All people lie on a first dates. Why is lying up front so common? The common goal is to hide the real you long enough so they love you just enough to keep from turning back.
There is something absolutely terrifying about being fully known. But yet there is something so fascinating about being fully loved.
If I’m fully known then surely I can’t be fully loved. But with God you are.
The message of the Bible is not that you should love God but that God loves you. At some point in your life, you came to believe in God, but he believed in you first. Though I am much worse a sinner than I could ever imagine, I am more loved through Christ than I could have ever hoped for. He fully sees you and fully knows you, yet he fully loves you. When you come to the realization that there is nothing you can do for God to love you any more or any less, it will truly change you and your relationship with the Lord.
John addresses with certainty.
1 John 3:16-24 We know what real love is because Jesus gave up his life for us. So we also ought to give up our lives for our brothers and sisters 17 If someone has enough money to live well and sees a brother or sister in need but shows no compassion—how can God’s love be in that person? 18 Dear children, let’s not merely say that we love each other; let us show the truth by our actions. 19 Our actions will show that we belong to the truth, so we will be confident when we stand before God. 20 Even if we feel guilty, God is greater than our feelings, and he knows everything. 21 Dear friends, if we don’t feel guilty, we can come to God with bold confidence. 22 And we will receive from him whatever we ask because we obey him and do the things that please him. 23 And this is his commandment: We must believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another, just as he commanded us. 24 Those who obey God’s commandments remain in fellowship with him, and he with them. And we know he lives in us because the Spirit he gave us lives in us.
God fully sees you and fully knows you, yet fully loves you because God fully designed you.
We are all uniquely gifted by God. Many of us simply live misunderstood lives because we don’t understand ourselves.
Jesus teaches us to love others “as we love ourselves.” But the big question we need to ask is, “Do we love ourselves?”
According to Jesus, your ability to love yourself determines your capacity to love others.
Something inside each and every one of us is broken because of the Fall of Adam & Eve. Think about how Adam must have felt about himself and about God before the Fall. He was at complete and total peace with God and with himself knowing nothing of any kind of shame or guilt. This is what Jesus wants to restore in you and me.
We should realize that God’s plan is for us to learn to enjoy him and to understand that he enjoys us. This is the relationship that Jesus came to provide.
God didn’t love you back, he loved you first.
In Psalms 139 David describes our God with beautiful imagery: how he creates us, encircles us, place his hand over us, leads us and sees us, and then David ends with this prayer:
“Search me, God, and know my heart: test me and know my concerns. See if there is any offensive way in me; leader me in the everlasting way”
My cautious heart is quick to add “search me, but don’t search too hard. Know me, but don’t know this part.”
As much as we desire to be fully known, the thought of someone actually knowing everything about us is a little bit terrifying. Even though the characteristics that God describes in psalms 139 are true: He creates us, encircles us and leads us, we still have this ancient, knee-jerk reaction to life ourselves from him when we sin, to hide our shame from him (Gn 3:8).
Because of Jesus, we have new clothes; when god see us, he sees the new us, not the old us. It’s in these garments that we approach the throne, and it’s there that we receive the opposite of what we deserve: mercy and grace (Heb 4:16).
When we are confident in our covering in Christ, there is no reason to cringe or run into a hole when we ask him to search us and know us. He is the God who treats you, leads you, and encircles you. There is nothing he doesn’t already know, and there is nothing that can keep you from him when you are in Christ with Jesus because you are fully known and fully loved (Rm 8:38-39).
