I keep coming back to Psalm 139.
It has always been one of the most beautiful Psalms to me, but I think I understand it differently now than I did years ago.
God examines my heart.
He knows everything about me.
He knows when I sit down and when I get up. He knows my thoughts before I even understand them myself. He knows what I am going to say before the words ever leave my mouth.
He goes before me.
He follows behind me.
There is nowhere I can go where He isn’t already there.
And somewhere along the way, I think I forgot that.
I started comparing my relationship with God to my relationships with people.
When my life blew up, people judged me.
People fled.
People who had once been part of my life wanted nothing to do with me. People talked. They gossiped. I felt the looks when I walked into a room or saw someone in public.
There were a few who stayed beside me, and I will never forget them. I will never forget the texts, the calls and the way they acted like Jesus to me.
But so many didn’t.
And somewhere in all of that, I think I decided God must have left too.
If people who claimed to love me could walk away because of what I had done, surely a holy God wanted nothing to do with me.
So I hid.
But here’s what I wish I could go back and tell that version of myself:
GOD NEVER LEFT!
Not for one second.
In fact, when I look back now, I realize He pursued me even more relentlessly.
Some of the darkest times of my life were the times I felt God the most.
And it wasn’t always the warm, comforting side of God that I wanted to feel.
Sometimes it was conviction.
Sometimes He made me painfully aware of what my choices had cost.
Sometimes He showed me things about myself that I didn’t want to see.
He didn’t shrug His shoulders at my sin and say it didn’t matter.
It mattered.
I had broken His heart.
And He loved me enough to show me that.
But somehow, even His conviction was smothered in love.
That’s the difference I didn’t understand back then.
People judged me and walked away.
God convicted me and came closer.
People talked about me.
God talked to me.
People saw what I had done and decided who I was.
God knew every single thing I had done, every thought I had thought, every motive buried inside my heart—and still pursued me.
Relentlessly.
Psalm 139 says:
Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?
I know the answer to that now.
Nowhere.
I couldn’t outrun Him.
I couldn’t disappoint Him into abandoning me.
I couldn’t wander somewhere He wasn’t willing to follow.
Even when I made my bed in the darkest places of my life, He was there.
I wish I had understood that then.
I wish I hadn’t confused the judgment of people with the heart of God.
I wish I hadn’t allowed the whispers, the stares and the opinions of people to convince me that I needed to hide.
Because if I could go back and stand beside that woman now, I think I would tell her:
Don’t mistake their absence for His.
Don’t mistake their judgment for His voice.
Don’t hide from the One who already knows everything about you.
He knows the whole story.
He knows what you did.
He knows why you did it.
He knows what it will cost you.
He knows who you were.
And He already knows who you are becoming.
You don’t have to run from Him.
He’s already there.
And years later, when you finally look back over all the places you’ve been, you’re going to realize something you can’t quite see right now.
You thought you were trying to find your way back to God.
But God had been pursuing you the entire time.
Relentlessly.
