Do You Really Know Jesus? Really?

This is a small but earnest appeal to each of our hearts today, yours and mine. Choose Him—whether it be that you choose again, or that you choose for the first time.

Love Him.

Abandon yourself to Him. 

His gift is free. But we can’t take something that’s free and fail to acknowledge at what unfathomable cost it came to the bleeding Giver.

Withhold nothing from the One who withheld nothing from you. Give Jesus the inheritance of your heart that He so desires and deserves.

His flesh was torn open for us. Blood flowed from His marred frame until He breathed His last.

Because He wants us close. He wants our hearts.

And in this life that we walk (and sometimes trudge and crawl) through, how close has your heart come to Him?

How close is your heart to Him when things seem to be going well and your way, when no big trials are invading your camp, when all (or at least a lot) seems to be smooth sailing?

And how close is your heart to Him when it breaks, when things fall apart, when disease takes one you love, when your family ruptures, when those things happen that make you feel like your heart will bleed right out of your chest, when storms beat against your house?

How close is your heart to Him when your world breaks, when national laws are passed that defy God’s law, when you read news headlines of children suffering and poor ones fleeing for a refuge, when nations are raging, when crises seem to only be escalating?

Do you know Him?

Do you know the One who came to heal the world’s brokenness, and your heart’s?

There is going to be an inevitable moment when you and I will lock eyes with Him for the first time. And if we don’t know Him now, we will not know Him then. 

Each of our lives is heading toward that very real moment. Life’s times of joy, sorrow and tribulation are moving us toward an eye-to-eye encounter. And in that moment, all of life’s sum will come down one thing, the only thing that matters.

Do you know—deeply, personally and intimately know—Jesus?

When you finally look into the eyes of the God-Man, will you be looking into the eyes of a friend? Will you know the depths of His heart and have let Him into the depths of yours? Will your heart have spent its days in wisdom, building a rich history with Jesus?

Or will you painfully realize, then, that He who has loved us, who has eternally desired us, who was pierced through for us, who was meant to be our nearest, most intimate Friend … is only a familiar stranger? 

How close will your heart be to His in that moment His eyes stare into yours?

This isn’t a hobby or a mere fraction of life’s whole. Jesus is Life. He gave His all, and by the grace of God, may my all, and your all, be His.

And may we be overcome, undone and astounded—again and again—with the wonder, the awe and the terrifying beauty of His story.

“Listen, ye children of God, it is the old story over again, but it is always new to you. See Him giving His back to the smiters, and His cheeks to them that pluck off the hair. See Him as He hides not His face from shame and spitting, dumb like a sheep before her shearers, and like a lamb that is brought to the slaughter. … See Him with the cross upon His mangled shoulders, staggering through Jerusalem’s streets. … See Him, ye that love Him, and love Him more as He stretches out His hands to the nail, and gives His feet to the iron. … Behold Him as they lift up the cross with Him upon it and dash it down into its place and dislocate His bones. … Stand, if ye can, and view that face so full of dolour. Look till a sword shall go through your own heart as it went through His virgin mother’s very soul. Will you not love Him who did all that friend could do for friend; who gave His life for us? Beloved, here are a thousand crimson cords that tie us to the Savior, and I hope we feel their constraining power. It is His vast love, the old eternal bond, the love which redeemed, which suffered in our stead, the love which pleaded our cause before the eternal throne; it is this which we give as a sufficient reason why we should love the Savior, if needs be, even unto death.” (C.H. Spurgeon)

Kinsey Thurlow is a minister at the International House of Prayer in Kansas City. She is an advocate for the fatherless and her husband, Jon is a worship leader and minister at IHOP-KC.