Known and loved by the Living God

“And thus the secrets of his heart are revealed; and so, falling down on his face, he will worship God and report that God is truly among you.” – 1 Corinthians 14:25

The thing is, God knows you.

Individually. Specifically. Unmistakably. The God of all the universe knows what’s going on in your life even right now.

And His Word reveals the condition of our hearts.

Hebrews 4:12 tells us that, “the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.”

God knows you. Your thoughts. Your failures. Your struggles. He knows your shortcomings. He knows your hurts.

And He loves you.

There is a moment, in Exodus 3:7-8, when God speaks to Moses from the midst of the burning bush and communicates His plans to deliver the nation of Israel from its bondage in Egypt, and He says, “...(I) have heard their cry because of their taskmasters, for I know their sorrows. So I have come to deliver them …”

Of all the words He could have used there -- not that’s He’s aware of their sorrows. Or that He empathizes with their sorrows.

He said He knows their sorrows.

It is the same word in the Hebrew – yada – that is used in Genesis 4:1 when we read that “Adam knew his wife.”

There is an intimacy communicated in that word.

Beyond understanding, it speaks of a deep connection to the pain.

God knows your sorrows that way.

In whatever you are going through right now, He knows exactly where you are. He has seen what oppresses you.

He has heard your cry.

Know today that Jesus came to deliver you from all of it.

Every single one of us is a sinner. And our sin, for each one of us, has been directly against this God who loves you so deeply.

For each one of us, our sin has separated us from God. And the only way to bridge the chasm that we ourselves opened up with our sin, was through the deliverer that God sent. Through Jesus Christ coming and paying the debt of that sin with His own blood.

He is speaking to your heart in that. He is revealing the secrets and He’s drawing to the surface things He desires to free you from, even right now.

So just hand them over to Him. Surrender that burden. That bitterness. That anger. That hurt. That sun. Surrender the self-indulgence over to Him.

Repent of it – ask His forgiveness – and leave it in His hands.

Yield to what God is moving on your heart, even in this moment, and be filled with the fullness of what He intends to do in your life.

Worship God and acknowledge what has been true all along: He is among you even now. He knows you. He loves you. He has seen what oppresses you.

And He means to deliver you from it.

Joey Crandall is the pastor at Calvary Chapel Carson Valley.