The grace-abounding Shepherd.

I think a lot about my Godless past and where I am now. I came from a non-Christian upbringing (my father has since been saved) and I always wonder where my life would be now if God hadn’t rescued me.

I don’t even want to begin to think about it.

It’s interesting because I know throughout my life God was pulling at me, yet I seemed to never really pay attention to it. I had begun to seek Him in my early teens and He allowed me to wallow in a lot of sin for a long season before He suddenly began tugging at my heart harder than ever before. I remember that time after time things would go great for me and I wouldn’t give God any credit. I know, somewhere outside of this realm in Heaven, God was saying, “Hello!!! It was me!” Over and over I was bailed out of every situation that I was in and forgot about Him.

Then, I got into a terrible relationship. Bad situation. Don’t get me wrong, it seemed perfect, but I was making all the wrong decisions. Once that ended, I was at a really low point in my life before I finally began to start progressing back towards Him.

If you’ve ever seen The Simpsons Movie, there is a part where the whole town is about to die and everyone in the bar runs to the church and everyone in the church runs to the bar. Comical, and so true.

That was me, running to God only when I needed Him. The amazing thing is, He still took me in. It’s not often that you will find a love that is so forgiving, but then again, we don’t understand the extent of God’s love no matter how much we think we do.

Agape is a word that gets lost in the Greek to English translation. It means “God’s love”; divine, unchanging, self-sacrificing, forgiving, perfect. I spoke in another post about God’s love being described in 1 John 4, but today I was drawn to this popular verse:

1 Peter 5:6-10 – Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.

Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that your brothers throughout the world are undergoing the same kind of sufferings.

And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast.

Satan may very well have used that relationship to hurt me, but God used it for His glory and brought me back to Him.

I guess the point of the story is that God never gives up on us. He loves us, He seeks us, and eventually He will catch us. Thankfully, God is a grace-abounding Shepherd. We deserve to be let loose to the wolves by Him for the way we act, but He is patient with His wandering sheep.

It struck me deep today how much grace God has poured on me over the years, and I’m comforted and excited to know that this is only the beginning…

No sweeter name than the name of Jesus.