There's a line that by us remains unseen - it can be crossed. I want to brag on the Lord today. I also want to show respect and love to unbelievers that Jesus loves! Why? I want them to come to Christ before their hearts become permanently hardened.

God has been called the Hound of Heaven. He is still so serious about this relentless pursuit of sinners, following them with His holy love until they give up. Please let Him win. Just surrender and discover that the One you've been so fiercely fleeing from is the very One you've been seeking all along. Here's a poem on that. 

Here Is "The Hound of Heaven" By Francis Thompson (1859–1907)

"I FLED Him, down the nights and down the days;

I fled Him, down the arches of the years;

I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways

Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears

I hid from Him, and under running laughter.

Up vistaed hopes I sped;

And shot, precipitated,

Adown Titanic glooms of chasmèd fears,

From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.

But with unhurrying chase,

And unperturbèd pace,

Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,

They beat—and a Voice beat

More instant than the Feet—

‘All things betray thee, who betrayest Me.’

I pleaded, outlaw-wise,

By many a hearted casement, curtained red,

Trellised with intertwining charities;

(For, though I knew His love Who followèd,

Yet was I sore adread

Lest, having Him, I must have naught beside).

But, if one little casement parted wide,

The gust of His approach would clash it to.

Fear wist not to evade, as Love wist to pursue.

Across the margent of the world I fled,

And troubled the gold gateways of the stars,

Smiting for shelter on their clangèd bars;

Fretted to dulcet jars

And silvern chatter the pale ports o’ the moon.

I said to Dawn: Be sudden—to Eve: Be soon;

With thy young skiey blossoms heap me over

From this tremendous Lover—

Float thy vague veil about me, lest He see!

I tempted all His servitors, but to find

My own betrayal in their constancy,

In faith to Him their fickleness to me,

Their traitorous trueness, and their loyal deceit.

To all swift things for swiftness did I sue;

Clung to the whistling mane of every wind.

But whether they swept, smoothly fleet,

The long savannahs of the blue;

Or whether, Thunder-driven,

They clanged his chariot ’thwart a heaven,

Plashy with flying lightnings round the spurn o’ their feet:—

Fear wist not to evade as Love wist to pursue.

Still with unhurrying chase,

And unperturbèd pace,

Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,

Came on the following Feet,

And a Voice above their beat—

‘Naught shelters thee, who wilt not shelter Me.’

I sought no more that after which I strayed

In face of man or maid;

But still within the little children’s eyes

Seems something, something that replies,

They at least are for me, surely for me!

I turned me to them very wistfully;

But just as their young eyes grew sudden fair

With dawning answers there,

Their angel plucked them from me by the hair.

‘Come then, ye other children, Nature’s—share

With me’ (said I) ‘your delicate fellowship;

Let me greet you lip to lip,

Let me twine with you caresses,

Wantoning

With our Lady-Mother’s vagrant tresses,

Banqueting

With her in her wind-walled palace,

Underneath her azured daïs,

Quaffing, as your taintless way is,

From a chalice

Lucent-weeping out of the dayspring.’

So it was done:

I in their delicate fellowship was one—

Drew the bolt of Nature’s secrecies.

I knew all the swift importings

On the wilful face of skies;

I knew how the clouds arise

Spumèd of the wild sea-snortings;

All that’s born or dies

Rose and drooped with; made them shapers

Of mine own moods, or wailful or divine;

With them joyed and was bereaven.

I was heavy with the even,

When she lit her glimmering tapers

Round the day’s dead sanctities.

I laughed in the morning’s eyes.

I triumphed and I saddened with all weather,

Heaven and I wept together,

And its sweet tears were salt with mortal mine;

Against the red throb of its sunset-heart

I laid my own to beat,

And share commingling heat;

But not by that, by that, was eased my human smart.

In vain my tears were wet on Heaven’s grey cheek.

For ah! we know not what each other says,

These things and I; in sound I speak—

Their sound is but their stir, they speak by silences.

Nature, poor stepdame, cannot slake my drouth;

Let her, if she would owe me,

Drop yon blue bosom-veil of sky, and show me

The breasts o’ her tenderness:

Never did any milk of hers once bless

My thirsting mouth.

Nigh and nigh draws the chase,

With unperturbèd pace,

Deliberate speed, majestic instancy;

And past those noisèd Feet

A voice comes yet more fleet—

‘Lo! naught contents thee, who content’st not Me!’

Naked I wait Thy love’s uplifted stroke!

My harness piece by piece Thou hast hewn from me,

And smitten me to my knee;

I am defenceless utterly.

