Hesed love

Hesed is the love that pursues you in your brokenness, meets you in your suffering, remains faithful through your struggles, and continually invites you into transformation.

Being a guitar player, I used to listen to Jimi Hendrix - “Are You Experienced?” back in the day. Now, thinking about the significance of having life experience takes on a deeper meaning when it comes to understanding our relationship with God… 

Have you experienced this “Hesed” type of love with God? 

Recently, I came across a video online of someone sharing that they needed to “command” themselves to love God each day. Honestly, this confused me because I wondered whether it might be possible that this person had not personally experienced first-hand this radical, amazing love of Christ. 

(Where words fail, music speaks) - 

“There's no shadow You won't light up

Mountain You won't climb up

Coming after me

There's no wall You won't kick down

Lie You won't tear down

Coming after me

Oh, the overwhelming, never-ending, reckless love of God

Oh, it chases me down, fights 'til I'm found, leaves the 99

I couldn't earn it, and I don't deserve it, still, You give Yourself away

Oh, the overwhelming, never-ending, reckless love of God”

-Reckless Love by Cory Asbury 

Have you ever experienced this reckless love of God meeting you in your absolute brokenness - consoling you, encouraging you, building you back up again? 

Have you ever been chased down by this reckless love of Jesus after you had spent most of your life completely lost and walking away from Him?

It’s the most absolute beautiful type of love…

I’m reminded of a personal story that happened years ago- which, I’ll have to leave out some details for privacy haha but here we go …

I once went to a country concert with some family members in a large stadium. You know how concerts go sometimes, everyone enjoys themselves and has a great time… well at the end of the concert, someone in our family got separated from us and lost in the crowd. This person had been enjoying themselves at the concert and was not completely aware of their surroundings I will say…. 

Well long story short, the concert ended and about 77,000 people all exited the stadium at the same exact time which pushed our family member into a sea of people, completely lost. 

We gave them a call but .. you know how these things go… we got the ever-so-descriptive: “I’m by a bench…”  and “There’s a dog….” 

Made it pretty tricky to narrow down their exact location haha. Not to mention it was a country concert which meant just about all 77K people in attendance were wearing the exact same thing: flannel. 

But when you truly love someone, you are connected through that love and always find them. I said a lot of prayers, took off my cowboy boots, and went running through the stadium parking lot until I found them. And I brought them home.

That’s what Jesus does for us. But in SO much more of an amazing, profound, incredible, and beautiful way that we cannot even fathom….

“I hear you whisper underneath your breath

I hear your SOS, your SOS

I will send out an army to find you

In the middle of the darkest night

It's true, I will rescue you

I will never stop marching to reach you

In the middle of the hardest fight

It's true, I will rescue you”

-Rescue by Lauren Daigle 

PS- I know everyone is on their own path in their faith journey but I also feel inclined to share that I have personally felt (especially recently) that I have experienced this first-hand radical love of God while attending Adoration at a Catholic church. Jesus is truly present in a very special way there. Sharing in case it encourages anyone to seek out this beautiful type of encounter with the living God.