Jesus is glorious.<\/p>\n
He simply is. \u00a0The beauty, simplicity, and mystery of THIS MAN amazes me. \u00a0I want to know Him. \u00a0I want us as a church to adore and follow Him. \u00a0When we gather for worship Sunday, may He lead us by His Holy Spirit to know our Father and to know ourselves. \u00a0And to know that He has reconciled us–forever. \u00a0Inseparably. \u00a0That you may marvel:<\/p>\n
Someday, the Scriptures tell us, all of God\u2019s people will appear before this one whose body is forever scarred by the whipping, the nails, and the spear they thrust into his side. His humanity is real and never sentimentalized. He will be enthroned as King of kings, and in consummating his kingdom righteousness will cover the earth like water covers the sea. He will be worshiped by all of creation, but always knows his people by name (John 10:3, Revelation 3:5).<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cWhat matters supremely,\u201d J. I. Packer says, \u201cis not, in the last analysis, the fact that I know God, but the larger fact which underlies it\u2014the fact that he knows me… I am never out of his mind… He knows me as a friend, one who loves me; and there is no moment when his eye is off me, or his attention distracted from me, and no moment, therefore, when his care falters… There is unspeakable comfort… in knowing that God is constantly taking knowledge of me in love, and watching over me for my good. There is tremendous relief in knowing that his love to me is utterly realistic, based at every point on prior knowledge of the worst about me, so that no discovery now can disillusion him about me, in the way I am so often disillusioned about myself… There is… great cause for humility in the thought that he sees all the twisted things about me that my [friends] do not see… and that he sees more corruption in me than that which I see in myself… There is, however, equally great incentive to worship and love God in the thought that, for some unfathomable reason, he wants me as his friend, and desires to be my friend, and has given his Son to die for me in order to realize this purpose.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n If you struggle with faith because you have unanswered questions, knowledge you desire in the hope it will make things certain, remember that what you know and don\u2019t know is important, but not supremely so. There is a greater knowledge that does not depend on us, that embraces us within a greater love, and for which no doubt arises. That is the knowledge that truly matters.<\/p>\n