to be fully known

To be understood, to be known, to be taken care of, to be seen, to be accepted, to be loved... these core desires that we have... that underlying desire is that we would be fully known and not misunderstood. And Jesus had that desire too. I see it repeated over and over in Matthew 6-12, how He just kept saying... if you understood who I really am and what I am really saying... if you really understood, you would be thinking about all of these things differently. You would be thinking differently about:

(chapter 6)

• sacrifice (what it is and how it works)

• needs (what they are and how they get met)

• money

(chapter 7)

• the faults of others

(chapter 8)

• physical healing (the purpose of it and the power behind it)

• following Jesus

(chapter 9)

• spiritual healing/the forgiveness of sins

• sinners

• crowds of hurting people

(chapter 10)

• persecution

• rewards

(chapter 12)

• the law

• family

It is so sobering, so humbling to read through all these words where Jesus just keeps telling us: look deeper. Look more eternally. Look higher. Look up and you will see... the way you are thinking about everything needs completely changed. Jesus wants to be fully known for Who He Is and what He has done... but not for His own glory but for the glory of His Father. And one day we will fully know Him, that is promised to us. But because of HIS GREAT LOVE - we are fully known already.

"But I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready, for you are still of the flesh. For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way?  For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” are you not being merely human? What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.  So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labor.  For we are God's fellow workers. You are God's field, God's building." (I Corinthians 3:1-9)

"When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known." (I Corinthians 13:11-12)

"So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy,  complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.  Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.  Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.  Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus,  who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.  And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross." (Philippians 2:1-8)