Full Circle aka Morning Thoughts (call it a devotion if you want)

The Lord continues to speak about pride, sin, knowing oneself, etc. This morning's email from the Ravi Zacharias team:

Self-Deception and the God Who Sees

I followed that up with two of my favorite verses:

Psalm 139:23
23 Search me, O God, and know my heart;
test me and know my anxious thoughts.

1 Corinthians 13:12
12Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

I am really good at deceiving myself. I find devil's advocate a fascinating role to play and have perfected my skills over the years - my husband's convinced I should have become a lawyer. A detail-oriented person (that's putting it kindly), I can argue the points of one word in a sentence into oblivion! Applied to others and situations, this trait is particularly annoying - applied to myself it could be downright destructive.

There is something in me that does NOT want to see myself for who/what I really am. So I revert to childhood and pretend, make up stories, etc. But that's not maturity (something I'm learning alot about the last few months) and it's not reality.

Truth is I'm so good at avoiding the truth that if I'm ever going to really know something about myself, I will need someone else to tell me. Someone whose opinion is always just, always accurate, always filled with grace, always loving, always true. I think this was David's cry when he prayed for God to know his heart, to try (or test) his thoughts. Our God is the God Who Sees.

There is something in me that longs to be known. Maybe it's because I'm a female, I don't know. But I want to be heard... to be understood... to be known. In honest moments, I can admit that the reason I allow myself to be deceived is because I am wholly afraid that once known, I will not be accepted or loved. I think we all fear this.

Do you love grammar? I don't, but I do have a healthy respect for it! The statement in 1 Corinthians is particularly packed with grammatical interest. It is set up as a comparion between the state of things now and when "that which is perfect has come." Until you get to the last phrase. It's true that we shall know on that day. But it is not true that we wait until that day to be fully known. In the verb "I am known" a grammatical tense peculiar to the Greek language is employed - it's called aorist. The aorist tense is without respect to time. Stated positively, it can mean at any given time. We would say always. We are always fully known by God! This at once fulfills both my desire to be known and my fear of being rejected - the God of All has embraced fallen humanity!

It's in this revelation I find the greatest joy known to man - that of a sinner washed clean!

1 John 3:1

1How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!