This was the first question posed at the opening session of a 5-week Sunday-School-Hour meeting based on the book "Pursuing God" by A.W. Tozer.
In fact, there were five questions for the week, one to ponder each day, and this first one was definitely fantastic to start out with. Pursuing God is all about falling in love with Him, and even just from this one question I am finding myself falling more for Him than I have in awhile. He truly is magnificent and mind-blowing yet gentle and so patient...
Today's question (and answer) brought some interesting Scriptures to my mind, and this morning as I looked them up God brought several more to me! But before I tell you the answer to the question, let me show you the verses and see if you can catch the underlying theme that I found:
Psalm 65:4
"Blessed is the man You choose, and cause to approach You, that he may dwell in Your courts. We shall be satisfied with the goodness of Your house, of Your holy temple."
1 John 4:19
"We love Him because He first loved us."
Romans 5:8
"But God demonstrates His own love toward us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us."
Romans 8:29-30
"For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover whom He predestined, these He also called; whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified."
Luke 19:10
"For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost."
Do you see it? Go back and read those again. I'm serious. It only takes a few moments to read, yet sooooo much time can be spent truly digesting these small passages from God's great Love Letter to us. I took a walk tonight so I could be alone with God to think and talk over them and I love them all. So... What's the underlying theme here?
***
I hope you actually took a moment to think about that; now I'll tell you what I saw personally. In each of these verses, we see that before WE can seek God, HE has to draw us FIRST! It's not like God only shows us His grace once we decide for ourselves that we want Him (otherwise some people would NEVER get saved! ;-) ). He pursues us first. HE is the one that chooses us, knocks on the door, waits for us to get it. And then when we do, He saves us... just think! He alone is the Catalys for our faith, the Savid One, the Overcomer with us, and then the Judge and Rewarder at the end! What kind of crazy love for us is that, that He would be alongside us so much?
See the verses again. He foreknew us; He came back to seek the lost, those not already "with it"; we can only love because He has loved us first; God causes us to approach Him and then we are satisfied with Him. What a gentle, patient, longsuffering God that woos us.
Beloved friends, what a truth. It all goes back to Him, even before we were saved it was because of Him. There was never a moment that He was not aware, working and allowing things to happen that accomplish His sovereign will and plan. We don't pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps to Jesus. God beckons us!
So, to answer that original question, Provenient Grace was defined as God's grace in pursuing us SO THAT we can pursue Him. Before we can be saved, God pursues us. What a foundation on which to find your love and pursuit growing!
As a side note, I feel like this will definitely change the way I pray for unsaved friends. I won't pray anymore that they'd see the light by themselves and "turn on the power" to start something brand new, but more like God would pursue them and open the eyes of their hearts to see Him there, already working... "turn on the light" to see what has been going on all along, unseen by them.
***
Before I was saved You were calling,
Wanting to catch me as I was falling,
Just waiting for me to put my life "all in"
For You and Your patient love were following
Me even while I was crawling
Trying to find my own way,
Do it on my own time on my own day,
Little did I know You were drawing,
Pursuing, lifting me above the fray.
I thought I needed to turn the power on,
Start something brand new with my own plan,
But it was more like flipping a light switch on,
To see the continued work of the Son of Man.
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