I slept, methinks, and woke,

And, slowly gazing, find me stripped in sleep.

In the rash lustihead of my young powers,

I shook the pillaring hours

And pulled my life upon me; grimed with smears,

I stand amid the dust o’ the mounded years—

My mangled youth lies dead beneath the heap.

My days have crackled and gone up in smoke,

Have puffed and burst as sun-starts on a stream.

Yea, faileth now even dream

The dreamer, and the lute the lutanist;

Even the linked fantasies, in whose blossomy twist

I swung the earth a trinket at my wrist,

Are yielding; cords of all too weak account

For earth with heavy griefs so overplussed.

Ah! is Thy love indeed

A weed, albeit an amaranthine weed,

Suffering no flowers except its own to mount?

Ah! must—

Designer infinite!—

Ah! must Thou char the wood ere Thou canst limn with it?

My freshness spent its wavering shower i’ the dust;

And now my heart is as a broken fount,

Wherein tear-drippings stagnate, spilt down ever

From the dank thoughts that shiver

Upon the sighful branches of my mind.

Such is; what is to be?

The pulp so bitter, how shall taste the rind?

I dimly guess what Time in mists confounds;

Yet ever and anon a trumpet sounds

From the hid battlements of Eternity;

Those shaken mists a space unsettle, then

Round the half-glimpsèd turrets slowly wash again.

But not ere him who summoneth

I first have seen, enwound

With glooming robes purpureal, cypress-crowned;

His name I know, and what his trumpet saith.

Whether man’s heart or life it be which yields

Thee harvest, must Thy harvest-fields

Be dunged with rotten death?

Now of that long pursuit

Comes on at hand the bruit;

That Voice is round me like a bursting sea:

‘And is thy earth so marred,

Shattered in shard on shard?

Lo, all things fly thee, for thou fliest Me!

Strange, piteous, futile thing!

Wherefore should any set thee love apart?

Seeing none but I makes much of naught’ (He said),

‘And human love needs human meriting:

How hast thou merited—

Of all man’s clotted clay the dingiest clot?

Alack, thou knowest not

How little worthy of any love thou art!

Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee,

Save Me, save only Me?

All which I took from thee I did but take,

Not for thy harms,

But just that thou might’st seek it in My arms.

All which thy child’s mistake

Fancies as lost, I have stored for thee at home:

Rise, clasp My hand, and come!’

Halts by me that footfall:

Is my gloom, after all,

Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly?

‘Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest,

I am He Whom thou seekest!

Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest Me."

Who Exactly Was Francis Thompson?

Francis Thompson (1859–1907) was a gifted English poet from Lancashire, England. He struggled for years with poverty, illness, and opium addiction, even living homeless on the streets of London. Yet through God’s providence, he was rescued, and then restored, and he became one of the great English Christian poets.

His poem The Hound of Heaven has influenced countless readers, including J.R.R. Tolkien. Thompson’s personal experience of running fast from God and then being overtaken by divine mercy, and POWERFUL GRACE gives the poem extraordinary depth and authenticity.

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What's The Central Message of The Hound of Heaven?

“I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years...”

The speaker runs from God through pleasure, relationships, nature, and personal ambition. Yet God continues pursuing him:

“With unhurrying chase,
And unperturbèd pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy...”

This is one of the most profound descriptions of the grace of God ever written. The Lord is not frantic, impatient, or uncertain. He pursues sinners steadily, sovereignly, and lovingly.

The poem ends with Christ’s tender invitation:

“Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest,
I am He Whom thou seekest!”

The great discovery is that every human heart is ultimately searching for God Himself.

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What Is Deeply Biblical in the Poem?

1. God Pursues Lost Sinners

Jesus declared that He came “to seek and to save that which was lost” (Luke 19:10). And that's exactly what He did here, Jesus was diligent, He sought out the Lost! On purpose! 

• Adam and Eve in the garden.
• Jonah on the sea.
• Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus.
• The Prodigal Son while he was still far away.

Thompson’s “Hound of Heaven” is a metaphor for this relentless divine pursuit.

2. Nothing Created Can Satisfy the Human Soul

The poem shows that relationships, nature, pleasure, and dreams cannot quench spiritual thirst. See...

• Ecclesiastes
• Jeremiah 2:13
• Jesus’ words in John 4:14

As Augustine of Hippo wrote: “Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee.”

3. God Removes Lesser Things to Draw Us to Himself

“All which I took from thee I did but take,
Not for thy harms,
But just that thou might’st seek it in My arms.”

This is profoundly biblical. God often strips away idols so that we will seek Him alone (Hebrews 12:5–11).

