The Secret of Being Known

S

omeone once asked, “Do you know God?” But there’s a question that is far more important: Does God know you?

The issue on the great day of judgment will not be whether you know God but whether God knows you.

Many will claim to know God in the day of judgment. They will say to Him, “Lord, Lord, I know You! I have prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name and done many wonders in Your name. I ate and drank in Your presence, and You taught in our streets. I swear I do know You!”

But to some of them He will reply, “I don’t know you, and I don’t know where you’re from. In fact, I never knew you. Depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!” (See Matthew 7:21-23 and Luke 13:25-27.)

No words could possibly be more terrifying to hear! How hor- rifying to think you know God, only to discover that He doesn’t know you! The issues at risk here are of eternal consequence. There can be no more fundamentally important question than this: What must I do to be known by God?

The answer has everything to do with my secret life with God. He wants me to enter the secret place, sit before Him, re- move every façade and mask of pretense, and reveal to Him the

Secrets of the Secret Place

innermost secrets of my heart. He wants me to unveil my face before Him (2 Corinthians 3:18) and let Him see the real me. The good, the bad, the ugly—all of it. He wants me to love Him without withholding any part of my being. He wants a relation- ship with me that is based in total transparency and honesty. I am changing more and more into the image of Christ, but during the process I allow Him to see the naked truth of my brokenness and carnality.

“But,” someone might counter, “I thought God knows every- thing about us anyways!”

True, He does. But just because He sees certain dark rooms in our hearts doesn’t mean we’ve invited His light into those dark rooms. The human tendency is to hide and cover up. If we try to hide our true condition from Him, not only do we deceive ourselves, but we also hold ourselves back from being known by Him. When He says He knows us, He means that we have invited Him into every part of our thoughts, motives, desires, and ac- tions. When we invite Him in, He releases His grace to empower us to overcome sinful patterns that had previously seemed un- conquerable.

Judas Iscariot serves as a compelling example of a man who was incredibly close to Jesus but yet didn’t allow Jesus into the secrets of his heart. He had a major problem with stealing, but He refused to confess it and bring it into the light. Jesus gave him multiple opportunities over a three-year period to open up, but Judas repeatedly chose to hide, hide, hide. Eventually Satan was able to reach into that stronghold in Judas’s life and yank him to his destruction. Judas illustrates the terrifying truth that it’s possible to spend lots of time in the presence of Jesus and still not be known by Him.

Jesus can handle the confessions of our actual struggles; what He can’t handle is when we hide them and pretend they don’t exist. The secret place is no place for secrets. It’s the place for total honesty and full disclosure. When we reveal our struggles, He releases the grace to help us change. This is how we let Him know who we really are.

The Secret of Being Known

Now here’s the awesome part: When we confess our struggles to Him, He lavishes us with acceptance and ownership. He says, “Since you’re willing to show Me your inner ugliness, I am willing to confess you before My Father and claim you as My own!” Wow! I feared that He might reject me if He knew the real me; as it turns out, He accepts me when I let Him see the real me. His grace truly is amazing! His acceptance is so incredible that it inspires me to open every single crevice of my heart to His loving eyes.

And that’s where the intimacy is! The greatest intimacy is found in the mutual giving of ourselves radically to each other. The cross demonstrates how radically He gives Himself to me, and my embracing of the cross is my giving myself back to Him with lavish abandonment. Not only am I honest with Him; I search for ways to give even more of my heart to Him. It’s the search for increasing self-disclosure that causes my relationship with Him to be deepened and enriched.

Someone once said, “Prayer demands a relationship in which you allow someone other than yourself to enter into the very center of your being, to see there what you would rather leave in darkness, and to touch there what you would rather leave untouched” (author unknown).

Isn’t it great to be truly known by Him? As Bill Gaither penned the song, “The one who knows me best loves me most!” He knows me, and He understands me.

One reason we find such delight in surrendering our lives to Christ’s leadership is because He never misunderstands us. All of us have known the frustration of feeling or thinking one way about a certain issue, but having someone else totally mis- interpret our thoughts or intentions and thus judge us wrongly. That never happens with Jesus. He always knows exactly what we’re thinking and what is motivating us. This is one reason the twelve disciples found Jesus’ leadership so compelling—because He was able to address the issues of their hearts with total ac- curacy and complete understanding. He knew them like an open book, and His ability to provide compassionate leadership in the power of that knowledge endeared them to Him forever. They felt completely understood, even when they were wrong and being

Secrets of the Secret Place

rebuked for it. Jesus both knew them implicitly and loved them unconditionally. Oh, the blessedness of being known by God!

How can we be known by God? The answer is given to us most simply in 1 Corinthians 8:3, “But if anyone loves God, this one is known by Him.” When we open our hearts to Him in lov- ing abandonment, He embraces us and knows us. What a joyful privilege—to have a knowing relationship with God Almighty! Thank you, Jesus, for the gift of the secret place where we can give each other this love.

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Дата добавления: 2015-10-23