It's So Nice to Get to Know You

I spent years consistently walking into beautiful buildings made of stone and stained glass; Kneeling, and singing, and eating “body” and drinking “blood” and reciting words to God out of a book that a pious priest wrote.  I prayed every night without fail,  I confessed my sins. I honored my mother and father.  I confessed Him as Lord.  I was good. I was religious. I was lost.  

And then, back in the day when a kid could be gone for hours on end with no cell phone, I told my parents I was going over to Zach’s to play football, but instead I snuck over to his church youth group.   There, in a small room, awkwardly standing in the dark with 30 9th graders, something happened.  With their hands lifted, they started to sing.  Ok.  This was super weird.  Everything in me wanted to leave, but curiosity had me locked in.  It wasn’t just the singing and the hand lifting that got me, it was what they were singing.  

“It’s so nice to get to know you.  It’s so nice to get to know You.  It’s so nice to get to know you as my friend.”  

“What?  What is this?”  I knew religion and this was something very different…  

“Though I know Your Lord and Savior, and I’ll praise your name forever, It’s so nice to get to know You as my friend.”  

And there, in that small dark room, I sang my way into eternal life.  

John 17:3

And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.  

Over the next few weeks of sneaking out on Wednesday nights I got to know the Lord and my life was changed forever.  

Does this sound familiar?  Maybe you have a similar story?  Jesus told one like it in Matthew chapter 7: 

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.  On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’

I, like the man in this parable,  thought being a Christian was a business transaction.  That if I did these certain things, God would let me live in his house. So I worked for Him.  He was my boss.  I was his employee.  He was my landlord.  I was His tenant.  It was exhausting and I hated it.  And to the glory of His precious grace, God interrupted my vain, religious work with a simple love song there in that small room with 30 kids. My life in God went from a sour business relationship to a loving family relationship though seeing and believing in the One Who came to do all the work for me.   

Jesus bore the weight of our sin on the cross so that we might now, through His perfect work there, be in right RELATIONSHIP with God.  He made Him Who knew no sin to be sin on my behalf, in order that I might become the righteousness of God in Him!  ~1 Cor 5:21 

We can KNOW God!  We can walk with God without the heavy weight of a landlord who is watching and waiting for us to forget a payment – for there is therefore now no condemnation for those Who are in Christ Jesus!  

Friend, do you know Him?    

Does the way you interact with God look more like a business relationship than a family relationship? 

“Oh, that we might know the LORD! Let us press on to know him. He will respond to us as surely as the arrival of dawn or the coming of rains in early spring.”  ~ Hosea 6:3 

amen