4. God’s Love Is Stronger Than Human Resistance

Romans 2:4 teaches that God’s kindness leads us to repentance. The poem presents grace as persistent and patient.

5. Christ Is the Fulfillment of Every True Longing

“I am He Whom thou seekest!”

This echoes Jesus’ declaration that He alone is the bread of life, the living water, and the good shepherd.

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It's a Warning I often Think About: “There Is a Line by Us Unseen”

“There is a line by us unseen,
That crosses every path,
The hidden boundary between
God’s patience and His wrath.”

Whether or not the exact authorship is uncertain, the message is consistent with Scripture.

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Biblical Support for This Warning

Genesis 6:3

“My Spirit shall not strive with man forever.”

Proverbs 29:1

“He who is often rebuked, and hardens his neck, will suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy.”

Hebrews 3:7–8

“Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts.”

2 Corinthians 6:2

“Now is the accepted time... now is the day of salvation.”

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What This Warning Does NOT Mean

It does not mean that a truly repentant sinner will be turned away.

Jesus promised:

“The one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out.” (John 6:37)

As long as a person genuinely repents and believes in Christ, there is full forgiveness.

1 Timothy 4:1–2: "Now the Spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith... speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their own conscience seared with a hot iron".

Ephesians 4:18–19: "They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, with a continual lust for more."

1 Timothy 1:19: "..holding on to faith and a good conscience. Some have rejected these and so have suffered shipwreck with regard to the faith."

Yes, there is a real danger for people who put it off, the most important decision of their lives. It is that repeated rejection of God may harden a person to the point where they no longer desire to repent. Their conscience becomes seared (1 Timothy 4:2). The problem is not that Christ refuses them, but that they stubbornly refuse Christ.

1. Thompson struggled during his life as a Roman Catholic man

2. He used Highly Mystical and Symbolic Language, expressions are poetic 

3. The “Hound” Metaphor speaks of how much God loves sinners like you and me. He left heaven for you and me.

Some believers may find the metaphor unusual, but it is meant positively: a hunting dog that persistently tracks its quarry. It emphasizes God’s determined love.

God is not some dog, but he can act very determined like a hound. In the Old Testament, the earnings of a "dog" could not be brought to the house of the Lord (Deuteronomy 23:18). Proverbs 26:11 compares a fool who repeats their mistakes to "a dog returning to its vomit".Rejection of the Gospel: In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus warned, "Do not give dogs what is holy," symbolizing that unrepentant sinners do not value the sacred message of the gospel.

Psalm 22 gives us prophecies about Christ’s Calvary suffering, describing those who persecuted Him as a "pack of dogs".

The Unsaved: The book of Revelation uses "dogs" to describe the ultimate group of outsiders who do not enter the New Jerusalem (Revelation 22:15).

Gentiles: Jesus momentarily used this term (of little puppies) to a Canaanite woman, reflecting the Jewish cultural distinction between God’s chosen people and "outsider" Gentiles.

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Is the Theology Sound from an Evangelical Perspective?

Yes, with discernment.

The central truths are thoroughly biblical:

• Humanity runs from God.
• God lovingly pursues sinners.
• Created things cannot satisfy.
• God removes idols.
• Salvation is found in Christ alone.
• Delaying repentance is spiritually dangerous.

These themes harmonize beautifully with sound evangelical doctrine.

The warning of The Hound of Heaven presents two truths:

1. God lovingly pursues sinners.
2. No one should presume upon God’s patience.

God says, “Come.”

The Spirit says, “Come.”

Christ says, “Whoever comes to Me I will never cast out.”

“Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts.”

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Life is so brief, it seems like it's over in a flash! The Bible compares life to:

• A mist (James 4:14)
• A breath (Psalm 39:5)
• Grass that withers (Isaiah 40:6–8)
• A passing shadow (Job 14:2)

Psalm 90:12 prays, “Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.”

You and I can run to the Lord and the unchanging Bible promises of God, but we are not promised tomorrow. How long we live, God alone knows. 

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Seek the Lord While He May Be Found.. while you have breath. 

Isaiah 55:6–7 declares:

“Seek the LORD while He may be found;
Call upon Him while He is near...
Let him return to the LORD,
And He will have mercy on him...
For He will abundantly pardon.”

This is one of the most gracious invitations in all of Scripture.

If you are hearing God’s voice today, do not run from Him.

Do not assume there will always be another opportunity.

Do not gamble with your soul.

The Lord Jesus Christ pursued you to the cross, bore your sins, died in your place, and rose again. His arms are open wide.

Come now.

Come while you still desire to come.

