The Hound of Heaven

In 1893 Francis Thompson wrote a poem called the "Hound of Heaven" with these opening lines:

I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.

The poem is a look at a person who - like Jonah on a ship running away from God - tried to run from God only to find that God was hounding him down. There are many people facing this experience. If you are running from God, then there are certain common experiences you may be going through. It is not certain any one or all of these will happen, but you will probably experience one or more of the following:

1. No matter how many excuses you offer, you cannot shake the feeling that God wants something more from you.
2. Things go wrong with you over and over - unusually so.
3. You feel a cloud of despair that won't lift when it ordinarilly would.
4. You see the same verse, message, sign or whatever over and over. For example, if you go to church you may hear the pastor speak about the same subject you and your friends talked about recently. It may seem coincidental at first, but then another event takes place taking it further out of the realm of coincidence.
5. You have a nagging feeling that something is wrong that you can't put your finger on. It has been with you for quite some time, and only one answer comes to your mind. You reject it and reject it and reject it. But still the one answer haunts you.

There is good news for you. You are being hounded by God. You may not think that is good, but it is in fact awesome. It means that God has chosen you to be His.

SCRIPTURE FOR CONSIDERATION

You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain, that whatever you ask the Father in My name He may give you (John 15:16).

God chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love (Ephesians 1:4).