To truthfully "know" Jesus, His heart, His person, His character is to be drawn to love Him dearly - this I know with good confidence. That being said, it would seem likely to me that if that true connection is never made, then it's more likely true that one has never honestly known Him. Scripture tells us that one day every person who has ever lived will acknowledge Jesus as Lord - even His most ardent deniers,... but how many will truly know Him? How many will know the height and honor of His place in the heavenly realm and will have embraced the opportunity to know Him as friend?
"Therefore, God elevated him to the place of highest honor and gave him the name above all other names, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue declare that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." Philippians 29-11 (NLT)
Everyone - even the dead will be raised to recognize Him at judgment day, but not every person will actually "know" Him or be acknowledged by Him as His friend. And the fate of those outside of that circle of His friends will be sealed on that day of His final judgment. Right now, many may find it easy to disrespectfully disregard Him or write Him off as "fantasy". But the day is coming and not far off when that so called fantasy will reveal Himself to them and that reality will bring sudden, everlasting and deepest regret to the memory of their every disrespecting thought about Him... but it'll be too late to know Him then.
It's a sad but true thought that to deny surrendering to God's call for relationship with Him is to deny the very purpose for one's own existence and life - having the opportunity to share relationship with us being His purpose in creating us in the first place. "Surrender" may be a hard word for stiff necked, hard hearts to swallow, but it's exactly what we must do in order to be called His. Human beings have become too proud and too far distanced from the simple truth, that though we've been given the freedom to make choices in this life, we've never been our own masters.
As human beings, we've put enough history behind us since the dawn of creation and the events of God's interactions in the Old Testament to make forgetting God an easier thing to do... but He's never forgotten us. It's been His patience to allow those who will to come to Him to do so that has allowed the history of this life to linger, ... but that time is running out. And our opportunities to make this life count for something eternal are passing by as well.
So many human beings that God created with a desire to know and to be known by Him have wandered far away from Him - some without realizing that it was ever His heart's desire to share life with them personally. How far might we have strayed from His unchanging standards and how far from our first and foremost thoughts has He fallen?
Does the word surrender immediately call up a resistant spirit? Even when used in reference to our surrender to the one who created us? Where do we stand in that most important relationship that spells out the only reason for our only purpose to be given life? Honest reflection and thoughts often have the ability to spell out the perils of the truth of our reality in the potential permanent state of our purpose. We either embrace it in complete surrender or we will die in denial of it.
Relationship with God - it's our only true task in life. So the single most important thing we can do in life - every moment, ... is to respond to God. And whether we realize it or not, we are responding to Him in what we say, do and even allow ourselves to think. And He knows it all. But if you're reading this and there are things in your life and past that stand as an offense in your response to God, it's not too late to make things right with Him while you still have breath. As the theologian Richard Sibbes once said truthfully, "There is more mercy in Christ than sin in us".
It's on our knees with honest, penitent and humbled hearts that we speak the most important messages of all of our lives before the God who gave us life...
... He's listening.
"No, O people, the LORD has told you what is good, and this is what he requires of you: to do what is right, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God." Micah 6:8 (NLT)
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