Come while the Spirit of God is drawing your heart.

And when you finally surrender, you will discover that the One from whom you were fleeing is the One for whom your soul has been searching all along:

“Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest,
I am He Whom thou seekest!”

Time is a precious gift. Every day of life is a great gift to thank the Lord for. As the sands in the hourglass continue to fall, remember this sobering truth: every sixty seconds, another minute of God-given opportunity slips into eternity, and with it, countless souls move one step closer to their everlasting destiny.

The Lord Jesus looked upon the multitudes and said, “The harvest truly is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest” (Luke 10:2). The fields are still white unto harvest. Men and women all around us are living, suffering, and dying without the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. Every heartbeat brings someone nearer either to everlasting life in the presence of God or everlasting separation from Him.

The apostle Paul wrote, “Knowing, therefore, the terror of the Lord, we persuade men” (2 Corinthians 5:11). He also declared, “Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us” (2 Corinthians 5:20). What a staggering thought: the sovereign God of the universe has entrusted to redeemed sinners the ministry of reconciliation.

The urgency could not be greater. Scripture says, “Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation” (2 Corinthians 6:2). Today is all any of us are guaranteed. Yesterday is gone forever. Tomorrow is promised to no one.

Jesus asked the most penetrating question ever posed to humanity: “For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?” (Mark 8:36). No promotion, possession, pleasure, or earthly accomplishment can compensate for an eternity without Christ.

The Word of God reminds us that the lost are spiritually blinded by Satan (2 Corinthians 4:3–4), dead in trespasses and sins (Ephesians 2:1), and already under condemnation apart from faith in Christ (John 3:18, 36). Yet the gospel remains “the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes” (Romans 1:16). Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners (1 Timothy 1:15). He died for our sins, was buried, and rose again the third day according to the Scriptures (1 Corinthians 15:1–4).

The risen Lord’s final marching orders still stand: “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations” (Matthew 28:19–20). “You shall be witnesses to Me” (Acts 1:8). These are not suggestions for a gifted few, but the loving command of our King to every believer.

Charles Spurgeon pleaded with his congregation:

“If sinners be damned, at least let them leap to Hell over our dead bodies. And if they perish, let them perish with our arms wrapped about their knees, imploring them to stay.”

D. L. Moody said:

“The world has yet to see what God can do with a man fully consecrated to Him.”

William Booth declared:

“Not called! Did you say, ‘Not heard the call,’ I think you should say.”

Leonard Ravenhill warned:

“The opportunity of a lifetime must be seized within the lifetime of the opportunity.”

Hudson Taylor wrote:

“The Great Commission is not an option to be considered; it is a command to be obeyed.”

Oswald J. Smith asked:

“Why should anyone hear the Gospel twice before everyone has heard it once?”

Jim Elliot challenged us:

“Wherever you are, be all there. Live to the hilt every situation you believe to be the will of God.”

According to The World Population Clock from the United Nations Population Fund, the world population is now over 8 billion people. Many have never heard a clear presentation of the biblical gospel.

Joshua Project estimates that more than 3 billion people live among unreached people groups, meaning they have little or no access to an evangelical church or faithful gospel witness.

The World Health Organization reports that hundreds of thousands of people die by suicide each year, underscoring the deep spiritual despair and hopelessness present in our fallen world.

The World Health Organization and UNICEF document that many children and adults die daily from preventable causes. 

Every person who dies without repentance toward God and saving faith in the Lord Jesus Christ faces eternal judgment (Hebrews 9:27; Revelation 20:11–15).

Therefore, Redeem the Time

Pray earnestly.

Love sacrificially.

Speak boldly.

Weep compassionately.

Go obediently.

Witness faithfully.

A conversation may be your only opportunity.

A gospel tract may be read after you are gone.

A prayer may open a heart.

A testimony may awaken a conscience.

A simple act of kindness may prepare the soil for the seed of the Word.

“The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life, and he who wins souls is wise” (Proverbs 11:30, NKJV).

“Those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the firmament, and those who turn many to righteousness like the stars forever and ever” (Daniel 12:3).

“He who goes forth weeping, bearing seed for sowing, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him” (Psalm 126:6).

May we live with hot tears in our eyes when there is loss or near loss. The gospel on our lips, the love of Christ in our hearts, and eternity in our view.

For soon our clocks will stop, our opportunities will cease, and we will stand before the Lord Jesus Christ.

Until then, let us spend and be spent for the salvation of souls, so that on that final day we may hear our Savior say, “Well done, good and faithful servant.. Enter into the joy of your lord” (Matthew 25:21).