Known by God
Known by God
If anyone loves God, he is known by Him. (1 Cor. 8:3)
Letting God In
God created us to have a relationship with Him. He wants to be close to us. Our sin is the only thing that separates us from Him, and Jesus took care of that problem once and for all by dying on the cross for us (see 1 Pet. 3:18). So the door for fellowship is wide open. We’re even urged to “approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us at the proper time” (Heb. 4:16). But we often hold back.
We are always the limiting factor in our relationship with God. He’s not cold or distant, too busy or unavailable. But we often are. We tend to reject God’s overtures for intimacy. Sometimes we know our lives are displeasing to Him, and we don’t want to deal with it. We feel like that’s all He’ll want to talk about. If we’re ever going to know God deeply, though, we need to be willing to engage with Him as we are, not as we’d like to be. He can work with that. He’s not expecting perfect people.
Trusting Other People
We don’t often make the connection between intimacy with other people and intimacy with God, but there is an inextricable connection between the two. If we can’t trust other people with ourselves, even the parts we don’t like, we’ll have a hard time trusting God with ourselves too. That’s just how God has designed things. So we’ve got to be willing to risk.
Bottom Line
Allowing ourselves to be known by God and others feels risky, but it’s the only way our relationships grow.