The Chase

For no one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them to me.

~John 6:44 NLT

A shout peeled through the quiet morning air. The chase was about to begin.

Deer hunting in the South. The Deep South, that is. Where the swamps rule, and the snakes and alligators grow big. There’s just nothing quite like it.

Dad wouldn’t allow me to own a 12-gauge shotgun until I was fifteen. Before that, he gave me a 410-gauge, which is not suitable for shooting deer. When I visited my cousins and my grandfather, who lived on a farm in Vance, South Carolina, I joined them and a host of other men on the Saturday morning deer hunts.

The men loaded the younger of us in the back of the pickup trucks, and the older men either dropped us off along the roadside or stationed us along the edges of fields. We waited until another group of men dropped the dogs off at another point. How they knew the dogs would run the deer our way, I never understood. They just knew the lay of the land.

As I stood there on those cold, crisp autumn mornings, I waited to hear the dogs and the voices of the men who drove them. Chills peppered my spine, and my hands sweated against the cold steel of the gun barrel as I waited, hoping to see a buck and get a shot.

Although I never killed a deer, I enjoyed the chase. My grandfather enjoyed the chase so much that he often never left his truck. He just sat, listened, and let the younger of us learn to enjoy it, too.

Jesus told about a heavenly chase. One carried out by Him through the person of the Holy Spirit. In fact, the entire Bible is about this chase, a chase that initially ensued when Adam and Eve chose to run their own way. The chase occurs because we need chasing, and covering ourselves with fig leaves of our own making won’t suffice. Like the deer, who perhaps think they are heading in the right direction, we bolt down the wrong path every time. Sin pulls us that way, just as instinct takes the deer away from the dogs. Left to ourselves, we’ll keep going the wrong way throughout life and into eternity. Sin causes us to run in the first place—and keeps us running thereafter.

But as the cooler temps and shorter days of fall chase away the summer heat, so God chases that sin in us that makes us sprint from Him. He wants to turn us toward Him. The seasons must change, and love likewise prompts God to chase us. Through His Spirit, God convicts and draws—chases—hoping we’ll turn to Him for forgiveness and abundant life. He wants no one to perish, but all to experience salvation. Beyond that, He wants us to enjoy life as He originally intended. And since I’m a little hardheaded, I’m glad God enjoys the chase, too.

If God’s chasing you, be thankful. But stop running and determine why He is chasing you.

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