What You Need to Know About God’s Unparalleled Longing

Here’s what I really want you to know about God: He has always desired to be with us. That’s who I find in the pages of Exodus as I rapid read The Voice translation for Mary Demuth’s 90 Day Bible Reading Challenge. A God who always makes a way for us to be near Him because He wants to be known. A God indescribably pained when we turn away.

With the Christmas story fresh on my mind, I see parallels to God moving in and living amongst us. Long before Jesus’s birth, God ached to talk with us as friends. Show us His glory. Overwhelm us with kindness. Erase anything that stands between us and Him.

I pause at this line:

I will live among the Israelites and be their God. And they will know that I am the eternal their God, who led them out of Egypt so that I could live among them. I am the Eternal One their God.

Exodus 29:45-46, The Voice

God wants to talk to us like a dear friend, as He did with Moses. Be known by us, just as He did with Aaron, who He gave a “way to know [His] will and make sound decisions for the people of Israel” (Exodus 28:20, The Voice).

He’s God With Us. Emmanuel, not just once a year, but every day behind and before us.

With us when we’re waiting in the car line.

With us as we squeeze in just one more thing before we leave.

With us as we grieve a goodbye.

With us as we step into something new with shaky steps.

With us as we wrestle in prayer through something we can’t understand yet.

With us as old memories tell us we’re still healing.

When You Want To Keep God Away

Maybe you’ve seen God as rigid and rule-enforcing. The ultimate disciplinarian. Absent unless you do something wrong. All-knowing and easily angered.

When that’s your view of God, you’d rather He stay out of your business. You don’t want to draw attention. You don’t want Him to notice you.

But let’s dig deeper, into the pain you’re carrying from the moments you felt invisible. The eye contact, hug, tender words that were missing. The way you shrank to appease or avoid someone else. How it left you numb or angry or resolute.

That scar is not you.

The pain is real, but you don’t have to carry it alone.

When you most want to keep God away, He pursues you. When you feel most unseen, God sees you. And when you couldn’t bridge the distance between you and God, He made a path with His very own Son.

That’s been His forever plan—to draw us close so we may know Him, adopt His nature, make His name famous. And right now, He’s asking you to set down the pain in the past and let His love heal you.

Naming the Pain

In order to place the painful pieces of our lives in God’s capable hands, we’ve first got to name them. Jennifer Dukes Lee offers space in her guided journal, Stuff I’d Only Tell God, to do just this. To preface the exercise, she writes:

Holes pockmark the soil of your life. They are empty, gaping. Inside these holes you feel real pain from the jagged spades that dug them. And if you’re honest with yourself, you probably haven’t processed these emotions like you should. You’ve got regrets. You wish you could have handled some things differently. There are wounds inflicted on you, and wounds you inflicted on others.

pg. 46

Then she points out a beautiful paradox: Holes are where we plant seeds. As she writes, “Those holes are not the end of you. If you look closely, they are places of beginning” (pg. 46).

What if the thing that makes you want to avoid God is actually a container for new life?

Just for a few moments, think on this: God’s desire for you is raging, wild, uncontainable. He can’t stay away. And something happens when you let His gaze reach into the hidden hurts.

He heals what’s broken and plants what you can’t see yet.

What You Need to Know About God: He Can’t Stay Away

What does it mean for us that God relentlessly longs to be with us?

It means there’s nothing in your life that His love can’t reach.

No pain, no broken promise, no character flaw that cancels His desire to be near you.

There’s nothing in your messy, human life that can make God stop coming for you.

He already knows it all, so nestle in close, and bare open your heart to Him. Get honest about the scars, the holes, the pain you’re still carrying. Then let Him exchange it for love that has no strings and knows no bounds.

Let’s pray.

God, you love me far too much to stay away. Your tender heart is jealous for the whole of my attention. Thank you for the way you love me. Help me to move towards You even when it hurts. Trust that You can grow beauty, especially in the most painful places. Bless others around me with the fruit you produce in my life, and always, always give You the credit.

Just a friend over here in your corner,

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