So God first pursued me before I began to pursue Him. How/when did that happen? I can remember some of the sequence of events, but how to know when God first began pursuing me??
In 1997 I was a committed atheist. One line of reasoning was, how can we put faith in something written 2000 years ago, when people still believed the earth was flat?? The truth of that is that Pythagoras first proposed that the earth was round around 500 BC. And Aristotle formally declared the Earth to be a sphere around 350 BC. So there went that theory.
Some time later, one of the most fundamental questions of humanity – other than the existence of God Himself – is “What was before the beginning?”. No human can honestly answer that question, so my point isn’t the unfathomable answer to the question, but that the answer is unfathomable, that our brains simply aren’t capable of grasping the concept. That’s a pretty big shortcoming in our brains, that we can’t truly grasp the concept of infinity. Or of an infinite universe. Or of an infinite being.... or Being.
Once my arrogant mind came to terms with that, where did that leave my belief that there is no Being greater than we humans? It was simple, really: our minds can’t grasp the existence or non-existence of such a Being. Ah. So it falls back on something called Faith.
This is where there’s a very big gap in that “sequence of events” that I’m recalling.
Prior to 1997 … much earlier in the 1990s … I had become addicted to cocaine, to the point of spending about $500 per week on my habit. My friends and I were cooking it down – called “freebasing” to my understanding – to end up with something far more potent, more commonly known as crack cocaine. We would process it such that we ended up with a round “pearl” of a chunk, and we would cut it up in order to smoke it.
One night, I found myself in the frequent position of being out of cocaine. Being alone in my apartment, I got down on the floor to dig in the carpet for any pieces I may have dropped at one time or another. And it was as though my eyes were opened to what I was doing, what I had done to myself. So I got up off the floor, put all the paraphernalia in a box, and never touched cocaine again.
But wait, wasn’t I addicted to the drug?? How could I possible just quit without any kind of withdrawals??? Oddly enough, that question never crossed my mind. I just made up my mind to stop, and that was that. (The fact that my brain was so infused with crack cocaine may have had something to do with the complete lack of reasoning and thought in the decision.)
I really don’t remember why I decided to get my first Bible, but I do remember a neighbor going with me to the store and helping me to choose one. With Bible in hand, I started taking a lounge chair and my dog to a city park and just sitting and reading. Soon after, I started going to a non-denominational church in Dallas, formally called the Scofield Memorial Church. Years passed, I met another neighbor woman who I later married, and we attended an Assembly of God church in the area.
Once I was exposed to genuine Bible teaching, and the concept of the Holy Spirit speaking to our hearts, the Pursuit began. And it is picking up momentum after these 25-some-odd years.
But because my mind was in no condition to think these things through, there’s no doubt -- None -- that God first pursued me.