Known and Loved Anyway
Good Morning,
You have searched me, Lord, and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue you, Lord, know it completely. Ps. 139:1-4
For many people the thing they want most is to be fully known. Yet that is also the very thing that many people fear. As David writes this Psalm, he is in awe of the fact that God knows absolutely everything about us. Who we are at our core, what we think, what we say and what we do. Furthermore, He even knows the things we think about saying and doing. That is because God is all-knowing. He doesn’t just possess knowledge but is the source of it all (that might make your head hurt!).
It is a great comfort that God understands us intimately and can empathize with everything we go through; even the things we can’t put words to. But we also know ourselves and are fully aware of the “less than admirable” things we think, say and do. And to realize that the creator of all things knows it too can be fearful. Arthur Pink writes that Divine omniscience fills us with uneasiness. Commentator James Boyce is more direct when he describes an all-knowing God as immensely threatening.
Certainly, for the person who has not accepted Christ into their life, the fear is well-grounded since God is the end-of-time judge to whom we will all give account. But as you read Psalm 139 it is not fear that David exudes. It is awe, peace and reverence. He basks in the fact that God not only knows Him completely, but that He is present every second of every day. He writes glowingly of the inescapable and comforting presence of God that surrounds us all (vs.7-12).
How is this possible? How can we be at peace with a God who knows all our blemishes and failings? The answer to that question is love. Not a love we can come to grips with, but a love that is beyond anything we can comprehend or imagine. It is completely independent of how we perform. It is unchanging regardless of our messes. Think for a moment about this astounding truth from Romans 5:8. “But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.”
Did you catch that? While we were still sinners. God knew all our screw-ups before we did and died for us anyway. In full knowledge of our flaws His love moved Him to offer is only Son to give us life and reconcile us to Him. And that changes the game. We can rejoice in being fully known because we have One who paid the price for our sin, relieve us of our guilt, and claim us as sons and daughters. That will change your complete outlook on life and fill you with a peace and confidence that goes beyond anything else.
David came to embrace what it means to be completely known by God and loved by Him anyway. Have you embraced the same thing?
Live this week on purpose,
Ron Klopfenstein
