To Know Your Name

Something that I've been thinking about a great deal lately is knowing God. My relationship with Him didn't really become personal until almost two years ago. I was raised in church and knew a lot about God, but I didn't really know Him. Joining Pulse and seeing the passion for God that so many of the students had really pushed me to a new level in my relationship with God. I began to want what He had planned for my life, and through some circumstances that were my own fault, I learned to find my identity in Him, and depend on Him as my best friend, Father, and Provider. But the thing that's been foremost in my thoughts lately is this: If we want to go anywhere in life, accomplish anything for God, we have to know Him. Not just know about Him. The word "know" has several different meanings, but the definition I like is "have developed a relationship with someone through meeting and spending time with them." We want to seek God's will and live it out, but it's kind of hard to accomplish anything if you don't know anything about Him. It would be like someone you're really close to, in my case, my mom, asking me to buy her a drink from Starbucks. If I don't know her very well, I won't know what to get her. I'll have to guess. I'll be stuck in front of the cash register, frozen in indecision, wildly trying to pick a random drink. But if I know her, I can walk in, order confidently, and save myself a catastrophe.


Paul talks about how knowing Christ is greater than anything in this life in Philippians 3:8-11. "...I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him..." Everything. He takes everything this life has and basically says it is worthless if he can't know Christ and have an intimate relationship with Him. That kind of passion and dedication is amazing. I'm making that my goal: to know Christ and be found in him. If that is in order, everything else will fall into place. It's not as easy as it sounds. But no one ever said following Christ with everything you had was easy. 


Mallory