“It’s so unusual it’s frightening.”

If you have not heard the song that accompanies this lyric, I recommend listening to it before continuing to read the rest of my post. You can find the song here, called Known by Tauren Wells. The song itself speaks to the intimate way that God knows us and invites us to know Him through Jesus. As a brief aside: if you are in need of always uplifting radio in the car or online with great variety, I recommend tuning into K-Love or Air1. Here in Springfield, MA, I highly recommend locally The Q 99.7. I love that God is allowing so many to transcend genre in order to be heard by the world.

My life since trusting Jesus (with what little I was willing to hand over at the time) in 2008 until 2015 became very transient. I make that previous parenthetical statement, because I think it’s important to point out that my personal journey with Christ started out a lot more like the little boy’s dad in Mark  9:24 where he sobbingly cried out “Lord, I believe! Help my unbelief.“

The Christian walk isn’t perfect, but if you are authentically following Christ, the change in your life and love you have for yourself and others is noticeable. It is a lifelong following involving a lifetime of recognizing the brokenness we’ve suffered or imposed upon others. It is humbly choosing to accept forgiveness in a way that allows us to move forward despite our flaws.

To love God and accept Jesus died for our transgressions is only the beginning to understanding how to love yourself and others.

Inviting God into all those parts and pieces of us that He knows and sees already, yet, that we still attempt to hide from him, is hard. I struggle with dating for a number of reasons, mostly for me, the pain of rejection. Avoiding that pain has made it much easier for me to set my work life up in order to avoid potentially risky interpersonal relationships. I’ve learned over the years that with any new relationship, be it romantic, platonic, or the undecided limbo that can occur between the two, the direction they go in requires a certain level of risk and vulnerability. A risk that hinges on a plethora of both individuals’ active assumptions, experienced and ongoing insecurities, and yes, continued daily choices to simply allow the other person to know you. A vulnerability to see one another among the reality of our own working messes. To choose to be known.

To be known is to stare down rejection and remember who we first rejected.

I’ve heard it said and believe from my own life experiences up until this very moment that disappointment is often a reminder of God’s divine appointments with us.

It is in our disappointment that God wants us to lean in through Jesus, share, seek, and ask Him to show Himself to us in a real way. And expect to see Him like crazy.

In everything. It’s so unusual, it’s frightening. God who in Christ stood where we stood and felt the disappointment and failure of not being chosen by the very people He came for after choosing to be known. Jesus knows pain and rejection. He walked it for us. He overcame it in order to live on and walk it out with us through The Holy Spirit, so that we too might overcome the sting of rejection and choose to be known in life. Choose to allow the fruits of the spirit to flow through us. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

It is a daily walk to be chosen and to invite God into what He already knows about you. To not reject him again and again. I’m finally choosing to allow others to see into my thoughts and my life, not just here in this blog, but in real-life, lived with intention. It isn’t always pretty, and I mess it up a lot. There are days when I feel defeated, because living intentionally has an element of vulnerability that often leaves others a little uncomfortable. Nonetheless, I am choosing to be known by more than just my God. And when you choose to be known to someone else – you risk painfully deep rejection that you’ve got to work through in order to grow. Yet through my own tears and feelings of rejection over the years, I am given a greater sense for how intimate the relationship with Jesus really is –how intimately God knows us through His Son’s own rejection by us. Yet He still loves us and wants to connect with us intimately in order that we may connect intimately with others in healthy ways.

“It’s hard truth and ridiculous grace to be known – fully known – and loved by you (God).”

A decade and multiple states later, my trust in Jesus has grown exponentially with each step I take in faith. I am now three years into living in New England. A place where the purpose and passion of my story is seemingly only just beginning. For the first time in my life, I finally sense I am where I was designed to be long-term. I’m choosing to be known in ways that I used to keep to myself, and it is so unusual it’s frightening.

How can you choose to be known today? Who can you choose to share a piece of yourself with, even in the face of rejection and still wake up tomorrow to do it again with the love of Jesus? Someone needs you to share today. Ask God who, and choose to be known.