Life-spark: God knows you completely. (John 1:43-51)
When my son Jeremy was eleven, I took him archery hunting. I called in a monster bull elk and it stopped only twenty yards from him. “Dad, I was scared! I was hiding in one of those little fir trees. I could almost feel his breath, but he didn’t see me.”
A man named Nathanael was not snuggled under a fir tree, but a fig tree, when his friend Phillip came to take him to meet Jesus. Meeting Nathaniel, Jesus promptly declared things about this stranger that sounded like He had known him all his life.
“’How do you know me?’ Nathanael asked. Jesus answered, ‘I saw you while you were still under the fig tree before Philip called you.’” (John 1:48, NIV)
Long before Google Earth could have helped Him zoom in on a fig tree in Israel, the Spirit revealed to Jesus not only Nathanael’s location, but his inner condition, his very character.
Jesus Christ knows us because He made us. The scripture says all things, including people, including you and I, were made for Him and through Him. (See Romans 11:36) “Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.” (John 1:3, NIV)
God made us so that, like Him, we want to be known. The desire to be known by others is a big part of our relational nature.
And God knows us. He knows who we really are. Jesus gave Peter new news about Peter (verse 42), and then He told Nathanael supposedly private things about Nathaniel. (verse 48) Over and over, Jesus told people unknown things about their character and potential, things about who they were meant to be and could be.
Since God knows me even better than I know myself, perhaps I should ask Him what He knows. Once I see what God sees in me, I’ll never be the same.
Life-challenge: Look at the second hand on your watch. Ask God if there is anything He knows about you that He wants you to know also. Still your mind and listen for His voice for a minute.