Knowing Jesus More vs. Being Known.
Saturday morning I headed to a meeting at our church. I grabbed my cup of coffee and headed out the door, armed with my notepad for taking notes during this meeting time together. This meeting was for the ladies in our church to take part in the planning process for an event coming up. There were several new ladies at this even including myself, the leader asked us all to go around the table and share two things about ourselves. She asked us to share our name and how long we'd been attending the church.
About seven other ladies spoke before it got around the table for myself. As I sat there watching and listening to each and every one of them I noticed something. I noticed that each of them were sharing more than the two things asked of us. They were sharing about their families, their kids, their husbands, bits and pieces of their story.
I realized very quickly that something that could have taken just a few minutes to go around the table started to take much longer and a huge chunk of time was spent letting the women around that table share freely. What stood out even more so clearly to me that day was that as humans we desire to be known.
God made us this way. We want to be known, we want to be validated and uplifted. Heck, one of my love languages if words of affirmation. I totally get it. We want nothing more than to share our stories and hear that we matter, that they matter.
As it quickly became my turn to speak I breezed through my intro and let the other person after me speak and I felt the Holy Spirit remind me that;
We must balance our desire to be known and validated with knowing Jesus more.
Jesus knows our deep longing and desires to be know because this is they way he created us to worship him. He wants us to be known by him, he wants us to draw ourselves nearer to him in order to fill this need he created in us.
One of the ways I practice this in my daily life is by digging into his word, and knowing exactly who God says he is and his promises for us. If we're not in God's word we can't know his goodness and his promises for us. This helps nurture and grow our relationship with Him. I hope that you're encouraged today to dig deeper into what God has waiting for you through His word. I pray you read those scriptures and rest in his promises.
God is for you. He won't fail you, you are His.