During my
time with God this morning, a particular “Aha!-Moment” blessed me deep into my heart.
As I considered things God was dealing with in my life, broken things that
needed the attention of the Great Physician of the soul, I discovered one more
thing God was teaching me for my comfort and joy.
The lesson
was simple, even though a long time in coming. It was the realization that our
felt-need to be “known” is a good thing; in fact, a God-thing. It was as though
a fog dissipated in my mind and I could suddenly see that the dysfunctional,
sarky, self-saturated, way of trying to be known did not rule out the genuine,
God-given, being-like-Jesus, need to be known.
This is
typical of so many things in life. It has been coined as throwing the baby out
with the bath water. It is when we think we must throw out the whole package
because we know something is wrong with it. It is the self-protective way of
handling things in our own strength, from our very limited understanding of who
we are and what is wrong with us, where we just want to get rid of anything in
our lives that is messed-up, and hurts too much.
So, when a
great many people know what it is like to be rejected because we were not good
enough, and to discover that so few people want to really know us, and to live
with that fear of, “if people really knew me they wouldn’t like me,” it is easy
to believe that our need to be known must be bad. Needing attention is treated
as if it is inherently sinful.
What suddenly
fell into place this morning was that all the sarky, self-serving,
dysfunctional, desperate ways of trying to get people to know us, and accept
us, are clearly in such conflict with the work of God through his Spirit, that
something does have to go.
However, it
is not our need to be known that must go, but only the survival-skills way of
handling our need to be known. It is only the sarky, fleshly, self-dependent
way of looking at this need that must change; not because our need to be known
is wrong, but because our ways of meeting that need are wrong.
Instead of
trying to hide our need, or beat our need to be known into submission (which is
really a sarky form of dissociation), or pseudo-crucifying our need to be
known, we must crucify the sark’s efforts to meet this need. We must put to
death our own strategies for satisfaction. We must come out from under all our
self-centered ways of handling our need to be known and stand empty and poor in
spirit before the throne of grace where God himself will meet our need with the
glorious revelation of knowing us before the beginning of time.
Suddenly it
all comes together, past, present, and future, in a glorious message of hope.
God “foreknew” his children in
eternity;[1] he
gives us eternal life, which is to know him now and forever;[2]and
he promises us an eternal future in the fullness of his joy where “I shall know fully, even as I have been
fully known.”[3]
All this
tells me that the felt-need to be known is his idea (hence why babies seek this
out from infancy). There is something in the way that the Triune God knows each
other, the intimate, constant, fellowship of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
that is replicated into us so that we have the same need to be in fellowship
where we are known.[4]
Again, this
is not the dysfunctional, counterfeit, pendulum-extreme, ways of handling this
need. It is the admission that, underneath all the self-protective, and
self-dependent, ways of handling the longing to be known, and underneath all
the hurts, and rejections, and failures, that have made so many people feel their
need to be known was sinful, shameful, disgusting, and reprehensible, is
something that GOD MADE!
It is God who
says, “But if anyone loves God, he is
known by God.”[5]It
is in God’s book that it is written, “But
now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God…”[6]It
is God who “has made known his salvation.”[7]It
is God who made himself known to Israel “in
bringing them out of the land of Egypt.”[8]God
promised, “So I will show my greatness
and my holiness and make myself known in the eyes of many nations. Then they
will know that I am the LORD.”[9]
While I can
see that God has been working in my life about this for a long time, this
morning’s, “What’s Under That?” experience brought me to see that any sarky
strategies for trying to be known, and trying to hide from the hurt of people
not wanting to know me, will always fail because they are of the flesh.
Instead, I
accept that I must acknowledge to God my poverty of spirit in this area of
feeling known. I must submit to the Holy Spirit in whatever ways he brings me
to mourn things that have happened to me to stir up sarky dysfunctional strategies
of handling my need to be known, and to mourn my sarky-dependence that has kept
me from having this need met first in Christ, and also among his brothers. I acknowledge
that I cannot fix the deep wounds that have surrounded this God-designed need
to be known, nor the painful experience of my own failures at meeting this
need. Instead, I welcome this gracious gift of God that stirs up a hunger and
thirst for the righteousness of knowing God in God’s knowing me.
In eternity,
I will know as fully as I have been known. Today, I put aside sarky strategies,
and polish up the brass mirror through which I seem to see so dimly,[10]
accepting that even today’s little bit I come to know, and feel known, is
described by God as, “being transformed
into the same image from one degree of glory to another.”[11]
And, since
this transforming into the image of Jesus Christ from one degree of glory to
another can only happen in the Spirit, denying the sark the right to meet this
need is one side of a very good thing.[12]
The other side is to follow Jesus under the cross of salvation, through which I
have come to know God who has always known me.[13]
So, do you
feel an irresistible need to be known? That is a good thing. Are you ready for Jesus
Christ to handle that for you? That’s right, another good thing.
© 2015 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517,
Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8 ~ in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise noted,
Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English
Standard Version Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good
News Publishers.)
[1]
Romans 8:28-30
[2]
John 17:3
[3]
I Corinthians 13:12; Psalm 16:11
[4]
I am not writing this to the exclusion of knowing others, or seeking their best
interests as Scripture teaches. This is only a matter of being able to focus on
one thing at a time, in this case, God ministering to me about my need to be
known.
[5]
1 Corinthians 8:3
[6]
Galatians 4:9
[7]
Psalm 98:2
[8]
Ezekiel 20:9
[9]
Ezekiel 38:23
[10]
I Corinthians 13:12
[11]
II Corinthians 3:18
[12]
Just a reminder that my use of the word “sark” is a preferred way of speaking
of “the flesh.” “Sark” is a transliteration of the Greek word translated “flesh”
in the English Scriptures.
[13]
When Jesus said, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take
up his cross and follow me” (Matthew 16:24; Mark 8:34; Luke 9:23), he introduced
the life that would later be described so thoroughly by Paul in the book of
Romans. Denying ourselves means giving up life in the flesh, and taking up Jesus’
cross means to live in the Spirit through the redemptive work Jesus’
accomplished at Calvary. We are called to a life that no longer depends on
self, or sark, to do the right things, but depends on the life of the Spirit
that is ours through the cross. It is in this life of the Spirit that we follow
Christ into an ever-deepening experience of knowing God in his knowing of us.
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