(This is an excerpt from Ben’s book, The Divine Chase: Responding to a Pursuing God. Hope it blesses!)[i]
"Without water, you are simply dead. All life depends on it. It covers most of the planet upon which we live. Two hydrogens and one oxygen. Two plus one. Two hydrogen atoms covalently bonding to one oxygen atom. H2 O. Water. Wonderful, beautiful water.
"In its pure form, it is tasteless and odorless but the most wonderful substance known. It gives us life, and it gives us tears. We cook with it. We play in it. We cleanse with it. We build with it. Doctors operate with it. We conserve it, and we waste it. It floats around us in the air and takes our ships around the earth. It cools us in the summer and warms us in the winter. It frames our mountains and replenishes our crops. It is rivers and lakes and streams and icebergs and glaciers and snowflakes and dew.
"The soft glimmer of moonlight bounces upon its surface, and it becomes the incarnation of romance. It makes children laugh, splash, swim, and giggle. It helps you work and play. It helps a man teach a boy to be a man. It helps a woman mold a girl into a lady. With it, God surrounds this world and then protects and embraces it. It encloses and protects our children in the womb. At times, it has taken life, and at other times, it has been worshiped.
"We drink it. When we have labored in the sun, we crave it. And when it touches our tongue, it quenches our thirst and satisfies us. We weep it. It gives us life, and it gives us tears. It is pulled from the heavens by gravity, a force we still do not understand fully but has scientific ramifications that stretch our human comprehension to its limits.
"Yes, his pursuit of us can be seen everywhere, even in the simplicity and complexity of water. And from water, we find so many other wonderfully simple things, and among that vast array lives beauty, subjective but shared. And in beauty, we detect the hand of God. Beauty feeds the heart and the soul. We look at a field of flowers brought to life by water, and most of us react to the color, shape, fragrance, and movement.
"We are reacting to the art of God, his simple art that is the story that he is always pursuing us. Everything that we know that God does is an act of pursuit at its core. When he created the universe, it was as an artist creating a masterpiece. In his mind, the artist has the thing of beauty to mold, paint, design, and build. He pursues it and dances with it unrelentingly until he has it in his grasp. Everything the artist creates reflects the artist. It is uniquely him. All of his joys and trials are there. All of his victories and failures are there. All of his loves, hates, and pains are there. Whatever is the sum of his being touches it. Though it is mere color, shape, light, or image, it becomes more than an object. It goes beyond the here and now, beyond this temporal existence into the eternal world of beauty. We look upon it, touch it, breathe it in, and find life from it.
"We always respond to it—perhaps with joy, perhaps with sorrow, perhaps with dread—but we respond. The art of God is us. That is as it should be. We don’t really pursue God, as some suggest. In reality, it is God pursuing us. As the artist creates and the sculptor shapes, so God created and shaped his universe. And we are not just part of creation. We are its epicenter, for in his creative will, he has directed his attentions to us in pursuit."
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[i] Bounds, Ben. The Divine Chase: Responding to a Pursuing God: Bloomington, IN: Westbow Press, a division of Thomas Nelson and Zondervan, 2017, p. 38–39. Reprinted by permission.
©2017 By Ben Bounds. All rights reserved.
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We can come to know Christ through confession of our sins and repentance (turning away from sin). Let me encourage you to do this by talking to God through prayer. Here is an idea of how you might do that:
"Dear God, I believe your son Jesus Christ died in my place on the cross and rose from the dead on the third day following his death. I confess my sins, all of them, to you now with a humble heart. I repent of those sins and ask you to empower me with your Holy Spirit in overcoming further sin. Amen”
If you prayed this or a similar prayer committing your life to Christ and becoming one of his followers, let me encourage you to find a good, Bible-believing church. If you live in the Weslaco/Rio Grand Valley area of Texas, let me invite you to the church I attend, Mid-Valley Assembly (www.midvalleyassembly.com).
Begin talking to God in prayer and reading the Bible daily. A good way to begin to read the Bible is to start with the Book of John in the New Testament.
Feel very free in connecting with me if you need any further help in your walk with the Lord Jesus Christ. You can do this via the above email or facebook page or this web page.
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Mercy Road Ministries was founded and now led by Ben Bounds. Ben has pastored churches across Texas for over thirty years and is an ordained minister with the Christian and Missionary Alliance (C&MA). He holds a BA in Pastoral Ministry and Biblical Studies from Southwestern Assemblies of God College and did graduate theological studies at the BMA Theological Seminary.
Ben's first book, The Divine Chase: Responding to a Pursuing God, was released on 12.08.2017 through Westbow Press, a division of Thomas Nelson and Zondervan. It is available in paperback and hardback through your preferred bookseller (Mardels, Barnes and Noble, etc.) and paperback, hardback as well as ebook through online book retailers (www.christianbook.com, www.cokesbury.com, www.amazon.com, www.booksamillion.com, www.barnesandnoble.com, etc.).
Ben is the host of Staying in Bounds, an on-air Bible devotional broadcast multiple times daily on KWJV 103.7 FM Weslaco, TX which can also be heard worldwide online at www.kwjvthestar.com.
Ben and his wife, Linda, together have four adult children and nine grandchildren. They live in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas.
Ben can be contacted for preaching engagements at benbounds695@gmail.com or 903.441.3279. Ben can also be contacted via his website @ www.benbounds.com, which is also his blog and contains more information about his ministry.
Follow Ben @ https://www.facebook.com/mercyroadministries/ and this website www.benbounds.com.
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