Do You Really Know Jesus? Really?

Have we come up close to the bleeding skin of the God-Man and let His wounds heal us?

Have we been ruined?

And have we been ruined, again and again?

There’s a question for each of our hearts that probes beyond whether we’re familiar with His name or His story. It even reaches past whether or not we’ve ever prayed a “sinner’s prayer.”

This question is for both the churched and the unchurched. It’s the question that our very existence centers upon. It’s the question we’ll still have to answer even after we breathe our last breath.

Do you really know Him? 

Or have we belittled the richness of His sacrifice, assuming that our familiarity with a story is the same thing as receiving it?

Truly receiving this story is transformative. For it comes with a divine exchange—when Jesus extends His heart to us, and we extend ours to Him.

To let yourself sink into this story is to surrender your life into the hand of another. It’s our heart’s looking way up, and it’s our soul’s bowing way down, as low as the ground will allow. It’s the tears of our brokenness spilled out; our dirty, shaking hands held out; our dark, bleeding hearts reaching out … to receive what we could never earn and do not deserve.

But He gives it to those who want it. To those who want Him. 

And when we receive Him, people will know. 

We will look different… because we have to let go of the world’s hands if we want to take hold of God’s. 

Readers, how many of us who are named Christians live our lives, day to day, giving little or no thought to Him? Have we accused Him of being boring and yet have been so full of the world’s wine that we’ve yet to truly drink of the Water of Life? Devastatingly, His glorious grace has been degraded in our eyes when we think we can embrace both His cross and the world, when we think His blood drained out was unto making us comfortable in our sin, when we withhold from Him the very thing He died for.

How many of us live “good and clean lives,” sit in church every Sunday, sing songs with the congregation—and yet our hearts have yet to fall in love with the One we sing about?

How many of us have heard His name, come to Him now and then when we need help, know a few things about Him … but He’s no more than a familiar stranger to us?

How many of us have never had that real moment before Him when we tell Him that we need His cross, that we need His forgiveness, that we need Him and that we choose and love Him back?