I am Known by God

I leave for the Sudan on Thursday. It’s hard to believe that it is finally here, and that it only takes a couple of plane rides to be transported from a place of familiarity, comfort, and excess to a place where indoor plumbing and Starbucks have yet to arrive. And while I am ready to just go, I know I am going through those days that usually accompany the final preparation for a mission trip; I question my adequacy to serve, my ability to share this Gospel of truth and grace. Will I be able to articulately describe a love that is incomprehensible and yet so palpably real in the same breath?

Recently, though, I have been trudging through J. I. Packer’s Knowing God. And however challenging it might be, it has also served as an encouragement to me over the past couple days as I prepare to leave. In it, he describes the beauty of being known by God:

“what matters supremely, therefore, is not, in the last analysis, the fact that I know God, but the larger fact which underlies it—the fact that he knows me…There is tremendous relief in knowing that his love to me is utterly realistic, based at every point on prior knowledge of the worst about me, so that no discovery now can disillusion him about me, in the way I am so often disillusioned about myself...”

How beautiful it is to describe God’s love as utterly realistic---that it overwhelms us despite our fears, failures, and flaws. That despite my own disillusionment, good or bad, His love is unchanging. That despite my own feelings of inadequacy, He will use me to His glory, and His purpose will prevail.

So I don’t have to worry about knowing what to say or being able to overcome culture and language, because the beauty in following Christ is that His love will transcend my human folly. As I prepare to love a people presently unknown to me, there is comfort in knowing that they are already known by Him.