The Only One

The other day I was in heartfelt prayer with God, asking Him for His presence, crying out for Him to say something.  I was weeping because I so desperately wanted Him to tell me what I was doing right and what I was doing wrong, to give me clear directions.  During that time of intense seeking, I imagined the day that I will finally hear Him say my name, the day that I will finally see His glorious face, and as I sat there slumped over, praying and weeping, He impressed something deeply upon my heart:  "I love you as if you were the only one."  That one sentence, in all it's appropriate perfection, was the food that my soul was so desperately longing for.

That is how God loves each one of us.  God's love for you is as if you were the only one.  Paul tells us, "For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes [the time of perfection; completeness] the partial passes away... Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely." (1 Cor 13:9-12).

My NASB translation also puts verse 12 this way:  "Now we see but a dim reflection as in a mirror; but then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known."  I can't decide what fills me with more wonder and longing:  to know that I am "fully known" by God, or to know that there will come a day in which I will know God fully and completely, even as I am now fully and completely known by Him.

Meditate on the fact that God knows you fully and completely.  Every sigh, every joy, every struggle, every victory, every defeat, every moment, meticulously recorded and pored over by the eyes of the Creator of the universe, the Author of all reality, "the Founder and Perfecter of our faith, Who for the joy that was set before Him, endured the cross..." (Heb 12:2).  The joy that was set before Him was us.  We are His joy.


"Though you have not seen Him, you love Him; and though you do not see Him now, you believe in Him and rejoice with an inexpressible and glorious joy.." (1 Peter 1:8)

"Jesus said to him, 'Because you have seen Me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen, and yet have believed.'" (John 20:29)

"And I pray that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to comprehend the length and width and height and depth of His love, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God." (Eph 3:17-19)