Come and Know Me.

I remember the day at the age of 12 that I chose Jesus.  My Parents marriage was rapidly falling apart. I had watched members of our church pull our family apart instead of restoring us as a family. The people that were suppose to be the hands and feet of Jesus, through words of discouragement and judgement around like it was there job to tell someone how unrighteous they were.  In that moment I had the choice. I saw what not following Jesus really looks like. I truly believe that some who call themselves "Christians", act as though the cross is a weapon of self righteousness towards those who are seen as less than. I knew I didn't need the world and our faulty human abilities, emotions or actions. I needed Jesus. 

At the tender age of 12, I was sitting in my room alone. I heard God's voice. I had never heard it before like that it was not a "heard" voice, but a voice that my heart was able to hear.  "Choose me".  I ran out of my room, to my mom and said "I want to give my life to Jesus."  I did a public profession of faith in front of our church community. I was recently reminded by my grandmother, she remembers the first time I took communion.  I cried.  Tears streaming down my face, it was such a spiritual moment. At 12 I did not know my bible, I did not know all the legalistic things that many churches adhere too. I just knew one thing, through the experiences I had already gone through, the life threatening situations and with the falling apart of our family. I needed Jesus.  

I have since than walked some pretty tough roads that left me scarred and broken. For years I have felt stuck in the trauma, like the horrible things that I have walked through were a weight holding me down. Yet amidst it all life still went on, and I was in a constant fight to gain ground to reach the top of the mountain of life with everyone else, and I just felt like I could never get there.  All the planning in life to reach the top of the mountain was turning out to be pointless. Nothing I had planned was working out. I had it all planned out, I soon learned that God's plan is always right, I may not like it, but He has the plan book. I have also learned it is when you reach the top that is actually when the real challenge begins. All the planning in the world won't and can't prepare you for the storms, the avalanches, the exhaustion. As I dwell on this I think about the mountain climbers lost on the tallest peak in the world most were lost on the decent. They reached the goal, that was all that they saw, they wanted that peak, nothing or anyone mattered more.  They had done the planning, the training, but they perhaps lost sight of what truly matters in this life. The world will tell us, that contentment is found at the top of the world, reach the top and you will find it all.  Have you found it all?  Me either. 

 This year, I heard that voice again. Say "Know me". Honestly it had been a very long time. For years I cried out to him asking him to let me know he was still there, and I heard nothing. Until August of this year, I was sitting at my cardiologists office. I had been dealing with some health issues with my heart that stopped me in my tracks. It was in that office that I realized I was climbing up Everest again, at break neck speeds. Over the last 2 years we found our home church, after searching for 15 years, and I joined all kinds of activities, and kept my home and homeschooling going, I was winning and climbing that mountain. I felt so good. But I was so tired. I thought I had enough strength to descend the mountain and tell everyone about my great adventure over these last couple of years. Reality was that a little storm came that I should have been able to handle, like many storms before. But my knee's buckled and I hit the dirt. I had used up whatever energy I had. I forgot about something really important, rest. Resting in Him. Here I was on the side of the mountain, to scared, to tired to be able to move. Yet life doesn't stop because you do. It was than that satan snuck into my head, and told me, I wasn't good enough, I wasn't smart enough, it was all my fault, I am a burden to others, I will never be enough for such and such. But I knew I wanted more but didn't know how to find it, I felt numb. I began to self isolate, honestly I still am in the process of breaking free from that isolation.  

You see, I still hadn't got it right yet. I was still on that rat race of life to the top of the highest peak. The weight of keeping up with the Jones's.  The blinded by fight of always the keeping it all together on the outside, but neglecting to acknowledge on the inside I was falling apart.  I wanted to reach that peak, however made a fatal mistake I leaned on my own understanding. Failing to truly Trust him. I needed to trust that I didn't need to look at my life from the top of a mountain, but  rather in living each day with him. to really get to know Him.  What would my life look like through the lens of knowing him? There was a song "To know him is to Love him" written in 1958 by Phil Spector, based off of the words on his father's grave stone. "To have known him is to have loved him". What does it truly mean to truly know Jesus?  What I found is, the more that I learn, the more that I spend time in his word, the more I love him.  The more my eyes are opened to this world and its broken promises and false advertising the more I realize, that I don't need to reach the peak of that mountain, I just need Jesus the rest will follow. Being a Christian is more than knowing about Jesus, its truly knowing him in an intimate relationship and that dedication, it takes time, and it takes trust. To know him is to know God.   

John Chapter 17.

1When Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, "Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, 2since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. 3And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. 4I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. 5And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.

6"I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world. Yours they were, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. 7Now they know that everything that you have given me is from you. 8For I have given them the words that you gave me, and they have received them and have come to know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. 9I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours. 10All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them. 11And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one. 12While I was with them, I kept them in your name, which you have given me. I have guarded them, and not one of them has been lost except the son of destruction, that the Scripture might be fulfilled. 13But now I am coming to you, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves. 14I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. 15I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. 16They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. 17Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. 18As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. 19And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth.

20"I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, 21that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, 23I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. 24Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. 25O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me. 26I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them." 

 Amen.