Know God, Know Yourself

 

 I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Gal. 2:20)

 

This verse has come to mean a lot to me in my “golden years” as a continuing overcomer of sin and death. It stands in sharp contrast to the years of my life prior to my conversion. As a willful young teenager the thought, "If it is to be it all depends on me," was the driving force that enabled me to break free from an abusive relationship. The “other” in that relationship was not willing to let go, so it was up to me to break the chains that bound me, and I did! That was an important first step in the process of my identity formation. I know now that God enabled that breakthrough, even though I didn’t know Him at the time. My roots had grown deep into the soil of backwoods Connecticut, but that yearning to be free of deadening influences was strong enough to uproot me and launch me into my first destiny which was to travel the world, and that was also what God had in mind for me at that time.

“Fly away magnificent bird, a world of unbounded freedom beckons” became my theme song. I was determined to never allow anyone to deceive and enslave me again. I was idealistic and concerned about the problem of “man’s inhumanity to man,” but was certain “religion” was not the answer.  I became “religious” about being unreligious. That attitude took me around the world to faraway places with strange sounding names like Katmandu, Kashmir, and Afghanistan. It finally drove me to the hallowed halls of academia, where I got a PhD in Philosophy, which you can read about in my last essay. There you can also learn how I finally surrendered to the love of Jesus Christ and yielded to Him the process of getting to know myself. My prayer life became mostly listening prayers as God helped me to grow in knowledge of Him, and also of myself. Calvin (and many others) said the two most important kinds of knowledge we can get are knowledge of God and knowledge of ourselves. I agree, and that process of getting to know God and ourselves might take us all the way back to the time when He was knitting us together in our mother's womb and generations beyond. We did not choose our parents or the time and place where we would be born, God did!

He is the ultimate writer of history. He is also the God of the present and the future. He knows all of us from the inside out, and in the crushing of growing up and throughout our lives, if we are open to him He is drawing out from each of us what He planned right from the beginning. He is putting together all the pieces to make us fruitful for the Kingdom that is to come starting right now! His Kingdom will be magnificent – a kaleidoscope of colors and sounds, with something new always breaking out, then returning to draw the old into the future, forever changed. That is how we can live in true freedom!