesians 2:8-9

As I shared in another message to you, He gives us the FAITH that we need to receive GRACE as a FREE gift so that we can be SAVED. He is so in love with us that knowing we did not have the one thing needed to do our part to reach for Him, faith, he provided us with it! In other words, He loves us so much that He came to us and helped us to reach out to Him. 

‘For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will hardly die for a righteous man; though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. ‘ Romans 5:6-8

While we were still sinners and His ENEMY, He came running after us humbles himself, laying aside all of his authority and power as God and lived the life of a humble earthly man and ultimately gave up his innocent life here so that we could have eternal life with Him in Heaven, 

But God pursuing us is more than just salvation, there are so many more layers to this idea. 

Let me move on, but stay close to what we just talked about. As a part of The Father’s desire to be in intimate relationship with us, He promised to send an advocate, helper, comforter to us when Jesus returned to the Heavenly realm. As we all know, He kept this promise in the giving of the Holy Spirit, now abides WITHIN us! 

Truly it is now as David asked in Psalms 139 –

Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? Psalms 139:7

The verses all around this question, answer it quite eloquently, but I will summarize quite simply. “NO WHERE.”

Thus we can be assured that at some point He WILL catch us, As is written in the letters to the churches in Revelations –

 Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.  Revelation 3:20

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter how far or how long we run, He will ALWAYS be there, but just like I mentioned above, faith is a gift. We can choose to accept it and the MANY other gifts and blessings He desires to give us or we can refuse to accept it. Likewise, as this final verse says, He is standing at the door gently knocking, gently calling each of us by name. We can hear his call and go to the door and open it, letting Him into our mess, and allowing Him to clean it up, or we can continue to muddle and suffer through in our pain and suffering all on our own.

He IS chasing, are you willing to be caught?

Gary Tidwell Completed 1.21.2025